Halo 3 PC Tech Review: The Master Chief Collection's Best Port Yet? 

thats more a problem with the gearbox port they used instead of the bungie xbox version

@@IINareik Moders already fixed most of the graphical issues of Geabox's port there is no reason 343 cant.

an interesting quirk i noticed with Halo CE is that the cutscenes have a dithering effect for some reason

Why would they when everyone keeps handing companies money to rebuy our old shoes with new laces? Everyone is so starved for quality we are praising these bare, mod-like upgraded remasters instead of high budget remakes. And I know everyone here would jump on a top quality remake, which could include the MCC (or 1 or 2 of these ancient games) as a bonus.

I think after the rest of mcc gets released on pc they will revist the titles to polish them all up quite a bit. Especially with the series x coming soon theres prolly a LOT they can do going forward. CE needs A LOT of work to return it to og xbox glory, but i have faith they will restore it eventually.

I honestly have no issues with the game as is, and don't "need" remade graphics in the style of H2:A.... but I never got this "H3 has aged nicely" argument. To be completely honest, I think H3 looked dated already a year after release. It really just looked like an OG Xbox game ported to the 360, which is basically exactly what it was. Some of the backdrops were really nice, especially during cutscenes, but that's about it. Again, I'm not complaining, I'm just making an observation. You gotta remember, this was a year after Gears 1 which looked a lot better, and a year before Gears 2 which was also a much bigger jump. When you look at games from the same time period (roughly speaking) like AC1, COD4, Batman Arkham Asylum, Gears 1 & 2, etc and all of those games look SO much better and have aged really well (Arkham Asylum still looks great to this day, Gears 2 with the 4k patch looks awesome too). Even with the 4k patch, Halo 3 still looks really old. I really do believe that graphics was kind of an after thought with H3. I mean, when you look at Halo 4, that game (running on the same hardware) still looks absolutely stunning.. it looked so good it may even pass as a current gen game.

MG Yeah, Halo 4 is kind of a miracle in terms of graphics.

@@SabatSch95 To explain "aged nicely", it means the art style and lighting have held up compared to something like Halo 2. I don't see where you're saying it's dated unless you think it looks like a carbon copy of og Halo 2. Also Halo 4's art style looks meh to me since the cutscenes aren't even in-engine.

@@trblemayker5157 Dude, Halo 3's cutscenes aren't in engine either (meaning, they're pre-rendered, just like H4). I do think 343 lost track with the art design with H5, but I think H4 looked absolutely beautiful, and I honestly much preferred the "modern", more high tech looking Forerunner design over the old H1-3 designs. But I wasn't really talking about the art style... I'm talking about the graphics on a technical level. It just doesn't look that good. The character models look like they were ported over from the OG Xbox days, the weapon models look extremely basic and not with much detail, the environments often look stale, except for some vegetation bits perhaps. Even the lighting isn't anything special... sure, there are some bits during the first mission that look pretty good, but again, other games from the same era just look so much better in practically every way.

Halo 3 came out same year as Crysis. Crysis looks several generations newer.

that's a memory shared I guess. I rented Halo 3 as well and it was the trailer that got me hyped for it (after having played the first two) will have to reserve some time to give it a proper run once again, now looking like the trailer 10 bungie employed hammered out for E3 :D

I actually bought it used from a Blockbuster back then :)

I was renting games from a store as recently as 2016, but then Hastings went bankrupt too. Now Redbox gave up on games and Gamefly is just... not efficient.

same, me and my brothers have been complaining about halo 3's FOV since the beginning of time. its soooooo narrow.

Which is supposed to be the default Halo FOV??

I read that the reason for the FOV being so low back then was because people spent most of their time on their couch, since the x360 was a console for TVs, it made sense to zoom-in so the players will see everything big, clearer and more readable, because our TVs are usually far away compared to PC monitors.

Considering it's a branch of the Reach era engine, and Halo 2 Anniversary Multiplayer uses it...hopefully it will be improved.

Yeah, I'm honestly most excited for what they'll do with H4 although part of me fears they won't give it that much love & attention b/c lots of Halo "fans" regard the game pretty lowly. I just hope they bring back all the armor customization, b/c what we have now on consoles is just weak. The original customization on the 360 was freaking awesome, and pretty much on Reach's level in terms of options. My Spartan 4 looked damn good if I do say so myself. Other than that, I don't really have that many requests, except for some better textures here & there, but honestly, even after 8 years, Halo 4 still looks absolutely incredible. I even think it looks better than H5.

