I’ve been a PC gamer for all my life, with the exception of having a lonely Nintendo DS to play Pokemon. I’ve never owned a console or even played on one until this past year when my ex-boyfriend introduced me to the world of Halo. It was an amazing game with beautiful graphics, but I was awful at using a console controller. The A and B buttons are in the wrong spots, there’s too many triggers, and why do you need two joysticks?! It also didn’t help that he started us on Halo 5: Guardians that offered no tutorial to the controls. We quickly switched over to Halo: Reach after about five minutes of me complaining about not knowing how to use an Xbox controller in my Nintendo-adapted hands.
At the time of beginning to learn more about the series, there was a rumor that the Master Chief Collection, or MCC for short, was going to drop on PC as well as Xbox before the release of Halo Infinite, the next game in the series. The MCC would contain new, remastered versions of each game up to Halo 4 and was allegedly releasing before the end of 2019. The big news regarding this release was that Halo: Reach was being added to the MCC—it serves as a prequel game to the original Halo: Combat Evolved.
On November 15th, which coincidentally was Halo’s release date anniversary, Microsoft announced that the MCC will be releasing on December 3rd. The first to be released is Halo: Reach and people are able to pre-order the singular game as well as the entire collection ahead of the other games in the MCC. I nearly screamed down the music building’s hallway when I found out the news, I was that excited. I’ve been dying to play Halo: Reach using a keyboard and mouse, and I had the opportunity to play a beta version of the game when I went to Halo Outpost Discovery over the summer. They allowed us to play a snippet of the game that had different play modes, like being on foot and driving a Warthog, an all terrain war vehicle.
Halo is one of the only first person shooter games I will actively play. I was never big on war/fighting games, typically going towards sandbox, survival and rich story games rather than action. I have a deep love for science fiction, and Halo does have an extensive lore that goes beyond the game and into books, which was a perfect combination. The graphics may have been awful in Halo: Combat Evolved, but fans were hooked by the first game for a reason, much like I was encapsulated by Halo: Reach.
So basically what I’m saying is that all my classwork will be done by December 3rd so I can spend all my time playing Halo…and maybe the new Pokemon game too, if I ever get around to buying a Nintendo Switch!