if you want to have a perfect encapsulation of the modern state of triple-A video games, then the free-to-play multiplayer mode of Halo Infinite is where you need to find it.
loading up this game is kind of an upsetting experience. the UI is absolutely terrible, just like Halo 5 the game is missing series-staple features like Forge, game modes like Infection, Assault, Juggernaut (this isn't even all of it, the game will release without a campaign co-op mode for the first time in series history, which to me would be like a fighting game being released without a training mode), locking basic customization features behind an obscenely miserly battlepass grind that doles out a drip feed of additions to a customization suite that no longer deigns to let you change the color of your character freely, made more insidious by the game itself placing more emphasis on individual player expression than any game in the series before it, what with each player using their own colors even in team game modes and a roll call at the beginning of every match to show off your cosmetics and give shitty little kids an opportunity to call you a Default.
however. once you're in the game? once you're haloing? oh man. oh buddy. it's fucking halo!!! halo just rules, the place it sits between more classic boomer shooters and more modern "boots on the ground" fare has always given it a distinct niche, one that rewards strategy and knowledge of its systems in ways that it's contemporaries simply don't, whilst offering a vast enough sandbox of intersecting weapons, vehicles, and ephemera that the game becomes an engine for creating hilarious stories to share with your friends. why else do you think the theater mode exists? (well, existed lol) just on a visceral game feel level this is by far 343's most successful iteration of the sandbox to date, excising much of the bizarre decisions that inflicted their Halo 4 efforts while still carving out it's own niche within a series that still maintains it's older efforts to play at your leisure through the master chief collection. it's very early days yet so we don't know exactly how balancing, map design, and things like that are gonna shake out in the long run, but just on a base level? this game is such a blast. two decades of iteration and tweaking of this formula have created a game that is like kinesthetic ambrosia, and it's refreshing to play a western modern-AAA game with visibly absurd money behind it that feels consciously designed, y'know?
i love the master chief collection for offering so much halo so readily, but the fact that it offers so much is kind of why it always feels depopulated and muted despite having a healthy player base. everything is so decentralized that there isn't really A Halo that everyone is playing, y'know? and that's what excites me about Infinite. a free-to-play halo game that everyone can play together and enjoy...once they get through the actively depressing menus lmao. even takes up a very normal and sensible amount of space on your hard drive!! i don't have to plan my life around having halo installed!! it's a miracle!!!
halo night with the squad...it's been a long time without you, my friend...
loading up this game is kind of an upsetting experience. the UI is absolutely terrible, just like Halo 5 the game is missing series-staple features like Forge, game modes like Infection, Assault, Juggernaut (this isn't even all of it, the game will release without a campaign co-op mode for the first time in series history, which to me would be like a fighting game being released without a training mode), locking basic customization features behind an obscenely miserly battlepass grind that doles out a drip feed of additions to a customization suite that no longer deigns to let you change the color of your character freely, made more insidious by the game itself placing more emphasis on individual player expression than any game in the series before it, what with each player using their own colors even in team game modes and a roll call at the beginning of every match to show off your cosmetics and give shitty little kids an opportunity to call you a Default.
however. once you're in the game? once you're haloing? oh man. oh buddy. it's fucking halo!!! halo just rules, the place it sits between more classic boomer shooters and more modern "boots on the ground" fare has always given it a distinct niche, one that rewards strategy and knowledge of its systems in ways that it's contemporaries simply don't, whilst offering a vast enough sandbox of intersecting weapons, vehicles, and ephemera that the game becomes an engine for creating hilarious stories to share with your friends. why else do you think the theater mode exists? (well, existed lol) just on a visceral game feel level this is by far 343's most successful iteration of the sandbox to date, excising much of the bizarre decisions that inflicted their Halo 4 efforts while still carving out it's own niche within a series that still maintains it's older efforts to play at your leisure through the master chief collection. it's very early days yet so we don't know exactly how balancing, map design, and things like that are gonna shake out in the long run, but just on a base level? this game is such a blast. two decades of iteration and tweaking of this formula have created a game that is like kinesthetic ambrosia, and it's refreshing to play a western modern-AAA game with visibly absurd money behind it that feels consciously designed, y'know?
i love the master chief collection for offering so much halo so readily, but the fact that it offers so much is kind of why it always feels depopulated and muted despite having a healthy player base. everything is so decentralized that there isn't really A Halo that everyone is playing, y'know? and that's what excites me about Infinite. a free-to-play halo game that everyone can play together and enjoy...once they get through the actively depressing menus lmao. even takes up a very normal and sensible amount of space on your hard drive!! i don't have to plan my life around having halo installed!! it's a miracle!!!
halo night with the squad...it's been a long time without you, my friend...
