i can finally put a log for this igdb entry because i finished playing all the actual games
this is half gonna be my thoughts on this specific collection and half my thoughts on halo as a whole

i dont think this is a bad collection at all but man do i wish it had some extra stuff
like credits? where are the credits? why would they not have the credits for each game at the end of each campaign? just really rubbed me the wrong way man
or bonus material like development stuff or even just an art/music gallery, like cmon man you dont get an opportunity to include that stuff that often so why not do it here
i do like that they have all the extra in-game stuff easily accessible in an extras menu, though i do kind of wonder why they bothered putting that stuff in the campaigns in the first place if it wasn't going to be exclusive to the campaigns themselves (i know the halo 3 stuff was already in there but the halo 2 stuff is brand new)
something that ISNT accessible to the extras menu for some reason is the weird side story in odst
but its also kind of really weird? im not really sure what the whole goal of it is, i guess its supposed to give you an idea of what it's like to be a citizen when the covenant attacks except for the fact that the main character is clearly special
idk man i find it weird when i look up the character and find out they have no mention throughout the rest of the series (novels not counting)
feels like someone just got their fanfiction added to the main game tbh
i didn't like how the loading screens between missions/levels were exactly the same between the different campaigns, i would've much preferred just keeping the original transitions (actually looking it up now it looks like there were actually no loading screens at all in the original games? talk about a downgrade!)
i DID like having the toggle for original graphics/remaster graphics, that's just always a fun feature for rereleases like this to have and more games need to do it

you know what REALLY pissed me off once i realized it
the fact that not having easy anti-cheat enabled completely DISABLES achievements for the collection
like what the fuck man i get maybe disabling achievements for multiplayer related things but i didnt even TOUCH multiplayer so why am i being punished
i have to imagine either
1. microsoft was just a bunch of dumbasses and were treating it like their own achievements and decided that to preserve the integrity and sanctity of "gamerscores", they needed to make ABSOLUTELY SURE that achievements were earned legit (despite the game being on a completely different service (steam) and said service not really caring at all how people get achievements) OR
2. whatever method they used to turn off achievements for multiplayer without easy anti-cheat has no way to differentiate between that and singleplayer games and they just didn't care enough to figure it out
either way its dumb and i dont like it! not one bit! but also it didn't detract from the actual games at all so whatever i'll get over it

halo as a series is pretty boring! but not in a bad way
it feels like each game doesn't do a whole lot to expand upon the previous games, like even with added abilities and new mechanics, ultimately the games all sort of follow the same cycle of
1. walk through an area
2. shoot some enemies
3. walk some more
4. shoot more enemies
5. repeat a few more times until
6. shoot enemies in multiple waves until level is complete
and then interspersed is a few cutscenes and occasional switch ups like "shoot enemies IN A CAR that's maybe FLYING" or "walk through an area AND hear exposition"
i think the game that gets closest to really switching things up is odst though that falls short too
odst makes you explore an open city to go find pieces of evidence to further the story which is different because you sort of pick and choose which levels you want to play next
however what kind of sucks is that the non-flashback city exploration sections just boil down to the same "walk through an area, shoot some enemies" cycle
feels like they missed an opportunity to change things up and like
idk put the evidence somewhere hard to reach so the player would have to actually figure out a way to reach it, or maybe have the player do something unique to the environment like having to ride through a subway tunnel or clear a traffic jam to proceed to a new area
halo 2 switched things up a bit by having you play as the arbiter, which i actually found pretty cool, though again they didn't go all the way because other than the camo replacing your flashlight, he plays basically the same as master chief

the halo series is like an action movie series that gets kind of repetitive but never actually bad
like the action starts out good but low budget, then with success it gets more grandiose and is still good but starts to look same-y, meanwhile the story serves the action well but often fails under scrutiny, but never gets so bad that it actively detracts from the whole experience

get some popcorn or a dessert, sit down, and watch the fireworks
and then when it's over, move on with your day

ultimately my advice is this: if you have an interest in playing halo, do it! this is a good way to do it and there's nothing really bad about it
BUT dont go into it expecting to experience some sort of videogame masterpiece like the half life series (just my opinion) or the last of us (not my opinion just what a lot of people say)

it's not a masterpiece,
but it is pretty alright

finally... the LAST halo game...
really though im not playing any more this is the last one for me (unless halo 5 comes to pc and infinite goes WAAAY on sale because i am NOT paying 60 bucks)

actually kind of okay, didn't hate it, thought the story was alright but it was pretty predictable even before i played it
like of course after 3 games of "ARMY HOO-RAH" they gotta go with the very subversive "but what if army structures lead to bad people in charge???? questionable morals for super soldier creation????" "master chief SAD????????"

