Halo 3 PC Tech Review: The Master Chief Collection's Best Port Yet?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.พ. 2025
- It's been a mixed bag with Halo: The Master Chief Collection but the quality has been rising for the most part from release to release. The latest offering - Halo 3 - absolutely screams on modern PC hardware, and fixes many of the issues we saw in prior TMCC offerings. Here's Alex with the full low-down.
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I hope they continue to fix the MCC. Halo CE's original graphics mode needs some extra love. Shader effects, animation interpolation, the fog/sky-issue. Anyway, I am so happy that these games are so playable at mediocre hardware. It's a treasure trove for budget PC gamers.
thats more a problem with the gearbox port they used instead of the bungie xbox version
@@IINareik Moders already fixed most of the graphical issues of Geabox's port there is no reason 343 cant.
an interesting quirk i noticed with Halo CE is that the cutscenes have a dithering effect for some reason
Why would they when everyone keeps handing companies money to rebuy our old shoes with new laces? Everyone is so starved for quality we are praising these bare, mod-like upgraded remasters instead of high budget remakes. And I know everyone here would jump on a top quality remake, which could include the MCC (or 1 or 2 of these ancient games) as a bonus.
I think after the rest of mcc gets released on pc they will revist the titles to polish them all up quite a bit. Especially with the series x coming soon theres prolly a LOT they can do going forward. CE needs A LOT of work to return it to og xbox glory, but i have faith they will restore it eventually.
I'm impressed by the visuals considering this was released in 2007. I get that many folks wanted the same treatment like Halo 2 Anniversary but Halo 3's visuals have aged quite nicely(barring some human character models) and makes us appreciate the amount of effort Bungie put into the game.
I honestly have no issues with the game as is, and don't "need" remade graphics in the style of H2:A.... but I never got this "H3 has aged nicely" argument. To be completely honest, I think H3 looked dated already a year after release. It really just looked like an OG Xbox game ported to the 360, which is basically exactly what it was. Some of the backdrops were really nice, especially during cutscenes, but that's about it. Again, I'm not complaining, I'm just making an observation. You gotta remember, this was a year after Gears 1 which looked a lot better, and a year before Gears 2 which was also a much bigger jump. When you look at games from the same time period (roughly speaking) like AC1, COD4, Batman Arkham Asylum, Gears 1 & 2, etc and all of those games look SO much better and have aged really well (Arkham Asylum still looks great to this day, Gears 2 with the 4k patch looks awesome too). Even with the 4k patch, Halo 3 still looks really old. I really do believe that graphics was kind of an after thought with H3. I mean, when you look at Halo 4, that game (running on the same hardware) still looks absolutely stunning.. it looked so good it may even pass as a current gen game.
MG Yeah, Halo 4 is kind of a miracle in terms of graphics.
@@SabatSch95 To explain "aged nicely", it means the art style and lighting have held up compared to something like Halo 2. I don't see where you're saying it's dated unless you think it looks like a carbon copy of og Halo 2. Also Halo 4's art style looks meh to me since the cutscenes aren't even in-engine.
@@trblemayker5157 Dude, Halo 3's cutscenes aren't in engine either (meaning, they're pre-rendered, just like H4). I do think 343 lost track with the art design with H5, but I think H4 looked absolutely beautiful, and I honestly much preferred the "modern", more high tech looking Forerunner design over the old H1-3 designs.
But I wasn't really talking about the art style... I'm talking about the graphics on a technical level. It just doesn't look that good. The character models look like they were ported over from the OG Xbox days, the weapon models look extremely basic and not with much detail, the environments often look stale, except for some vegetation bits perhaps. Even the lighting isn't anything special... sure, there are some bits during the first mission that look pretty good, but again, other games from the same era just look so much better in practically every way.
Halo 3 came out same year as Crysis. Crysis looks several generations newer.
Sometimes it looks like the first halo 3 trailer they released where MC is looking over the ark. It looks so good, I'm extremely impressed.