"My slumber was disturbed by a mighty roar heard across worlds. On every world, a CRISIS. On every alternative, a new apocalypse. A doomsday. A last judgement. A conclusion that never comes but continues to arrive. An endless EVENT."
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When I first wrote about Halo Infinite, I described it as where you need to go to find an avatar of the Modern AAA game experience. Having now finished the campaign, I would like to expand that further to include the modern media landscape as a whole in 2022.
Halo Infinite begins without beginning, and ends without ending. It is an eternal middle, starting after everything is established and stopping before anything is concluded, a promise of content to come, an eternal conflict Master Chief wages to stop Halo from being fully reborn, that in it's waging produces a thousand tiny moments of HaloTM content to enjoy. Or, perhaps, not even to enjoy; to simply consume, one after another, turning blue icons grey until there are no blue icons that remain, until the next feast of Blue Icons arises, until the wheel turns again.
In a world where each day, we are presented with news headlines demonstrating time and time again that the pillars that make up our modern world are in fact the very same thing choking the life out of it, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Shared Universe, previously the niche domain of geek franchise fodder that produced such delightful ephemera as the Yuuzhan Vong or Faction Paradox, has emerged as the definitive modern storytelling mode. How else do we justify the obscene contradictions of the world in which we live than by performing necromantic rituals on dead worlds and stories, ensuring they stretch on forever and ever, insisting upon their own existences far beyond memory and relevancy or even their own endings. A world where marvel superheroes can face their Endgame and keep going, a world where The Dead Speak, and, of course, a world where Master Chief continues to fight the good fight forevermore, clearing outposts on the infinite sprawl of Zeta Halo.
Do you remember Halo 5: Guardians? Halo Infinite, hopes you do and do not, at the exact same time. That game happened, to be sure - the illusion of the Shared World cannot allow something like a game with a number attached to simply Not Occur without shattering the shared delusion of meaning and import that continuity represents - but it was followed by a phantom Halo 6 that never came out, a game that resolved the conflict with The Created that Halo 5 set up, a game where Master Chief had his tearful final confrontation with Cortana, a game that properly introduced The Banished and established them as an equal threat to the UNSC, a game that conveniently resets everything to it's most comfortably anthromorphic and predictable states. The green guy and the aliens on the ringworld, the rebel alliance and the empire. On and on it goes. Halo 6 exists now only as a wound that Infinite spends the entirety of it's runtime picking at, a gap in space and time that exists only to be filled in by content, audio logs and and lore podcasts and theory videos, Content upon Content, nothing but Content in this blasted land. Master Chief emerges from this black hole of a Game That Never Was to find Halo in the process of rebooting itself, and wearily sets himself to prevent that goal. Bereft of advancement, regressing to the Iconic Version of himself, and aided always by a false simulacra made by the image Cortana represented in prior games, against a nameless, faceless enemy, literally called The Endless, always out of sight and out of firing range, dangled forever in front of the Chief as he runs along on the hamster wheel of Halo's corpse forevermore, listening to the voices of ghosts explaining what happened in games that never were, all the while, a Final, True and Ultimate Threat hangs just out of reach, an Empty Hand holding an Energy Sword of Damocles that will never, ever fall.
This is Halo: Infinite. The promise of ephemera, imagery, and writing that once Meant Something, that had cultural and artistic significance emerging from the time it was created, placed into a vacuum-sealed Platform to sustain itself in perpetuity, without beginning or end, a mobius loop greedily devouring it's own tail because there remains nothing else. An existential nightmare existence without progress or retreat, where Master Chief fights forever against an enemy he cannot ever defeat, yet cannot ever defeat him in turn. Where the only victory to be found is the perpetuity of the world that Is, stretching on forever and ever. The Covenant can become The Banished, the Empire can become The First Order, Dark Souls can become Elden Ring, Overwatch can become Overwatch 2, but nothing can ever actually change. Nothing can actually evolve, not even combat. The world can never be allowed to end, to die, to allow new flowers to sprout from it's corpse as it becomes a part of the earth that spawns it. No matter what happens, Master Chief must always be on a Halo, shooting a grunt with a battle rifle.
