Halo: The Master Chief Collection

I finish the campaign before I touch multiplayer, always have, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection lets you do both from the same couch. Six Halo games sit in one install, with split-screen campaign co-op and local versus matches for up to four players. That breadth is the pitch. Getting started is less smooth than with the party-first picks, since someone has to choose a game, a mode, and a map before anybody is shooting. Pick a campaign, grab a second controller, and only try Legendary if you enjoy arguments. Old, loud, and still sturdy.

I could not write a Game Pass shooter list and leave Halo off it. This is the whole library in one install: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, ODST, Reach and Halo 4. In Combat Evolved you tap a button and the graphics swap between the old look and the remake, mid-firefight, and I lost a good ten minutes doing that on my first launch. Six campaigns is weeks of evenings, not a weekend. The menu sprawl and the uneven polish between games are the price. It is the best-value classic library on the service.

Halo Infinite is the newer game, and the Master Chief Collection is still the better co-op pick. Six campaigns, and the Warthog turns every escape into slapstick, one of you driving badly and the other shooting worse. I always finish a shooter campaign before touching multiplayer, and this is the package that rewards that habit. Split-screen works on the couch, and online play covers up to four depending on the game. Menus are a mess. Onboarding is inconsistent across the six, so pick one campaign and start there.

Leaving Halo: The Master Chief Collection out of the top ten felt wrong, so call this an apology. Several campaigns support four-player co-op, and I have run Halo 3 on Legendary with a full fireteam, everybody shouting about the same Brute chieftain. The value is enormous, and it is practically Xbox home turf. It missed the cut because these campaigns were designed around one Spartan, so a third or fourth player is sometimes just extra hands rather than a needed role. Fireteams that grew up on Halo will have a better time than newcomers, and the older games show their age.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is the one I feel almost obligated to mention on any Xbox co-op list, and it earns the spot honestly. Six campaigns, all playable in online co-op. That's a lot of game for one purchase. I missed most of these the first time around, console loyalties were elsewhere back then, so playing through them online with friends as an adult feels like catching up on homework I actually enjoy. The jump from Combat Evolved's slower pace to Halo 5's modern feel is noticeable, and not every campaign in the pack holds up equally well. It sits in honorable mentions because newer picks on this list offer a tighter, more consistently online-ready co-op experience out of the gate.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is still the deepest split-screen shooter package on Xbox, and it isn't close. Six campaigns support two-player split-screen co-op, and the classic versus modes scale up to four on one screen. My LAN group still argues over which campaign to run on a given night, because MCC hands you six instead of forcing one. The versus split is where it earns its rank, though. Glancing at a friend's half of the screen to figure out where they're camping is exactly the kind of chaos I mean when split-screen shooters get chaotic in the best way. New players get stomped for the first hour. Stick with it and everyone catches up fast.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is what I'd load up for a LAN night of nostalgia, the same way my group still boots up Age of Empires 2 or Red Alert 2 decades later. Six mainline campaigns and their multiplayer suites in one package, custom games, and Firefight for co-op nights when nobody wants competitive pressure. Not the sharpest modern pick, though. Player counts for the older titles have thinned since launch, and matchmaking for anything outside Halo 3 or Reach can take a while to fill on a random Tuesday. Halo Infinite is still the better first stop if you only own one Halo game. MCC is the deeper well for reliving the whole franchise with friends.

The MCC is not one game. It is a library. Six campaigns, co-op on all of them, classic multiplayer for when you want to switch from story to competition without changing discs. My group has used it exactly that way: campaign co-op for a few hours, then a string of 1v1 or 2v2 matches until someone needs to stop. The breadth is both the selling point and the caveat. There is so much here that picking where to start takes longer than it should for new players. If you already know Halo, this is an easy recommendation. Coming in fresh, the onboarding is on you.

My Xbox years had a lot of Halo in them, and most of the best sessions happened with a friend on the couch rather than online. The Master Chief Collection is the reason this format still matters for shooters. You get six campaigns, classic arena multiplayer, and genuine four-player flexibility, all in one package. No other FPS on this list comes close to that depth. The split-screen runs cleanly, the readability holds up even in four-player, and you can jump between co-op and competitive without switching games. If you only own one split-screen shooter, this is the one.

My LAN group has played Unreal Tournament for years, and the thing I always wished for was a single package that could shift tone mid-evening without everyone reinstalling. Halo MCC is that package. You get six Halo sandboxes, custom game options that go deep enough to keep veterans busy, and a shooting feel that new players can grasp inside two minutes. One round you are playing Halo CE pistol starts on Blood Gulch, next you are running Halo 3 BTB. The variety is unmatched on this list. It runs well on PC, supports LAN-style private matches, and has bots for filling seats when someone drops. Nothing else here covers as many groups in as many moods.

Halo has a controller heritage that goes back twenty years and it shows. Picking this up on Steam Deck and immediately feeling at home with the aiming and movement is not a coincidence. The collection is enormous value: six campaigns, varying in length and tone, with enough content to keep you busy for months. I grew up with the PlayStation ecosystem and came to Halo later than most, which maybe gives me a cleaner view of what the collection actually is: an exceptional argument for mission-based FPS design that holds up well beyond the nostalgia around it. The Deck fit is good rather than perfect, but for campaign-first players the package is hard to beat.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is the safest call I make when I don't know who's showing up to a LAN night. My group spans wildly different skill levels, from the friend who mains competitive shooters to the one who mostly plays cozy games between rounds, and Halo is the rare game where nobody complains about the matchup. Custom games like Infection and Grifball turn a mismatched room into something genuinely funny rather than lopsided. Native LAN support means no matchmaking queues or account logins to fight through. It does ask for a bit more hardware headroom than the older shooters here, but that's a low bar in 2026. If you're only bringing one shooter, bring this one.