If you’ve been playing video games throughout the 2010’s, you’ve no doubt realized that old games get both enhanced and sometimes remade from the ground up a lot. And while not everyone enjoys these remasters/remakes due to changes and omissions often made which change the overall experience the game originally shipped with, some praise these versions for the improvements they feel were made.
Using my favorite remaster, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, I can tell you that I’m very mixed on it. Here’s the pros and cons:
PROS:
. Great visuals when using the remastered mode
. Motion capture in cutscenes
. 16:9 aspect ratio
. Achievements
. Terminals
. Skulls
. Coop over Xbox Live
CONS:
. Bad texture pop-in
. Altered texture/graphical effects work from PC version
. Screen cropping during split-screen
. Less consistent frame rate
. Lack of original multiplayer
Because of the pros/cons of Anniversary, I like both the remaster and original versions of the game for different reasons.
So how do you feel? Do you prefer to play the original game as it offers the experience the developers intended, or do you prefer these new takes when they’re done right? Maybe you own both versions but favor one over the other or maybe you even play both.
I don’t like remasters, rereleases, etc.
I prefer new games with a new story to tell. Though, I did enjoy Halo: CE Aniversary and Halo 2: Aniversary. The new cutscenes and the complete overhaul of graphics was nice. But again, I still think rereleasing games is a cheap way to grab some extra dollars exploiting our nostalgia.
Only reason I bought remakes is because of achievements. Now I am kind of sick of them because they seem to be dominating the market vs new games.
I don’t know. When all material/posts/interviews refer to CEA as CE getting the ‘Anniversary treatment’, along with Halo 2. I’ve never seen them called remasters.
A remaster to me, based on the majority of games out there is simply a re-release at a higher native resolution and framerate than the original, often with no extra work done (R&C trilogy, MGS trilogy etc).
So with that in mind as the basis for my opinion, i think remakes or games that receive the ‘anniversary treatment’ are a nice way to relive your old games (REmake, HCEA, H2A, MGS TTS) whilst remasters, being mainly a PC gamer myself, i’ve always thought to be irrelevant to me since you effectively already have the remastered version in most cases.
That said, regarding CEA, I am not a fan of the art stule of the new graphics so I prefer classic mode, in which case, Halo PC then becomes my go-to version to play as I don’t have my original Xbox hooked up right now.
Glad to see another Halo PC fan here.