Halo: Master Chief Collection is an absolute broken mess
Last weekend, I picked up the Halo Master Chief Collection from the Steam sale with a friend. We wanted to play through Halo 1 again, but it was completely unplayable.
You can’t always join another player’s session.
Occasionally, nothing happens when starting a mission.
On certain missions the game just completely freezes.
At certain points the game locks up leaving you unable to move.
It’s just awful. Don’t buy
That’s a shame you couldn’t enjoy it with your friend. Can I safely assume you’re playing on Windows?
I’ve played a fair bit into the first game on my Steam Deck, and it plays great! Sometimes the compatibility tools in Linux are better for playing older games than those in Windows.
You could try HoloISO (community edition of SteamOS) in order to get an environment that’s already setup for you. You don’t even have have to permanently install it. It should be able to boot up to it from an external drive and play the game from there.
It’s not no work to do that, but if you really want to play…