I remember going to block buster to rent this game, couldn't afford to buy it but renting it was easy. I miss blockbuster.
that's a memory shared I guess. I rented Halo 3 as well and it was the trailer that got me hyped for it (after having played the first two)
will have to reserve some time to give it a proper run once again, now looking like the trailer 10 bungie employed hammered out for E3 :D
I actually bought it used from a Blockbuster back then :)
I was renting games from a store as recently as 2016, but then Hastings went bankrupt too. Now Redbox gave up on games and Gamefly is just... not efficient.
Curious how they'll handle Halo 4 with it's updated engine.
Considering it's a branch of the Reach era engine, and Halo 2 Anniversary Multiplayer uses it...hopefully it will be improved.
Yeah, I'm honestly most excited for what they'll do with H4 although part of me fears they won't give it that much love & attention b/c lots of Halo "fans" regard the game pretty lowly. I just hope they bring back all the armor customization, b/c what we have now on consoles is just weak. The original customization on the 360 was freaking awesome, and pretty much on Reach's level in terms of options. My Spartan 4 looked damn good if I do say so myself.
Other than that, I don't really have that many requests, except for some better textures here & there, but honestly, even after 8 years, Halo 4 still looks absolutely incredible. I even think it looks better than H5.
Well it runs native 4k 60 on Xbox One X. And that's only using an RX580 and those little baby Jaguar cpu cores. So it should be fine.
MCC is finished when ODST drops for me. Couldn't care any less about Halo 4
@@치킨-i1i Halo 4 has the best campaign story and the story ages gracefully tho
The FOV was ridiculous on 360, even at the time, when I was 17 and didn’t even have a clue what FOV was, I still thought it felt wrong. Still looks great though.
same, me and my brothers have been complaining about halo 3's FOV since the beginning of time. its soooooo narrow.
Which is supposed to be the default Halo FOV??
3 is probably the best but I'll always have a soft spot for CE. It's timeless.
The best, maybe, but no the perfect one, Halo 3 has a lot of network issues in Multiplayer, the hitreg is bad
First half of CE is great the other half no so. Regardless it still holds up well for its age.
@@MrDarkjeda so does halo 2 and ce especially 2, when halo 2 dropped with mcc on pc the hitreg was damn bad.
halo 3 hitreg I've found atleast feels normal compared to how halo 2 was
The kind of awesome thing about Halo is none of them are perfect. The series legitimately has so much potential.
CE wasn't fully formed, H2 was unfinished, H3 is slower and less sharp feeling than H2 due to slower movement speed, all weapons being projectile etc. ODST has little wrong with it, but it's nowhere near as feature rich as the others.
Reach made the mistake of using the same levels for campaign, firefight and multiplayer, bloom on weapons is controversial, the armour abilities aren't always well balanced for multiplayer. H4 borrowed too heavily from CoD, it had too few good 4v4 levels, some weapon balance issues, the Didact story arc is too bloated with expanded universe content (though the Cortana rampancy arc is the best written story in the whole Halo universe, and is inspired by the director's mother being diagnosed with dementia).
H5 abandoned everything good about H4's storytelling, and the Spartan abilities changed the nature of the game so much without accounting for them in its multiplayer level design. Warzone was a good concept poorly executed.
These are obviously very vague, very few bullet points, but I don't think it's controversial to say every single Halo could have been done better, and that's a good sign for the potential of the series.
CE is my favourite for purely subjective reasons. I still feel something special when I boot up the campaign every few years or so
T-bagging at half the framerate -> literally unplayable.
In real life I prefer my bagging at half refresh.
FOV makes such a massive difference, its like a whole new level of depth.
Im not used to it lol, so i dislike it
When they changed it starting in Halo 2, I stopped playing.
Halo 3 is such an amazing work of art. I'm amazed how Bungie got this beautiful game to run on a Xbox 360. Bungie did wonders and this game is such a masterpiece
Over a decade of waiting to finish the god damn fight. Glad it's finally here though and they did a pretty great job.