And it's still fun to shoot a grunt with a battle rifle. But it's been over 20 years since Combat was said to Evolve. When will the war end? Will it ever, or are we trapped in a perpetual conflict with an enemy that is both tremendously weak and cowardly and infinitely powerful and terrifying? When will the galaxy be at peace? When will the covenant finally be defeated? When will Durandal look back on the world that was, and wonder who we were? How many more Ancient Evils remain to be defeated? How many more Banished/Covenants exist to be broken? How many more Grunts are there to be shot with my Battle Rifle? When will the credits roll, when will the screen fade to black, when will anything come to an actual, true end?
I don't know. But I know I'll probably play the DLC. Because I don't know the way out of this world any more than you do. And at the end of the day, bereft of anything better, I'll keep shooting grunts in the face with a battle rifle.
Three stars.
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"'In the End'? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."
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When I first wrote about Halo Infinite, I described it as where you need to go to find an avatar of the Modern AAA game experience. Having now finished the campaign, I would like to expand that further to include the modern media landscape as a whole in 2022.
Halo Infinite begins without beginning, and ends without ending. It is an eternal middle, starting after everything is established and stopping before anything is concluded, a promise of content to come, an eternal conflict Master Chief wages to stop Halo from being fully reborn, that in it's waging produces a thousand tiny moments of HaloTM content to enjoy. Or, perhaps, not even to enjoy; to simply consume, one after another, turning blue icons grey until there are no blue icons that remain, until the next feast of Blue Icons arises, until the wheel turns again.
In a world where each day, we are presented with news headlines demonstrating time and time again that the pillars that make up our modern world are in fact the very same thing choking the life out of it, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Shared Universe, previously the niche domain of geek franchise fodder that produced such delightful ephemera as the Yuuzhan Vong or Faction Paradox, has emerged as the definitive modern storytelling mode. How else do we justify the obscene contradictions of the world in which we live than by performing necromantic rituals on dead worlds and stories, ensuring they stretch on forever and ever, insisting upon their own existences far beyond memory and relevancy or even their own endings. A world where marvel superheroes can face their Endgame and keep going, a world where The Dead Speak, and, of course, a world where Master Chief continues to fight the good fight forevermore, clearing outposts on the infinite sprawl of Zeta Halo.
Do you remember Halo 5: Guardians? Halo Infinite, hopes you do and do not, at the exact same time. That game happened, to be sure - the illusion of the Shared World cannot allow something like a game with a number attached to simply Not Occur without shattering the shared delusion of meaning and import that continuity represents - but it was followed by a phantom Halo 6 that never came out, a game that resolved the conflict with The Created that Halo 5 set up, a game where Master Chief had his tearful final confrontation with Cortana, a game that properly introduced The Banished and established them as an equal threat to the UNSC, a game that conveniently resets everything to it's most comfortably anthromorphic and predictable states. The green guy and the aliens on the ringworld, the rebel alliance and the empire. On and on it goes. Halo 6 exists now only as a wound that Infinite spends the entirety of it's runtime picking at, a gap in space and time that exists only to be filled in by content, audio logs and and lore podcasts and theory videos, Content upon Content, nothing but Content in this blasted land. Master Chief emerges from this black hole of a Game That Never Was to find Halo in the process of rebooting itself, and wearily sets himself to prevent that goal. Bereft of advancement, regressing to the Iconic Version of himself, and aided always by a false simulacra made by the image Cortana represented in prior games, against a nameless, faceless enemy, literally called The Endless, always out of sight and out of firing range, dangled forever in front of the Chief as he runs along on the hamster wheel of Halo's corpse forevermore, listening to the voices of ghosts explaining what happened in games that never were, all the while, a Final, True and Ultimate Threat hangs just out of reach, an Empty Hand holding an Energy Sword of Damocles that will never, ever fall.