Well it runs native 4k 60 on Xbox One X. And that's only using an RX580 and those little baby Jaguar cpu cores. So it should be fine.

MCC is finished when ODST drops for me. Couldn't care any less about Halo 4

@@user-ny1jn1uu7y Halo 4 has the best campaign story and the story ages gracefully tho

Im not used to it lol, so i dislike it

When they changed it starting in Halo 2, I stopped playing.

The best, maybe, but no the perfect one, Halo 3 has a lot of network issues in Multiplayer, the hitreg is bad

First half of CE is great the other half no so. Regardless it still holds up well for its age.

@@MrDarkjeda so does halo 2 and ce especially 2, when halo 2 dropped with mcc on pc the hitreg was damn bad. halo 3 hitreg I've found atleast feels normal compared to how halo 2 was

The kind of awesome thing about Halo is none of them are perfect. The series legitimately has so much potential. CE wasn't fully formed, H2 was unfinished, H3 is slower and less sharp feeling than H2 due to slower movement speed, all weapons being projectile etc. ODST has little wrong with it, but it's nowhere near as feature rich as the others. Reach made the mistake of using the same levels for campaign, firefight and multiplayer, bloom on weapons is controversial, the armour abilities aren't always well balanced for multiplayer. H4 borrowed too heavily from CoD, it had too few good 4v4 levels, some weapon balance issues, the Didact story arc is too bloated with expanded universe content (though the Cortana rampancy arc is the best written story in the whole Halo universe, and is inspired by the director's mother being diagnosed with dementia). H5 abandoned everything good about H4's storytelling, and the Spartan abilities changed the nature of the game so much without accounting for them in its multiplayer level design. Warzone was a good concept poorly executed. These are obviously very vague, very few bullet points, but I don't think it's controversial to say every single Halo could have been done better, and that's a good sign for the potential of the series.

CE is my favourite for purely subjective reasons. I still feel something special when I boot up the campaign every few years or so

Hairless Sasquatch tf lol?

Searching through the comments to see if anyone else caught the sneaky AVGN nod. Gold

@@ashleysaffair and for the rest of us who didn't get any of this ?

@@abuzerkadayf8224 It's a reference to the Angry Video Game Nerd's intro song.

@@abuzerkadayf8224 yeah I'm confused too :(

@@TypoDiabetes Be an adult and google AVGN. This isn't hard bro.

Yeah that was literally the only thing keeping me from playing it non-stop since I get kind of motion sick a low FOVs and hate the look of it. I hope for the sake of people playing on console that they get FOV sliders soon, too.

That's still an issue? I heard some guy came up with a fix for it. There's a YT video on it.

I'm just glad Halo 3 doesn't have that issue. I would've never installed the collection ever again.

I honestly think the reach is kinda unplayable once youve went to any other mcc game

What? I played it and everything looked butter smooth, didn't notice anything wrong

@SonnieSlim yea you wouldn't be saying that if you were having that problem. It's really horrible. To the point where I didn't bother playing the game on my 144 Gsync screen and had to use my 4k TV.

Can't wait to play it for the first time tomorrow since me and my brother are almost done with halo 2 and will hop on halo 3 right after! They are still fun games even after all this time

If 343 don't fix all issues we should all go and play the 360 version haha

I'm kind of hoping someone makes a mod to remove the visor. I know you can kind of tune it out over time, but 1 and 2 didn't have it.

They're gonna add proper graphics settings in future updates, probably when Halo 4 hits, as that will come with a performance fix for Reach and Halo 2A.

@@karljuliuz Nice! That's when I will buy the MCC ;-)

Loading...done.

343 sucks

You should play with a controller, holy shit that auto aim :DD

@@z0nx m&k is still way better

Agreed, Halo 2 is the best game in the series.

It's nice to find others that agree. Halo 3 though still fun is what happens when you try to fix what isn't broken (H2) and end up missing the mark. Downgraded sound effects from assault and battle rifle from H1 and 2, removed satisfying rag doll death animations, slower movement speed, reduced long range br shot accuracy etc. H2s core gameplay was already perfect, and they messed with it for no reason, I was confused even at launch at the downgrades they made.

I had a perfectly fine time in co-op

then why do other weapons update at more than 60?

