: I haven't been bamboozled yet. MCC was a bunch of games duct taped together,
: I ended up buying it around the time they announced ODST (just after I
: would have gotten it for free) and spent this spring playing Halo 1, Halo
: 2 (with an ODST detour), Halo 3, and Halo 4 one after the other and had a
: hell of a time.

You had a hell of a time because you didn't buy the game until well after launch. That's hardly justification for buying Halo 5 well before launch, and is in fact what I'm prescribing.

You didn't suffer through the first couple of months of MCC, so you can't really understand what I'm telling you when I say you're setting yourself (and others, when you consider the cumulative effects of pre-orders) up for a massive hoodwinking.