This is Halo: Infinite. The promise of ephemera, imagery, and writing that once Meant Something, that had cultural and artistic significance emerging from the time it was created, placed into a vacuum-sealed Platform to sustain itself in perpetuity, without beginning or end, a mobius loop greedily devouring it's own tail because there remains nothing else. An existential nightmare existence without progress or retreat, where Master Chief fights forever against an enemy he cannot ever defeat, yet cannot ever defeat him in turn. Where the only victory to be found is the perpetuity of the world that Is, stretching on forever and ever. The Covenant can become The Banished, the Empire can become The First Order, Dark Souls can become Elden Ring, Overwatch can become Overwatch 2, but nothing can ever actually change. Nothing can actually evolve, not even combat. The world can never be allowed to end, to die, to allow new flowers to sprout from it's corpse as it becomes a part of the earth that spawns it. No matter what happens, Master Chief must always be on a Halo, shooting a grunt with a battle rifle.
And it's still fun to shoot a grunt with a battle rifle. But it's been over 20 years since Combat was said to Evolve. When will the war end? Will it ever, or are we trapped in a perpetual conflict with an enemy that is both tremendously weak and cowardly and infinitely powerful and terrifying? When will the galaxy be at peace? When will the covenant finally be defeated? When will Durandal look back on the world that was, and wonder who we were? How many more Ancient Evils remain to be defeated? How many more Banished/Covenants exist to be broken? How many more Grunts are there to be shot with my Battle Rifle? When will the credits roll, when will the screen fade to black, when will anything come to an actual, true end?
I don't know. But I know I'll probably play the DLC. Because I don't know the way out of this world any more than you do. And at the end of the day, bereft of anything better, I'll keep shooting grunts in the face with a battle rifle.
Three stars.
-----------------------------------------
"'In the End'? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."
gostei bastante até da campanha, ainda acho q falta algo desde q a 343 assumiu a franquia nesse aspecto mas a historia em si é bem interessante
Assim como a gameplay q não tem muito o q dizer, é o padrão da franquia com um excelentes acréscimo de equipamentos q facilitam andar pelo mapa e até em certas batalhas com chefes, Trilha sonora excelente
mas pra mim o maior problema e q me deixou não dar uma nota maior é o mundo aberto vazio e genérico, é podre mesmo, não tem nada além de capturar bases, ouvir uns áudios, e capturar mais bases, isso tem q ser extinto no próximo jogo da franquia.
Assim como a gameplay q não tem muito o q dizer, é o padrão da franquia com um excelentes acréscimo de equipamentos q facilitam andar pelo mapa e até em certas batalhas com chefes, Trilha sonora excelente
mas pra mim o maior problema e q me deixou não dar uma nota maior é o mundo aberto vazio e genérico, é podre mesmo, não tem nada além de capturar bases, ouvir uns áudios, e capturar mais bases, isso tem q ser extinto no próximo jogo da franquia.
Sinceramente, eu não sou o maior fã de Halo, gosto e respeito muito tudo que ele fez pela indústria, mas não cresci jogando os jogos da franquia e muito menos joguei seus respectivos multiplayers em seus tempos áureos, então falo em relação a campanha. Infinite foi meu Halo favorito e por uma margem significativa.
Eu gostei de tudo aqui. O gunplay é maravilhoso e o hitmark de quando elimina um inimigo é uma delícia. O que não curto nos jogos do Halo, e também em jogos num geral são armas laser. Em todos os outros Halos iniciamos com as armas UNSC e assim que acaba a munição já precisamos trocá-las já que os inimigos raramente usam nossas armas pra dropar ammo. Isso é totalmente gosto pessoal e nenhum demérito do jogo, mas gostei em como Infinite foi totalmente mais aberto em relação a armas jogáveis na campanha, o arsenal daqui é maravilhoso, as armas da UNSC são um deleite de jogar, e graças a Deus as munições dela são fáceis de encontrar, já que existem várias caixas de munição de seus respectivos tipos espalhados.