I'm so glad they got it right this time. This is by far my favorite Halo game, and possibly my favorite FPS of all time.
5:40 I can't believe you made this joke.... grAAAAAAAAASS
Searching through the comments to see if anyone else caught the sneaky AVGN nod. Gold
@@ashleysaffair and for the rest of us who didn't get any of this ?
@@abuzerkadayf8224 It's a reference to the Angry Video Game Nerd's intro song.
@@abuzerkadayf8224 yeah I'm confused too :(
@@TypoDiabetes Be an adult and google AVGN. This isn't hard bro.
I briefly thought that the 360 footage was the PC version. Just shows how strong the art direction of the original was
Graphics Fidelity: Improved. My ability to land headshots: Nonexistent
Loading...done.
343 sucks
You should play with a controller, holy shit that auto aim :DD
@@z0nx m&k is still way better
This game is one of the reasons that I still have my 360. Great game...great series.
Can't wait to play it for the first time tomorrow since me and my brother are almost done with halo 2 and will hop on halo 3 right after!
They are still fun games even after all this time
If 343 don't fix all issues we should all go and play the 360 version haha
Loved this series on my 360. Looking forward to playing the series again on a PC.
Fond memories of Halo 3. The first game I booted on my new LCD 32" 1080p. I was blown away.
I simply love how we live in a time where we can now find a video called "Halo 3 PC tech review" with benchmarks :)
I'm disappointed they didn't fix the frame interpolation on Reach.
That's still an issue? I heard some guy came up with a fix for it. There's a YT video on it.
I'm just glad Halo 3 doesn't have that issue. I would've never installed the collection ever again.
I honestly think the reach is kinda unplayable once youve went to any other mcc game
What? I played it and everything looked butter smooth, didn't notice anything wrong
@SonnieSlim yea you wouldn't be saying that if you were having that problem. It's really horrible. To the point where I didn't bother playing the game on my 144 Gsync screen and had to use my 4k TV.
Amazing !! However.. Halo 2 still has my heart!
Agreed, Halo 2 is the best game in the series.
It's nice to find others that agree. Halo 3 though still fun is what happens when you try to fix what isn't broken (H2) and end up missing the mark. Downgraded sound effects from assault and battle rifle from H1 and 2, removed satisfying rag doll death animations, slower movement speed, reduced long range br shot accuracy etc. H2s core gameplay was already perfect, and they messed with it for no reason, I was confused even at launch at the downgrades they made.
My favorite game ever, now with FOV slider..it’s all I needed.
Yeah that was literally the only thing keeping me from playing it non-stop since I get kind of motion sick a low FOVs and hate the look of it. I hope for the sake of people playing on console that they get FOV sliders soon, too.
I'm glad PC players finally get to finish the fight.
Welcome home. Performance is amazing!!
Nice AVGN theme subtle insertion when he said "cannot go back to the past"
this game looks beautiful and performs like butter on pc
god bless halo and microsoft
Shit looks like 2007game imo shoulda remastered all
@fisher foster as it was hahahah so why saying it's beautiful idk I booted it up last night on my oled at 4k it's pretty meh idk but if u love it so be it, but what is beautiful is fkng ghost of tushima holy hell if I was at hosp doing gastric emptying imaging I'd be on it
@@djbpresents9584 just because it's old doesn't mean it's not beautiful
only new released games arent exclusively good looking, older titles aren't automatically shit in visuals as time goes on
the old re1remake still looks good
fzero gx still holds up as well and i can go on
of course games striving for realism will look worse as time goes on as technology progresses, but games with distinct artistic flair will maintain integrity
like tlou1 or the new tomb raider games just look very dated in terms of visuals as we see newer games but on top of that they are overall very generic too and kind of lose their appeal
halo atleast has a distinct design in places and this mixed with the impressive job the team did for 3, it really does look beautiful
5:37 I like the AVGN theme there ;)
The resolution boost makes it look like a whole new game. I have never seen a resolution boost change visuals so dramatically, so much detail was lost because of the lower resolution.
