I believe Legendary is best balanced for co-op, not single player. But I LOVE the experience of playing Halo with a partner. I can't just get the boys together to play Halo. But now my friends all have families or their lives are so busy that we all don't even play the same games necessarily. I used to be able to get my friends together and play co-op. But the campaign proper I would think would stick to invites only. If something like Spartan Ops were to come back, I could see that as having matchmaking because it'd be a smaller bite-sized campaign so if someone's griefing it won't last too long. A Way Out doesn't have any sort of inventory like a Resident Evil game would so you can't remove things from someone, but that game also doesn't have campaign matchmaking because they wanted you to play it with people you know. Resident Evil 5/6 has campaign matchmaking as well, but I'm pretty sure the game suffered for it because any time you joined someone you brought with you every weapon you had instead of starting with whatever you joined into (because obviously it would be stupid to join in on a character with no weapons or anything). Gears has always had campaign matchmaking, but I really doubt it's used all that much (I think the earlier games joined you into the first available match so trying to play a specific level was next to impossible). Nowadays there's Looking For Group on Xbox (no idea if something similar is on PS4), any number of online forums, finding people by just playing multiplayer, and other ways of grabbing people to play with you. If you're planning on playing a game's campaign in co-op you likely have friends that you're going to play with, and inviting randoms in could just lead to a number of problems like them griefing any number of ways. I'm of the mind that it'd just cause more trouble than it's worth. The world has changed so much since the early days of Halo, and imo, it’s time the franchise caught up. It certainly seems like it’s something they’ve never even considered for MCC or 5, which is crazy considering the latter is a squad based shooter. I don’t know, I’ve been sitting on this topic for a while, and now with Infinite seeming like it’s struggling with development, it feels like features like this are further away than ever. 343i only promised to put back in local co-op into future games after a significant backlash from 5, but then never bothered to actually implement it in that game iirc. My worry is that this seems to be getting worse too. I can also understand there might be some concern about trolling, but then it’s entirely possible to disable friendly fire, and to be honest, there’s no more of a worry for this than there would be on any other match-made activity that Halo implements. I can understand some people might want to play solo, and that’s absolutely fine, that option should always be there too. It’s something I just can’t get my head around, especially when other first party games on the Xbox such as Gears are implementing it. Every Halo game since 2 on the original Xbox has had access to some form of matchmaking for multiplayer, and yet through all of them, only Reach has had anything to assist with co-op. One issue that continues to persist though, is that 343i, and Bungie before them for the most part, have failed to utilise the tools available to them to make access to this experience as easy as it should be.
Halo online campaign series#
It gives players who are new to the series an opportunity to experience the game without worrying too much about struggling through, as there’s another Spartan to help take the load off, it gives players the opportunity to explore wonderfully realised worlds with others, both friends and strangers, and it also gives a degree of unpredictability and freshness to a play through of a level you may have done so many times before. Halo in co-op is wonderful for a number of reasons. One area where this series really shines, however, is in campaign co-op.
The competitive multiplayer is legendary, and continues to be one of the best in class to this day. Halo is one of those series that has always shines when playing with others.