O plot também está no alto escalão da franquia pra mim. Basicamente ignora a bomba da história de Halo 5 apostando numa narrativa simplista, porém certeira. The Weapon e o "piloto" são dois personagens que de longe foram meus favoritos na franquia, o fato deles interagirem o tempo todo com o Chief se cria um laço instantâneo, diferente dos outros jogos onde acaba sendo um pouco difícil se apegar aos personagens tirando Chief, Cortana e Arbiter. E falando no Chief, além do homem falar mais aqui, eu achei sua humanização incrível, em várias cenas nem precisamos ver o seu rosto pra imaginar sua expressão.
O mundo aberto é o que já vimos em todo lugar, mas essa sensação de ter o Chief no Zeta Halo, sozinho contra um exército num mundo desconhecido passa uma vibe simplesmente incrível. Outro ponto de destaque são as boss battles, tentaram algo mais elaborado e entregaram bastante. A trilha sonora é basicamente "dum dum dum dum", seguido de chills, nada muito fora do normal.
Parece que ele foi um live service questionável, mas na campanha eu sai extremamente satisfeito, gostei muito do desfecho e espero que venham grandes coisas na franquia, e que ao menos uma vez na vida a 343 lance um jogo completo e redondo no lançamento.
Eu gostei de tudo aqui. O gunplay é maravilhoso e o hitmark de quando elimina um inimigo é uma delícia. O que não curto nos jogos do Halo, e também em jogos num geral são armas laser. Em todos os outros Halos iniciamos com as armas UNSC e assim que acaba a munição já precisamos trocá-las já que os inimigos raramente usam nossas armas pra dropar ammo. Isso é totalmente gosto pessoal e nenhum demérito do jogo, mas gostei em como Infinite foi totalmente mais aberto em relação a armas jogáveis na campanha, o arsenal daqui é maravilhoso, as armas da UNSC são um deleite de jogar, e graças a Deus as munições dela são fáceis de encontrar, já que existem várias caixas de munição de seus respectivos tipos espalhados.
O plot também está no alto escalão da franquia pra mim. Basicamente ignora a bomba da história de Halo 5 apostando numa narrativa simplista, porém certeira. The Weapon e o "piloto" são dois personagens que de longe foram meus favoritos na franquia, o fato deles interagirem o tempo todo com o Chief se cria um laço instantâneo, diferente dos outros jogos onde acaba sendo um pouco difícil se apegar aos personagens tirando Chief, Cortana e Arbiter. E falando no Chief, além do homem falar mais aqui, eu achei sua humanização incrível, em várias cenas nem precisamos ver o seu rosto pra imaginar sua expressão.
O mundo aberto é o que já vimos em todo lugar, mas essa sensação de ter o Chief no Zeta Halo, sozinho contra um exército num mundo desconhecido passa uma vibe simplesmente incrível. Outro ponto de destaque são as boss battles, tentaram algo mais elaborado e entregaram bastante. A trilha sonora é basicamente "dum dum dum dum", seguido de chills, nada muito fora do normal.
Parece que ele foi um live service questionável, mas na campanha eu sai extremamente satisfeito, gostei muito do desfecho e espero que venham grandes coisas na franquia, e que ao menos uma vez na vida a 343 lance um jogo completo e redondo no lançamento.
assassinations, co-op, and forge wont be in the game upon its release. but fear not, halo fans, as the series staple feature the "battle pass" will make it in on time.
People bring up Joss Whedon's quipping these days as a catch-all complaint against a lot of stuff that doesn't really deserve it but the Weapon AI's entire script is actually the most insufferable MCU parody-tier shit I've heard in my life. "I'm calling them flying octopus monkeys!" Oh do they also narwhal bacon at midnight? Give me a fucking break
Been biding my time thinking about my experience with Halo infinite because I sort of just logged hours when I felt like it and I never really shared it with any friends. Mostly because it's like a flurry of fights not just with the expectation this game brings out, but also my lightly nostalgic feelings on the series, and my tumultuous actual time with the series over time. To describe my conclusion now would be 3 steps forward and 2 major falls back.
We made one big step for suffusing the campaign again with a great deal of charm and a flurry of lovely 'moments' that reminds me what this series Can bring as an experience.
We made another step up in that same area by really stressing the word "infinite" in an interesting place, an infinitely recharging grappling hook that somehow perfectly combines halo textbook shooty patooty with freedom to bring to encounters. Especially doing such in a way where it really never got old for me by campaign's end.