I have 2 gripes with Halo3 in MCC on PC:
- Motion blur, which doesn't have an option to be turned off and been bothering me when playing the game .
- The tutorial message and their position being way too close to center of the screen and sometimes obscuring action (just like in Halo 2).
I'm kind of hoping someone makes a mod to remove the visor. I know you can kind of tune it out over time, but 1 and 2 didn't have it.
They're gonna add proper graphics settings in future updates, probably when Halo 4 hits, as that will come with a performance fix for Reach and Halo 2A.
@@karljuliuz Nice!
That's when I will buy the MCC ;-)
I wish TH-cam videos went higher than 60fps so I can better appreciate the fps differences. I can see the differences DF is pointing out even at 60fps but I want the full effect.
It's really unfortunate they still didn't fix the water physics in Halo 3 MCC. On Xbox 360 there was this awesome 3D displacement, which by the way worked perfectly in Eldewrito (that fan-made Halo 3 multiplayer PC port), but in MCC it is still broken.
Would've loved to see some performance testing with integrated GPU's in notebooks.
I appreciate DigitalFoundry reviews, you guys do the tech analysis of game engines and unique hardware that is rare from other reviewers. For example, that review you guys did of the possible xbox one APU (where at least the CPU part was original) with Windows 10 and Doom Eternal.
Alex, huge fan, and I appreciate these videos. Something you missed is the horrible implementation of coop which is rendered unplayable by lag and stutter. There is something very wrong there.
I had a perfectly fine time in co-op
the 60fps lock for weapon projectiles might be limited by the hit detection in multiplayer which is also limited to 60 ticks. Interpolating that would be messing with that.
then why do other weapons update at more than 60?
My introduction to Halo was on the original Xbox at a friend's house. I might get this game for PC to relive that part of my childhood.
There’s certain games, certain series even, that every generation need to experience. Halo was one of them for me.
Alex!
First, absolutely love your content here on DF! You’re a real champion for us PC-gamers.
Second, could you please take a look at and run some FPS graphs on Path of Exile? That game have just been having absolutely awful performance issues lately, and it would be nice to have it in numbers and put a spotlight on it just to light some fires under GGGs ass, so that maybe one day they sort out all the issues out. I think a lot of POE players would watch a video like this too as it has been a talking point for a long time now in the community,
Well I'm playing it in ultrawide at 2560x1080, there's some stretching in some textures, like fog and UI elements, I don't know if that is easy to fix, but the gameplay is really fun, and I really appreciate the fact that the cutscenes play at ultrawide,no black bars!
Play it at either full 4K or 1880P, it worked that way for me and I got no stretching.
We never got the odst and 4 video Alex
Love the AVGN shoutout @ 5:38
Glad Halo 3 is out now, also happy thr audio fix is here too, I may pick this up in the coming month.
Sometimes it drops to $32 on steam.
@@usul573 this include all 5 games right?
@@UltimateAlgorithm Yep! Bought it at that price after _Halo 2_ released for it, and when _Halo 3_ was added a few days ago, all I had to do was download it from an in-game menu, no extra purchase required.
Xbox Game pass PC 1 dollar first month you can play 1+2+ CE and 3
@@UltimateAlgorithm Yes all six, currently Reach, 1, 2, and 3. ODST and 4 are coming.
The best Halo. Best lighting in a game at the time (see how flat Reach looks in comparison), and cool explosions that you can run through in theatre mode.
missed opportunity here Alex Battaglia to run this game with a 580 and maybe equivalent Cpu to the Xbox one x to see the frame differences. Nonetheless the amount of stuff you guys teach me all the time is amazing thank you guys :D
I'm glad we have digital foundry. They hold devs accountable for great or shite performance. Alex as always is fantastic
Awesome, they finally fixed the sound on Reach! Maybe now is the time to get the MCC ... or lets wait until that backlog of the summer sale decreased a bit.
2020 Winter Sale would be the perfect time! ;-)
Love the ad placement
Incredible video, and great writing and explanation! Thank you Alex!
