Master Chief Collection is live today, but not without some issues. The game is currently suffering from matchmaking issues making it hard to find and get into multiplayer matches (I’ve been sitting at the screen above for 5 minutes trying to find a Halo 3 match).
So far I’ve been able to play a handful of matches, however I’ve also noticed some of the matches have less than the maximum number of players in them (my last Halo 2 Team Slayer match was 3 vs 2). When it works the game is a blast. It’s been awesome getting reacquainted with the maps and nuances of each game and switching between the 4 Halo games with a touch of a button.
The menus are well designed and are incredibly quick and easy to navigate. You can select any of the campaigns (and any mission) in seconds or switch over to multiplayer with a flick of the analog stick and choose between a large variety of playlists spanning the four games.
There are playlists that just focus on a single game in addition to playlists that will switch you from game to game between matches.
There are also campaign playlists where you can choose to to play through a series of missions (or all of them) with friends.
I can’t wait to sink hundreds of hours into the four campaigns and hundreds of multiplayer maps! Hopefully the matchmaking issues get worked out soon, until then I’ll probably just play more of the campaign missions.