Shit looks like 2007game imo shoulda remastered all

@fisher foster as it was hahahah so why saying it's beautiful idk I booted it up last night on my oled at 4k it's pretty meh idk but if u love it so be it, but what is beautiful is fkng ghost of tushima holy hell if I was at hosp doing gastric emptying imaging I'd be on it

@@djbpresents9584 just because it's old doesn't mean it's not beautiful only new released games arent exclusively good looking, older titles aren't automatically shit in visuals as time goes on the old re1remake still looks good fzero gx still holds up as well and i can go on of course games striving for realism will look worse as time goes on as technology progresses, but games with distinct artistic flair will maintain integrity like tlou1 or the new tomb raider games just look very dated in terms of visuals as we see newer games but on top of that they are overall very generic too and kind of lose their appeal halo atleast has a distinct design in places and this mixed with the impressive job the team did for 3, it really does look beautiful

Play it at either full 4K or 1880P, it worked that way for me and I got no stretching.

Sometimes it drops to $32 on steam.

@@usul573 this include all 5 games right?

@@UltimateAlgorithm Yep! Bought it at that price after _Halo 2_ released for it, and when _Halo 3_ was added a few days ago, all I had to do was download it from an in-game menu, no extra purchase required.

Xbox Game pass PC 1 dollar first month you can play 1+2+ CE and 3

@@UltimateAlgorithm Yes all six, currently Reach, 1, 2, and 3. ODST and 4 are coming.

2020 Winter Sale would be the perfect time! ;-)

Yeah I thought Reach was first but it's Combat Evolved so that's the one I'm doing now

Chief? Really? Cool, I really liked the cutscenes in Reach, they looked so nice

@@WhiteHawk77 I ended up skipping half of halo CE couldnt enjoy it for some reason, finished reach and halo 2 and gonna play halo 3 soon

They dont need to listen to microsoft.They already hv enough quality exclusives that Sony doesnt hv to pretend to be "good guys" by making and releasing and cashing the same games that came out 13 fucking years ago. Hiding the fact of lack of any games this gen.But then gullibles cant see that so i understand your pov. Also, Doom and Titanfall 2 are far better games than anything halo. Hell, Destiny has better combat loop than halo now.

CONport con in plain sight.

after 13 yrs. yes why not.

@@qwerty9398 stop getting triggered. He didn't said sony games are bad but how they should focus on quality of port

@@vineeygamer Brand building. Licensing. Rereleasing. Etc...

I think it's the lighting, there's just something about how it looks in 3 and ODST. I think Reach and even 4 look way worse in that regard.

@@Fnorgh The colors are really nice too, just on the textures themselves.

Until today? What changed your mind? :P

Looks so much better than reach that's for sure.

HDR on Windows 10 has been nothing but a headache for so damn long, I just don't even try to use it anymore unless I'm on a console.

Set your display to YCrBr and set HDR to ON on desktop remove 99% of the problem with HDR.

@@Kubose I'll be honest. Half the time I just don't bother as I don't honestly think HDR looks that much better. In fact in some cases I just find it annoying. In Halo 3 one bug I noticed is that looking at the portal at voi actually makes the game react like you are looking at the sun dimming the edges even though the portal is the polar opposite. Plus never really thought that blinding light was a great "feature". It is cool though in darker games like cities with neon lights or sparks and particle effects but beyond that it's fairly unremarkable. HDR on PC isn't nearly as bad as it used to be though as you now have control of brightness in SDR experiences and can control what apps use it, but personally I prefer when a game has it baked into the engine. Far less finicky. I know a fair few games with this feature suck as both Assassin's Creed Origins and Odyssey and while Forza Horizon requires the check be on in Windows it gives you overriding control in game going around the jank. Honestly making it just be controlled by windows is the real cheap move I wish would stop being used. The HDR toggle makes things feel less seamless considering it even causes your games to flicker the screen when launching to verify the game is HDR compliant. In many cases I would just say ignore HDR. You probably won't notice what you're missing. Besides, unless you play on an OLED display or a fully aray backlit display HDR is a waste anyways. Personally, I'd say people should hold off on investing into it till either getting an OLED display or wait for microLED or ELQD. The effects of HDR are lost a lot on LCDs and if you don't have the contrast ratios of full aray local dimming or the brightness values necessary, it's might as well not be HDR at all.

I have a bad news for you - you have a very bad audio system.