Yesterday 343 sent out a Tweet to finally let us know when Halo 2 would be coming to PC, and it turns out it's a lot sooner than many might've expected! It's only been roughly two months since Halo CE Anniversary was added to the collection, and now 2 will be here next week. Yep! May 12th is it's release date and, just like with Reach and CE, you can either buy it as a stand alone title, or as part of the Master Chief Collection as a whole. Whichever option you choose the game will still run through the Collection itself, so be aware of this if you decide to only purchase 2 and nothing else. This caused a bit of confusion back when Reach first came out as the other titles were not available, despite being shown on the game's list. Keep in mind that if you choose to buy the entire collection rather than just Halo 2, this will still be the case for about half of the MCC's titles. Reach is the third game to be added to the collection, with Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, and Halo 4 still being unavailable.
That being said, Halo 2 Anniversary itself is a bit more than a port of the original game. In fact it was the original "star of the show" when this collection released for Xbox One. Like with Halo CE Anniversary, 2 comes with a new graphics engine which completely alters how the game looks and brings it closer to today's standards. One might argue that it looks better than CE Anniversary (which was a 360 game initially), and on top of the in game graphics, most cutscenes have been replaced with full high quality CGI scenes instead. These new scenes look simply amazing, and help transform the story into an exciting cinematic adventure from start to finish.
On top of the new graphics engine, the game also comes with two multiplayer modes. The first multiplayer mode is the original Halo 2 release that took advantage of Xbox Live, and brought many into the world of online console gaming. It's exactly as you remember it (assuming you played it before), with just some general changes to get it working smoothly on Xbox One and PC. As for the other multiplayer mode, it's basically 7 maps with the new graphical style. It's not as robust of a mode as the original Halo 2's mutliplayer, but it's still nice to see.
And that's about it for now! If you're a fan of Halo or would like to get into the series for the first time, now is seriously the best time to do so. This collection's releases are moving along at a pretty fast pace, and it's only a matter of time before the final three games join the lineup.