And finally another strong step by having a really super competently put together multiplayer. While I mourn what 5 gave me I'm not at all unhappy with this Halo 3-meets-more-arena-fundies.
The first trip-up was in the story. The immeasurably gross moe Cortana-but-not-Cortana that we infantilize in such a fashion that the meme people make about "Dad Games" is somehow more true here than any other actual example. It's so disgustingly misogynistic while also once again slamming Halo 4's sense of letting go. The idea is twisted into a semblance of moving on by neither addressing john's problems and instead just letting him have a girl he can have grieving fatherly control on.
The second was the multiplayer beginning to regress. Besides the fact that it has no real timeline to keep it afloat while lacking in SOOOO much that pretty much every other Halo multiplayer has as a staple, it's already pushing me back into a Halo Reach situation again, removing the tech I actually enjoyed doing with no communication beforehand (Honestly it's just shocking. I was modding waypoint when I got to see Bungie just sack ability tech in favor of making each one stronger on their simplest shit which is how you got modern armor lock. I'm reliving it!). The idea of compromising with long term vets and re-introducing people to Halo of old is now dissipating like the smokescreen it is.
This leads to such a discombobulate frustrating experience. Even if they reverse some of what I've talked about it won't change how Halo has become so trashy in having a coherent vision. For fucks sake
We made one big step for suffusing the campaign again with a great deal of charm and a flurry of lovely 'moments' that reminds me what this series Can bring as an experience.
We made another step up in that same area by really stressing the word "infinite" in an interesting place, an infinitely recharging grappling hook that somehow perfectly combines halo textbook shooty patooty with freedom to bring to encounters. Especially doing such in a way where it really never got old for me by campaign's end.
And finally another strong step by having a really super competently put together multiplayer. While I mourn what 5 gave me I'm not at all unhappy with this Halo 3-meets-more-arena-fundies.
The first trip-up was in the story. The immeasurably gross moe Cortana-but-not-Cortana that we infantilize in such a fashion that the meme people make about "Dad Games" is somehow more true here than any other actual example. It's so disgustingly misogynistic while also once again slamming Halo 4's sense of letting go. The idea is twisted into a semblance of moving on by neither addressing john's problems and instead just letting him have a girl he can have grieving fatherly control on.
The second was the multiplayer beginning to regress. Besides the fact that it has no real timeline to keep it afloat while lacking in SOOOO much that pretty much every other Halo multiplayer has as a staple, it's already pushing me back into a Halo Reach situation again, removing the tech I actually enjoyed doing with no communication beforehand (Honestly it's just shocking. I was modding waypoint when I got to see Bungie just sack ability tech in favor of making each one stronger on their simplest shit which is how you got modern armor lock. I'm reliving it!). The idea of compromising with long term vets and re-introducing people to Halo of old is now dissipating like the smokescreen it is.
This leads to such a discombobulate frustrating experience. Even if they reverse some of what I've talked about it won't change how Halo has become so trashy in having a coherent vision. For fucks sake
Gaylo Shitfinite
One almost has to feel sorry for 343 Industries. Ever since being handed the keys to Microsoft’s flagship franchise, the developer has really struggled with proving to the fanbase that they were Bungie’s rightful successors and truly know what they’re doing with the property, while also putting their own stamp on it. Halo 4 was well-received at launch and showed they at least understood what a Halo game should be, but quickly kind of faded from the collective memory of even those like myself who loved it when it first came out due to it being too similar to what came before. Guardians meanwhile, where they tried to take a more original approach, may be the most disliked entry in the entire series, spin-offs included. Perhaps that is what led to Infinite, which adopts an open-world structure, not because its makers had anything unique or innovative to bring to the table, but it being the safe route everyone is taking these days.
If I wasn’t familiar with Halo’s iconic alien and weapon designs in advance, you could have told me this was some new Far Cry set in space and I probably would have believed you. 343 brings all of this stuff like grappling hooks, upgradable equipment, boss battles (which are usually just bullet spongier versions of already bullet spongy regular foes), and enemy strongholds into the mix without any of the brand’s established personality to set it apart from the pack. As a result it sort of feels as if you’ve already played this before, and that’s because in a way you have. I honestly appreciate something along the lines of Spartan Assault more, as that managed to bring the brand’s distinctive essence over when it swapped genres.
