Halo: Reach release megathread

[Andytizer 269]

I thought it would be fun to make a thread which combines our impressions of the game which is about to release today. At what time exactly? In about one and a half hours:

It would be interesting to post up impressions, performance, specs, etc below.

Some thoughts:

- how does the Steam/Microsoft multiplayer work

- how will we account for 5 'different' games in the article (I believe some discussion has already happened about separating the articles)

- perhaps this is a chance for us to do some PCGamingWiki multiplayer

As always let's keep our wiki article up to date: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Halo:_The_Master_Chief_Collection

[Rose 272]

I've been playing games since the early 90's mostly on PC but occasionally on the NES, then Sega and briefly PS2. I've not stumbled upon Halo at all, so all I know of it is from others.

Nostalgia aside, what's a good reason to get into it now in 2019? What's special about the series?

[Aemony 142]

Game is live on Steam now, and available for download. Download is 15 GB.

[Andytizer 269]

@Rose I've only ever played Halo 1 on PC all the way through. I did try to play Halo 2 on PC but I remember the GFWL prevented me from playing and back then we didn't have a PCGamingWiki :).

I think it's a couple of things - most people consider the early Bungie Halo games real quality games. The campaign for Halo 1 was excellent - it had a great story and flow, NPCs that fought beside you, a big open map (at the beginning anyway) where you could tackle in multiple directions, the AI was really good and felt like each individual reacted realsitically, the vehicles with turrets were felt really good too. Remember that this game came out in 2001 (2003 on PC) and was miles ahead of other FPS games at the time. On Xbox, it pioneered the FPS control system and it was the first thing people thought of if you said 'multiplayer FPS' on a console.

In terms of whether you should play it in 2019, I think you can ask a similar question of whether one should play Half-Life 1 or 2 in 2019 - it pioneered many aspects of FPS gaming these days, but I'm not sure if it's as fun or as relevant as other games released more recently.

[Jenya 3]

Nostalgia galore, can't wait to play them all.

[Andytizer 269]

First impressions:

Runs beautifully on my setup with graphics quality set to 'Enhanced', reaches 60-75FPS at 3440x1440 on my setup:
Processor: Intel i5 4670K
Ram: 16GB RAM
GPU: Zotac NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB Mini
Motherboard: ASRock Z87E-ITX
Monitor: Acer XR341CK

Xbox login seamless and no issues there. It seems to be required in order to even get into the options menu.

Shame there aren't more graphic 'options', just 'performance', 'original' and 'enhanced'.

Resolution scale is there - it goes from 25% to 100%, shame there isn't supersmapling.

The first assault rifle in the campaign dosen't feel particularly interesting and has weak sounds.

Subtitles don't seem to be working.

There's a LAN mode (as opposed to Xbox Live mode) which is interesting.

When you launch the game there is an interesting 'Any-Cheat Disabled' mode specifically for modding:

 

[BONKERS 32]

No Anti Aliasing options? Disappointing.
MSAA could definitely be implemented into these engines in this day and the performance penalty should be fine on modern hardware.  Or at least a modern TAA or PPAA solution. Halo Reach's TAA was poor quality and had tons of ghosting problems.

[Andytizer 269]

38 minutes ago, sean8102 said:

Only issue I have is the in game audio dose not sound right. For example gun shot sounds sound really muffled. Found plenty of posts in the steam forums and sub reddit of others with the same issue. 343 said they are aware of the issue and its a "encoding issue". Working to fix ASAP but may take some time.

Yes I agree, the guns sound extremely weak and not satisfying at all.

I put together a short video demonstrating the 21:9 cinematic fix + some ultrawide gameplay:

 

[Andytizer 269]

There's a nice 'PC Port Overview' of Halo: Reach on PC here: https://frameseer.com/halo-reach-pc-port-overview/

[Aemony 142]

11 hours ago, sean8102 said:

Found a page where 343 keeps a updated list of known issues for Halo Reach on PC. The audio issue I mentioned is talked about on this page as well.

 

https://support.halowaypoint.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037448411-Halo-Reach-PC-Known-Issues-12-3-19

Thanks, I've added the link to a "Known issues" section on the wiki article.