FarmersOnly.com's biggest competitor.

"Objection! That's...objectionable!"

In a shocking twist, the new hardest boss isn't Radahn or Bayle, but a giant oven.

booba baiken

10/10 best close-the-refrigerator-door simulator of 2021.

Never has their been a rougelike/lite that has come close to the amount of charm and personality this game has. Fun, fast-paced gameplay, rewarding replayability, and a world so oozing with life that it's just as fun on run one as it is run 50. One of the few singleplayer games out there that has me playing dozens upon dozens of hours after beating it solely to see the world fleshed out even more. Supergiant Games has outdone themselves once again.

I must start by saying this positive review is tentative. There are issues in this game. Not so much issues in terms of gameplay or story, as they are no different than the original Xbox and Xbox 360 versions, but in the attempt to modernize the game. Truly I pity 343i for the work they must have to do. The industry just isn't the same as it was 10 to 20 years ago, yet those are the games being presented to you. It's 343i's job to ensure that these games are faithfully brought to PC while keeping the admittedly outdated titles fresh for players new and old alike. They've succeeded in porting the games available at current (Halo: Reach and the currently Insider-exclusive build of Halo: Combat Evolved), but they have not succeeded well at making the experience worthwhile.

Where do the core issues lie? To me, they all stem from 343i's lack of critical thinking on certain aspects of their development process. Thinking back to when the Xbox version of this game first released half a decade ago, their problems were flipped. No one really cared about the progression system or the lack of additional content; the games themselves quite simply didn't work as intended. In order to remedy this, the developers went full steam ahead towards fixing those core issues which, as of now, have been solved. The cost of this focus, however, appears to be a lack of insight into what the medium and long-term affects of the game's more minor issues might be, especially when it comes to the PC-exclusive situations.

Firstly, and this is the most atrocious act (as per community reaction), is the customization and progression systems. Due to the nature of this game, 343i couldn't just go back to the old systems that were in the original games. They had to find a way to make a system that would work with EVERY game in the Master Chief Collection. Their solution was to add this battle pass style progression of "rank up to get one thing of our choosing and that's that and also make it annoying slow and unsatisfying." Of course, this wasn't what their philosophy was when developing the system, but that what it ended up feeling like. I'm currently 65 hours into this game, and I just today hit rank 20 in the season 1 battle pass. I feel like I've earned nothing of note, however. This isn't necessarily because the rewards themselves are not cool (Halo: Reach armor and misc. gear has always looked cool to me), but rather it's because I feel like I've done nothing to earn it. There's no personality in a system that guarantees everyone takes the same path to get the same armor at the same mind-bogglingly slow rate. I'd personally like to see a challenge system implemented to earn armor instead of earning it through XP. Higher-ranking gear equals a harder challenge. This solves the AFK bot problem AND the progression problem with a single change. Of course, 343i does not currently have a challenge tracker outside of their achievements tracker, but I imagine with a bit of ingenuity they could make that system work for new challenges as well.

Secondly, as of the time of this writing, there is no way to access the classic map editor known as Forge without going offline and modding the game. As to why this is the case is still unclear, but luckily we should expect to see it releasing for Halo: Reach in the near future if the near-finished state of the hacked version tells us anything. A BIG part of the charm of Halo is its custom games scene. It's been what has kept Halo 5 from imploding after all this time. An addition of a custom game browser to that game has sparked a community of mic'd up players having fun with each other in a variety of wacky game modes that make you feel like a 12-year-old again. That experience is being sorely missed by me and a majority of like-minded individuals in this game. If you need any proof of how enjoyable these custom game sessions can be, simply look up recent videos on YouTube of Halo: Reach custom games ported over from the Xbox 360 version being played. Watching those should give good perspective as to why this is a bad thing to be missing.

Thirdly, here's something that, in my opinion, is a completely irrational thought, but one that you nevertheless may have: the rest of the games aren't gonna be coming on a monthly or even bi-monthly basis. Right now, 343i is running their very first test flight of Halo: CE for Halo Insiders, over two months after Halo: Reach has been released. AT the current rate, we probably won't see Halo: CE on public servers until as early as March to as late as May (or possibly longer). Same goes for Halo 2, which is maybe a month or two behind CE in terms of development. Halo 3, ODST, and 4 are still no-shows on the development side of things, which makes me think the ladder of the list won't be released until next holiday season. With that being said, this seems to be EXACTLY what has been promised by 343i and is honestly a faster rate than anticipated for what they are doing. I only mention this because you may expect everything to be here soon, but do not deceive yourself. If you buy the full $40 version of this game, you are putting in a long-term investment that won't pay out if you don't have the patience to wait for their releases. Just remember this: the longer a release take, the better it'll probably be.

Now, there are perhaps smaller extraneous issues that some individuals have that I personally think over overreactions or too minor to whine about, but I don;t want to fill this review up with nitpicks. IF you wanna see those, head over to the Steam discussion boards for this game. They'll provide you with the whims of the masses.

Despite all the drawbacks previously mentioned, is MCC still worth it? To me, it is. If you've never played Halo before, this is definitely gonna be a fun experience for you getting to live through all these campaigns for the very first time. And even if you have played Halo before, this game provides the same classic gameplay you know and love with KB&M support and all the frames your heart desires. The gameplay still holds up all these years later, and the stories of all these games are still timeless classics. We often focus on the negatives because it is easier to criticize than to praise (ever have a guy or girl you like ask why you like them and die inside? Yeah, it's like that), but just know that the negatives I have mentioned are just a part of the whole experience, and your tolerance for problems will greatly influence how much these issues affect these otherwise terrific games. Look inwards, ask yourself if you can take the risk and temper your expectations, and decide for yourself if Halo: MCC is for you. If you are on the fence, just remember there is no risk in buying just Halo: Reach for the bargain bin price of just $10. The campaign alone is worth the money, even people who aren't fans of Reach would agree.

As always, if you have questions, just comment under this post.

Thank you for reading. Good luck, Spartans.

Destiny is undoubtedly a tough game to get into, but there’s a good chance that you’ll enjoy at least some aspects of this game. If you’re lucky you might find something that brings you coming back or you might be turned off of this in the first five minutes. Destiny has always been something you have to be patient with. If you just play until there’s no story left and leave, then you really haven’t gotten into the part of the game Bungie intended as the core experience. Frankly, I can’t blame anyone for doing that, as Bungie does a piss-poor job at explaining exactly what to do for inexperienced players (or even me, someone who has over 5,000 hours in this series).

When it comes down to it, the game is free now, so the only risk you have trying this out is some download time. There are MANY potentially enjoyable experiences in this game. It’s up to you to determine if any of them are for you. Do yourself a favor and look for some people willing to sherpa you through the content you don’t understand or simply look it up.

[Also, beware of some reviews on here. Armor customization IS free and people aren’t patient enough to unlock it like normal people. There is absolutely no incentive to buy armor due to grinding because armor you buy has no actual power unless you already have powerful armor that you then infuse said armor in to. The armor system does EXACTLY what they said it would do and there’s no denying that. There is, unfortunately, a group of people who continue to say the opposite because they must point their finger at some random thing they make up because they aren’t qualified to put their thoughts to words. Take all praise and criticism with this series with a grain of salt. Everything is subjective, and if any game proves that, it’s this one.

If you have any questions about any aspect of the game, just DM me and I’ll give you my honest, unbiased-as-possible explanation. I would explain everything in this review, but what would be the point? Everyone who likes this game like it for their own reasons, so hop in and see what interests you (or not).

They should probably just change the genre name to Hollowvania since it's completely redefined the genre.