Now, right out of the gate I’ve no doubt made it sound as if I hate this, yet that’s not quite the case. However derivative its formula is, it remains nonetheless engaging. I still found myself driven to acquire each base, rescue all of the captured marine squads, and generally just hunt down every little icon I could see on the map to complete as much as possible. It’s a satisfying process thanks to how you’re rewarded with an increased UNSC presence on “Installation 07” and a variety of steadily unlocked new toys such as guns and vehicles you can call in at any liberated outpost (it would have been nice if the pilot had the ability to drop things off to you anywhere so long as you aren’t in combat, but hey we can’t have everything). There’s a genuine sense that your efforts are rebuilding a friendly military force on a hostile world. I wish it had all actually tied into the story however, as the detached nature of these side-excursions has left the player community theorizing that Master Chief canonically never did these optional activities. Which, especially if true, causes their inclusion to come off as slightly hollow.
As for the writing, after the plot of their previous outing was universally panned 343 decided to completely change directions here via a soft reboot that basically retcons everything they had concocted prior and does almost entirely its own separate thing. Cortana and her “Created” army? Defeated offscreen (no, seriously). The Covenant? Unaccounted for. The Prometheans? Also MIA. Spartan Locke? Presumed dead. Infinite picks up literally right in the middle of a battle with a new(ish) faction called “The Banished” who you might remember from Wars 2 and largely more or less pretends all that other stuff didn’t happen. It feels as though there’s a game or two missing between this and Guardians that would have explained these developments. We do ultimately witness the necessary closure to the whole Cortana betrayal arc, the one thread they wouldn’t have been able to get away with ignoring, but the tale is needlessly confusing regardless, leaving you with questions that I’d bet 343 has NO intentions of ever answering. The perfect example of why the Halo TV show deviating so heavily from the source material is far from the affront its detractors proclaim it to be. The sole redeeming aspect is that Chief’s inner turmoil has given him some humanity. It’s simply a shame it came at the expense of his longtime AI companion who they brutally character assassinated and have since tried to replace here with a pair of annoying wannabe sidekicks. One of whom does nothing outside of whining nonstop and the other that essentially acts as an insultingly naive, childish version of her (but my LAAWWD is she caked up!).
I think it’s worth mentioning that if you decide to buy this all you’ll be paying for is the campaign as the multiplayer portion was released free-to-play and is available by itself as a separate download. Naturally, this means there’s battle pass bullcrap, and as much as I typically can’t stand that sort of dreck I will give them credit for not letting the passes expire. Whenever the next “season” rolls around the preceding one doesn’t go anywhere so those rewards don’t become forever unavailable to those jumping on late. You can even switch between whichever you want to grind at will. A nice touch. Admittedly, I’ve never been the biggest fan of Halo’s competitive half so do with the following information what you will, but I don’t think I’ll be joining matches again anytime soon. The lengthier than average time-to-kill, wildly varying effectiveness of weapons, and constant race to get the most powerful items first when they spawn strikes me as weirdly dated. Consequently, most of my time was spent in Tactical Slayer where the removal of shields and limit to a specific gun class increases both the pace and stakes while leveling the playing field. I also tended to stick with the Community Creations playlist as the smaller maps created by the fans are in my opinion better than the ones from the devs themselves (Forge is alive and well!). Brutal. Despite all I’ve wrote in this paragraph, I am willing to concede that in the end my complaints could merely be a matter of personal taste as opposed to legitimate fault, and what’s offered is a legitimate alternative to CoD/Battlefield.
While this review has been of the more critical nature, I did enjoy the weeks I’ve spent with this package. It’s just seeing the series most responsible for getting me into gaming stripped of so much of its distinguishing identity in this manner hurts a bit. The traditional linear stages were my favorite part, because even with the repetitive level design it’s where Infinite carries the same vibe and style that caused me to fall in love with the majority of its predecessors. Hence, I can’t recommend this if you’re looking for the next great Halo experience, but rather yet another solid open-world FPS. To conclude, I’ll say that with reports of trouble going on behind the scenes at Microsoft/Xbox currently and the doomsayers prophesying this to be the end of the sci-fi juggernaut, if they are in fact correct (not likely) it may not be the triumphant bang we all wanted the ride that started back in 2001 to go out on, but it is at least significantly grander than a whimper.
