Test your might with eight modifiers
The past several years have been hard for Halo: The Master Chief Collection, to put it lightly. On the one hand, I don’t fault fans who felt burned by the sorry state of the compilation. On the other hand, 343 Industries’ commitment to set things right is commendable. Lessons have hopefully been learned.
In a recent update, the studio added a few neat surprises for folks who have stuck with The Master Chief Collection. The most attention-grabbing addition has got to be fresh challenge skulls for Halo: CE.
- Anger – Enemies and allies fire their weapons faster and more frequently.
- Bandana – Fixed a bug with this skull so now energy-based weapons have infinite ammo as well.
- Catch – Enemies throw and drop more grenades.
- Ghost – A.I. characters will not flinch from attacks, melee or otherwise.
- Sputnik – The Mass of objects is decreased, making them more easily displaced
- That’s Just Wrong – Strengthens the hearing of both allies and enemies. They will now notice the slightest sound of reloading or drawing a weapon, footsteps, etc. A.I. also have increased accuracy.
- Thunderstorm – Field Promotions to the ranks of all A.I. characters so they are more difficult to fight, smarter, and more dangerous.
- Tough Luck – Enemies always go berserk, always dive out of the way, and never flee.
Modifiers: they’re good as hell! More games could use them, both as a way to test our limits (like Halo) and to expand the potential audience with accessibility options (see: Celeste‘s assist mode).
Elsewhere in the update, 343 Industries has brought in a “modern aiming” option for players who thought The Master Chief Collection felt off. The setting is “so good” that it’s toggled on by default.
Modern aiming will help “smooth out the aim acceleration zones on your controller by using values that are more like [Halo 2: Anniversary] and [Halo 4] than the older legacy titles,” according to 343. “The big difference you will notice is that the movement of your cursor is much smoother with these settings turned on and the aim acceleration zones in the diagonals are much harder to activate.”
The developers promise they’re “far from done” with updates for Halo: The Master Chief Collection, noting that these skulls are “something new to chew on” while they “continue work on longer-term features that take months to develop.” Speaking of: a custom game browser is still on the docket.
It sounds like fans will have reasons to keep checking back in while they wait for Halo Infinite.
MCC January Update [Halo]