Halo 3, my favorite entry in the franchise, just keeps getting better thanks to Project Reclaimer. This new PC-specific launcher runs Halo 3 directly off your installation of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, so yes, you do need to own the base game.
That said, what the community is building here is genuinely impressive and honestly a little bewildering. Players are setting up matches with up to 128 people, including 64-on-64 team battles, all with full mod support. The catch, sadly, is that this is all PC-only, which is a real shame.
The entire project is so ambitious that I barely feel like I’ve scratched the surface. You can play the Halo 3 campaign in co-op with up to 16 players, and I appreciate that you can bring your own customized Spartan or Elite too. What I love most, though, is that they’ve restored Halo 3’s original menu and even managed to cram in a server browser, so you can play to your heart’s content.
I love stuff like this. I really do. It’s just frustrating that so much of the labor of love for Halo seems to come from the community rather than the people who were in charge of the franchise.
Beyond the campaign, four-player split-screen is back. Unlike the original Xbox 360 release, though, those four players aren’t stuck on a local network. You can take your entire local group online and jump into community servers together.
Forge has also been completely blown open. Creators can now use objects from across different maps, remove invisible boundaries, mess around with custom lighting, and even place Halo 3’s AI directly into their creations. Spartans, Elites, Marines, Grunts, Jackals, Brutes, Hunters, and more can all be thrown into maps and made to fight players or each other.
Dedicated servers are here as well, running on Windows or Linux, alongside playlists where players can vote on what map and mode comes next. Now I had to sit down when I heard that mods can even be downloaded automatically when you join a server, rather than requiring everyone to go hunting around online for the exact same files beforehand! Something that takes me back to my Garry's Mod days.
It basically feels like someone looked at everything Halo 3 could have become on PC and just decided to build it themselves. Project Reclaimer isn’t simply increasing the player count; it’s effectively building an entire community multiplayer platform around a game that originally released almost two decades ago.
I highly recommend you check the project out and let me know what you think. It really reminds me of ElDewrito, if anyone remembers that. It was a port of Halo Online a while back, before Halo officially launched on PC.
Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.