So glad Halo 3 ended up being a good port as it's probably my favorite game in the series. The frame-interpolation issues in Halo 2 and Reach had me worried about this one but I'm really glad they were able to make it work this time around.
Am I the only one that finds Halo 3 incredibly beatiful, I mean REALLY beautiful until today?
I think it's the lighting, there's just something about how it looks in 3 and ODST. I think Reach and even 4 look way worse in that regard.
@@Fnorgh The colors are really nice too, just on the textures themselves.
Until today? What changed your mind? :P
Looks so much better than reach that's for sure.
Something not mentioned is that Halo 3's co-op latency feels a lot better now. I'm not sure if it's just me but I'd been playing with a few friends and whether we were on-host or off-host, none of us ran into any input delay. I remember X360 Halo 3 having some pretty bad control lag back in the day, and early MCC Halo 3 was no different
interestingly, halo 3 and reach actually use some proprietary waves middleware to achieve their reverb / occlusion processing for all sound effects. they detailed it in a recent blog post, but they no longer have access to these middleware solutions for current ports due to (I believe) licensing and compatibility issues with newer APIs. New solutions had to be coded from scratch to emulate these older ones, so I don't think we'll ever achieve 100% parity, but it's very impressive how close they've now been able to get it.
It looks fantastic in Xbox One X too at 4K 60fps
"PARallax" Plosives were insane this video.
The Graphical Jump from the Halo games is Undeniably the best part and its truely astounding...
Halo 4 is what shocked me the most cus i thought that game released on Xbox One by its next gen looking graphics only to realise its on a fricking 360.
Each sequels always looks like an upgrade and never a downgrade.
I used to believe Reach was a downgrade then i understood it's intentionally washed out due to its depressing plot.
05:40 subtle avgn reference
Finally the audio is fixed!
Played this on my 2080ti & 9900k at 1440p for the first time. Really happy with performance and the experience of Halo 3. My favourite campaign so far!
Sees Halo on DF : instant smile.
I played PC MCC Halo 2 today for first time in over a week. The weapon sounds are noticeably improved.
Been having a blast on this on steam, 144 fps and 1440p, just wonderful. The best halo, wonderful campaign and great multi.
5:40 nice AVGN reference 👌
It's impressive how well this game has aged. 13 years old. Looks better than a lot of games from that time and was designed for a console. MCC is getting better. They're learning how to port games to pc properly and this gives me hope for the later halo releases.
It disappointed me to see both the video and the comments touch on the remaining issues with Halo Reach's frame interpolation, but not all of it's improperly scaled post-processing effects for stuff like lighting bloom, fog, rain, etc; something which I don't believe 343I has even publicly acknowledged yet. On that note, does Halo 3 have any busted postprocessing effects like Reach, then? That's something the video doesn't address at all either way.
I was waiting for this. Thanks
Halo 2 with hdr on the c9 oled impressed me more than anything else. Want that for H3
5:40 you smooth bastard 😏
I was beyond thrilled when i fired the game up as the only console I owned was a ps1 and I've wanted to play H3 ever since it came out and now in 2020 my wish was granted and i am extremely happy and in love with it :)
I really like digital foundry so keep up the great job you're doing! I just have one suggestion. When comparing performance please use frame time (milliseconds per frame) instead of frame rate (FPS). Gaining 10 fps from 30 fps to 40fps isn't the same as 120fps to 130fps. It's not linear. I can understand that people know FPS better than ms per frame, but then you could transfer ms to fps. This will give correct measurements and reliable results. Please, this would give your channel so much more credibility.
This is why we prvide percent ages verbally and say the fps amount on screen, same thing as saying the MS number!
@@DigitalFoundry I don't see how percentage difference for fps and milliseconds would be the same. Could you please clarify?
It could be better. They could have added subtitles to gameplay dialogue, playing multiplayer in the campaign could have less lag, more graphics options (mainly an option to take out the bloom), letting mouse & keyboard input to be read at the same time as gamepad input (for better gyro aiming), and supporting steam input api
My biggest wish for MCC is for 343 to have steam input API. For those who don't know, without steam input API (SIAPI), using steam input would just rebind controls to different keys or controller buttons.
