Halo 5 is the biggest Xbox One game of the year, and plenty of people are excited to get their hands on it. However, there is a pretty significant elephant in the room in the form of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, the series’ first venture onto the Xbox One that suffered from one of the worst launches in gaming history, and continued to have significant problems months after its release.
The Master Chief Collection‘s debilitating issues led many to lose faith in developers 343 Industries, and will undoubtedly come some to be rightfully skeptical of whether or not they should pick Halo 5 up on its release day, in case they’re greeted with the same kind of problems. But what is the likelihood of The Master Chief Collection‘s problems presenting themselves once again? While we can’t say for sure given that we’re still hours away from Halo 5‘s official launch, let’s take a look at whether or not it should be a day one buy, and lament that we’re now in an age where we legitimately have to have this conversation:
Reviews
First things first – is Halo 5 any good? Well, reviews certainly seem to indicate that it is. It’s currently got a Metascore of 86, though reviewers are divided on whether or not its story component is one of the best or worst in the series’ history. However, while Halo‘s campaign certainly has its fair share of admirers, its multiplayer modes are where it has always truly shined, and there’s been a high amount of praise for what 343 Industries has accomplished in this regard. EGM stated that it has a “fast and ferocious multiplayer” with “modes open to all player types,” while our good friends over at GameRevolution called new mode Warzone “the most important leap for multiplayer in Halo since the good-old reliable Slayer,” adding: “It’s that good.”
All-in-all it seems that Halo fans and newcomers alike could be in for a treat here, though these reviews are inevitably not indicative of what the game will be like on launch day, given that its servers will be populated with many more players who could place an extra strain on the game.
Development
The key difference between Halo 5 and Halo: The Master Chief Collection is their development history. While Halo 5 has been developed over the course of 3 years by 343 Industries, Halo: The Master Chief Collection was outsourced to no less than five different developers, with 343 then piecing their efforts together into the broken mess that it ended up being.
Considering how many fingers were in The Master Chief Collection pie, it’s not particularly surprising that it ended up with more than a few problems, something which shouldn’t be the case with Halo 5 given its comparatively smooth development history.
So is it a day one purchase?
It’s incredibly difficult to recommend pre-ordering any video game given the amount of problems we’ve seen many of them suffer from on launch day, but Halo 5 is a different beast than Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and there is no viable excuse for it coming up against the same issues. That being said, it still could have its own set of problems, but if you’re a Halo devotee who really can’t wait to start playing the game tomorrow, then it’s a reasonable bet that it will work and not have a launch that emulates the broken The Master Chief Collection.
With that being said, there’s still no definite answer to this question – in other words, don’t blame us if Halo 5 has duped us all and is actually a mess upon its release!
