: So I took the plunge and bought an XBox One. I also bought Gears of War 4,
: The Master Chief Collection and Halo 5.

: We got home with the console at 11:30 am last Thursday and I set the console
: up and reactivated my Live Gold account.

: The console I bought is the S model with the 500 gig hard drive. I told my
: wife in the store that "500 gig's of storage should be
: plenty"......boy was I wrong. Well, long story short, it took 9 hours
: to get all the games installed and functioning. I fell asleep waiting for
: each game to update and install. When my wife woke me to let me know when
: each game finished installing, she had that angry, furrowed brow look on
: her face! You know when you were a child and your mother told you,
: "if you keep making that face it will eventually stay that way?"
: It turns out that old adage is actually true!.....at least for wive's.
: After 36 years of marriage to me I can understand because at least 3 time
: a week I do or say something stupid.........you married guy understand
: this!

This is the new normal for games, it's not unique to Halo. The most recent game we bought was the Bioshock Collection and it took a few hours to install.

Welcome to the new world order.

: When I bought The Master Chief Collection, I assumed all my progress in all
: the games would seamlessly transition over to my profile, but it didn't.

Um..... why? Why on earth would it? Ever? It's a "new" game with it's own achievements and graphical overhauls.... on a fundamental level it is -not- the same Halo. For me, part of the fun was replaying and earning some of those achievements over again. But, to each their own.

: I really don't want to collect all the skulls in Halo 2 and Halo 3 again. I
: did collect all the stuff in the MC version of Halo 1. I mean really,
: after over a decade of playing these games, all of my progress should have
: transitioned over so I wouldn't have to do it all over again.

I could not possibly disagree more with you in this regard. But again, you had different expectations. The Halo Wars definitive edition for example does the same thing, so if you were interested in that at all, stay away I guess.

:This morning I uninstalled The Master Collection. Buying this game was a waste of my
: money.

Oh Man, it was a cluster at launch. It was supposed to be this awesome thing.... a 24/7 LAN party, all the Halo titles! MP blew ass right out the gate and it honestly never recovered. But for me, I truly enjoyed playing Halo 2 in updated graphics and the cuts scenes and terminals were stellar for me. And I don't care what Snipe says- Halo 2 looked like ASS and out of all the Halo games, if any of them needed an overhaul, it was that one.

: Just this morning, I popped in my original Halo 3 disk, as well as ODST and
: the Anniversary version of Halo 1, and none of these games are supported
: in the XBox One. I'm pretty pissed about that. DIdn't Microsoft state that
: the Xbox One is backwards compatible to play your 360 games?

Not all games, and not those ones because they were re-released as the MCC..... as another pointed out, you didn't research this before hand, so you kinda did this to yourself.

Back when the 360 came out I recall being bummed that most of my OG Xbox games would not be compatible. It is what it is.

Had you checked the list before hand, you'd have seen this and also that Reach is backwards compatible, so that is good if you were a fan of Reach.

: Microsoft will gladly charge me $4.99 to get ODST, but I already own 2 copies and I
: refuse to pay more to play a game that I already own. It's the same thing
: for Halo 3 that I own 2 copies of. My old Xbox Elite is having problems
: loading games from the optical drive. I guess I'll have to buy a new 360
: to play my older Halo games, unless a patch becomes available for the
: Xbone!

Yeah, better buy an additional 360. I admire your optimism about a patch.

As a whole, the gaming industry is making a ton of money by having us re-buy games we already own. Nintendo is pretty notorious about this, and the worst IMO. On one hand, it feels like preying on nostalgia. On the other hand, it is convenient to have at your fingers without having to dig out the old consoles. Another sign of the times for consoles right now. Sure, I could go back and fire up my 360 and play each Bioshock game right there, no issue. But I didn't want to deal with setting it up, making a mess, messing with my setup to do that. Having all the content in one package for PS4 was attractive, and all the DLC to boot (that i didn't get the first time). So, to each his own. Bioshock is a game I happiy rebought, MCC I was not as much. Wasted potential. But more of this is cropping up.

Like the movie industry, remakes and re-masters and reboots are "safe bets" for a studio while original content continues to be elusive. If something isn't a run-away-success right off the bat, then it's a "failure". Success isn't what it used to be, I guess. :(

: Now about Halo 5. I knew virtually nothing about the campaign before I bought
: the game, with the exception of watching a few cutscenes from the game on
: Youtube a few weeks ago. I was pleasantly surprised with how fun the Halo
: 5 campaign is. I spent the better part of two days collecting all the
: skulls and Intel gizmos in the game. My minor gripe with the campaign is
: the weapons in the game have very little ammo. This makes it tedious and
: time consuming to keep your weapons full.

It is pretty fun. The MP is well polished too, and forge is just gotdang'd amazing. It feels like a logical evolution in the series in terms of gameplay. Story was ass though. Not a fan. If I were a Star Wars fan, Halo 4, 5 (hopefully not 6) are my prequels.

: I didn't know beforehand that Halo 5 does not have splitscreen co-op.
: Splitscreen co-op has been a staple in Halo since the first game. How the
: hell this was not added to Halo 5 during its creation is just plain
: stupid. I haven't bothered to find out why this feature was cut from the
: game because I'm sure 343 Industries just made some lame excuse for not
: including in the campaign.

: Over and out.

Again, you didn't do your due diligence and assumed. I don't want to sound like I'm picking on you- don't take it that way. You're just not going to get any sympathy is all. It was a shock for us all as well. No LAN support either. Always online.

It just isn't what it was.... perhaps that time has passed.

Who knows what the next installment will bring. For as much as 343 does that I don't agree with, they do just as much that makes me happy. I'm a pretty big Halo Wars fan, and that is a niche game. Seeing it get a sequel is great for me. Also being able to play the first one on PC with "xbox anywhere" ho boy, I'm happy!

Their involvement with the community is stellar, and fan service is great. I feel like the majority of things they do that I don't like or agree with, are determined or done by the business side of Microsoft.

Also Brian Reed. He sucks. Worst. Writer. EVER.