If it is supported, then you could bind different actions to each button. Also different functions that developers can put in. Also if done right, changing different which button does what would show different button prompts in the game.
Maybe if the properly support SIAPI, we could probably get proper gyro aiming
Halo 3 and Halo CE were the two Halo games that left the biggest impression on me.
EXCELLENT NEWS, and it's my birthday!
Dam the OST is still a banger
I was wondering why there was pop in. I never played the original so I didn't know if it was always there or if they added the issue
Just to let ya know, the player's arms being capped at 60hz on Halo 2 has been updated as well! Now it doesn't stick out anymore!
I finished Reach few days ago, never played a Halo game before cuz only PC, damn I enjoyed it, I'll definitely finish this too, great games
Yeah I thought Reach was first but it's Combat Evolved so that's the one I'm doing now
Chief? Really? Cool, I really liked the cutscenes in Reach, they looked so nice
@@WhiteHawk77 I ended up skipping half of halo CE couldnt enjoy it for some reason, finished reach and halo 2 and gonna play halo 3 soon
It's amazing that the bar for this being worthwhile is 'sure they could have done all this 12 years ago, but at least they didn't screw up anything significant'.
HDR support has been added to their backlog per their June development update
Take notes Sony. This is how you port your games to PC.
They dont need to listen to microsoft.They already hv enough quality exclusives that Sony doesnt hv to pretend to be "good guys" by making and releasing and cashing the same games that came out 13 fucking years ago.
Hiding the fact of lack of any games this gen.But then gullibles cant see that so i understand your pov.
Also, Doom and Titanfall 2 are far better games than anything halo.
Hell, Destiny has better combat loop than halo now.
CONport con in plain sight.
after 13 yrs. yes why not.
@@qwerty9398 stop getting triggered. He didn't said sony games are bad but how they should focus on quality of port
@@vineeygamer Brand building. Licensing. Rereleasing. Etc...
Can't wait to boot this up!
HDR is in the roadmap now
Halo 3 on my samsung odyssey g7 I recived yesterday at 1440p 240hz getting 400 plus fps is pure eye candy.
Knew I should wait for the DF video before buying Halo 3 but I just couldn't wait... Thankfully it runs, looks and sounds great!
We just call it MCC btw Digital Foundry.
Such a good review and you paid a lot of attention to details, impressive.
Thank you for that AVGN joke. Loved it. :)
yaay!! been waiting for every one of your videos on mcc and am never disappointed as to how thorough you all are!
It honestly plays amazingly
Other than some character models, I think Halo 3 still looks really good. Throw in some modern lighting and some updated models and oh my...
The best Halo.
Nah Halo CE.
They just need to put the push to talk button for controller users back in Halo 3. It was on 360 but on PC I have to put my controller down and press the V key to talk in game or go open mic.
did anyone else not notice any difference between the patched audio compared to the backward compatibility one
I have a bad news for you - you have a very bad audio system.
Thanks to 343 for this great work!
That ending! LOL. That’s classic Halo comedy.
the question rapidly approaching for my play through of the halo series is halo 5 pc
5:15 That's why you don't use UE.
Hell it was the most important one anyway! We've always had CE and 2.
It's crazy to me that Master Chief Collection came out in 2014 and here we are almost 6 years later and it's still being "finished". It IS a PC port of it so that gives it a bit of a pass and it's cool to finally have some of these entries on PC at long last (I recall when Halo 2 came to PC they made people upgrade to vista just to play it lol). Hopefully the team tweaking these games for PC continues thier mostly solid work and they can perhaps move on to something new by the time we roll into 2021.
2006-2007, the year of way too much god damn bloom
It is a well-made port, but like you Alex, I was disappointed I wasn't able to run it on a GPU from that 2007 era. I was so hoping to get this game running on my classic Geforce 9600 GT...