in this game cortana has lost her chin. i think it's in the next game
she's also the bluest she has literally ever been, which i think at this point is established to be related to her age which makes sense considering one of the key plot points
she also removes your suit flashlight? like she says at the beginning "i updated your suit firmware" and then you just dont have a flashlight the entire game so thanks for that i guess cortana?

the forerunner areas reminded me of the original covenant areas in the first game (in that they looked really boring and repetitive) though other areas were pretty alright

they brought the special abilities back which is cool but wow do all but a couple suck
the shield slows you way too much to make it useful at all for traversing between cover,
the camo is SUPER nerfed compared to the camo in like halo 2 or something,
the decoy just doesn't seem to do anything? you can't really make good use of it because once you expose yourself so you can send it on a path to distract the enemies, they are already focused on you,
the armor lock literally makes you a sitting duck (i actually forget if it was in this game or reach tbh either way its bad),
the forward launch both never showed up for me until the end of the game and also just seemed pretty difficult to use in general,
and the x-ray vision is mostly useless because even though it lets you know where enemies are they almost always are immediately aware of where YOU are, which then alerts you to them anyways because they start shooting at you, also i never got it in an area where i could really take advantage of it with grenades or sneak attacks or anything
that leaves just the jetpack which provides pretty useful upward mobility (can skip taking the stairs) and the auto-turret which is basically like a more useful decoy because it actually draws fire to it, shoots back, and splits the enemies attention

the ending of this game is really unintentionally funny, just (SPOILERS SPOILERS FOR THIS ONE LINE CMON BACKLOGGD!!! INLINE SPOILERS PLEASE???? IM DESPERATE!!!!! I CANT TAKE IT!!!!!!) master chief going "oh yeahhhh she said that once" and it just ending with that

thats basically all i have to say, honestly these games aren't super deep or involved, i beat this one in 2 days (i had basically no distractions)

i actually have very minimal things to say about this game
gameplay is fine and the new shift abilities were cool, story is short, i thought the story was pretty alright though with some side plotlines just kind of fizzling with no explanation (i dunno if theres like bonus stuff i missed or whatever)
they made cortana purple (which she was in halo 1) BUT with a bluish glow
this is an INGENIUS way to connect the stories of halo reach and halo 1, as well as establishing that her purpliness in halo 1 was completely purposeful
why is she blue later in the timeline? dunno
i think they ran out of voice actors for the side characters because multiple characters just sound like they grabbed some guy from the office and told him "read these lines"
also the ending narration is just kind of crap man, idk the voice actress for halsey has a very strained voice and i hear it the most with her eulogy at the end and it just kind of bothers me, also the eulogy itself is kind of bad too

idk man odst was just waaay more memorable (i can actually remember character names from that game lol)

yknow i think i just have a problem with non-linear storytelling, or at least this specific way of doing it where you go find a "piece" of the story, then go find another completely separate piece that's not necessarily directly before or after the previous piece
it just kind of annoys me when i'm like "oh i wonder what happened to that guy" only to find another story piece where someone goes "...blah blah after he DIED blah blah..." and i'm just like "oh okay i guess he's dead now" and then i find another separate piece where it's like "oh no he might DIE?? what will HAPPEN?" and i already know exactly what will happen because the other story piece just fucking told me
anyways i found most of the pieces of this game in order so i actually liked it!
the core concept of looking for little pieces of evidence of your other squad mates and suddenly being like "i know EVERYTHING that happened now" is a little funny but the actual gameplay mechanic of playing through what happened, recontextualizing the areas of the game you just went through is pretty cool and i enjoyed it a lot
also you're NOT master chief which means you can't dual-wield weapons (this is the only gameplay change)
oh my god are these some of the most generic human designs ive ever seen, the squad leader guy straight up looks like some sort of human-proportioned minecraft steve recreation while the boss lady looks like she was designed by someone who doesn't know what women look like (and i dont mean that in a "male gaze" way i mean that in a "the designer was a gay man" way (i don't know who the character designer(s) actually was and i dont care enough to find out))

all in all though i enjoyed the concept, the story, and the gameplay and it wasn't even too long, the city walking sections were pretty alright despite me expecting them to drag on

cortana does NOT exist in this game