8/10
If I wasn’t familiar with Halo’s iconic alien and weapon designs in advance, you could have told me this was some new Far Cry set in space and I probably would have believed you. 343 brings all of this stuff like grappling hooks, upgradable equipment, boss battles (which are usually just bullet spongier versions of already bullet spongy regular foes), and enemy strongholds into the mix without any of the brand’s established personality to set it apart from the pack. As a result it sort of feels as if you’ve already played this before, and that’s because in a way you have. I honestly appreciate something along the lines of Spartan Assault more, as that managed to bring the brand’s distinctive essence over when it swapped genres.
Now, right out of the gate I’ve no doubt made it sound as if I hate this, yet that’s not quite the case. However derivative its formula is, it remains nonetheless engaging. I still found myself driven to acquire each base, rescue all of the captured marine squads, and generally just hunt down every little icon I could see on the map to complete as much as possible. It’s a satisfying process thanks to how you’re rewarded with an increased UNSC presence on “Installation 07” and a variety of steadily unlocked new toys such as guns and vehicles you can call in at any liberated outpost (it would have been nice if the pilot had the ability to drop things off to you anywhere so long as you aren’t in combat, but hey we can’t have everything). There’s a genuine sense that your efforts are rebuilding a friendly military force on a hostile world. I wish it had all actually tied into the story however, as the detached nature of these side-excursions has left the player community theorizing that Master Chief canonically never did these optional activities. Which, especially if true, causes their inclusion to come off as slightly hollow.
As for the writing, after the plot of their previous outing was universally panned 343 decided to completely change directions here via a soft reboot that basically retcons everything they had concocted prior and does almost entirely its own separate thing. Cortana and her “Created” army? Defeated offscreen (no, seriously). The Covenant? Unaccounted for. The Prometheans? Also MIA. Spartan Locke? Presumed dead. Infinite picks up literally right in the middle of a battle with a new(ish) faction called “The Banished” who you might remember from Wars 2 and largely more or less pretends all that other stuff didn’t happen. It feels as though there’s a game or two missing between this and Guardians that would have explained these developments. We do ultimately witness the necessary closure to the whole Cortana betrayal arc, the one thread they wouldn’t have been able to get away with ignoring, but the tale is needlessly confusing regardless, leaving you with questions that I’d bet 343 has NO intentions of ever answering. The perfect example of why the Halo TV show deviating so heavily from the source material is far from the affront its detractors proclaim it to be. The sole redeeming aspect is that Chief’s inner turmoil has given him some humanity. It’s simply a shame it came at the expense of his longtime AI companion who they brutally character assassinated and have since tried to replace here with a pair of annoying wannabe sidekicks. One of whom does nothing outside of whining nonstop and the other that essentially acts as an insultingly naive, childish version of her (but my LAAWWD is she caked up!).
I think it’s worth mentioning that if you decide to buy this all you’ll be paying for is the campaign as the multiplayer portion was released free-to-play and is available by itself as a separate download. Naturally, this means there’s battle pass bullcrap, and as much as I typically can’t stand that sort of dreck I will give them credit for not letting the passes expire. Whenever the next “season” rolls around the preceding one doesn’t go anywhere so those rewards don’t become forever unavailable to those jumping on late. You can even switch between whichever you want to grind at will. A nice touch. Admittedly, I’ve never been the biggest fan of Halo’s competitive half so do with the following information what you will, but I don’t think I’ll be joining matches again anytime soon. The lengthier than average time-to-kill, wildly varying effectiveness of weapons, and constant race to get the most powerful items first when they spawn strikes me as weirdly dated. Consequently, most of my time was spent in Tactical Slayer where the removal of shields and limit to a specific gun class increases both the pace and stakes while leveling the playing field. I also tended to stick with the Community Creations playlist as the smaller maps created by the fans are in my opinion better than the ones from the devs themselves (Forge is alive and well!). Brutal. Despite all I’ve wrote in this paragraph, I am willing to concede that in the end my complaints could merely be a matter of personal taste as opposed to legitimate fault, and what’s offered is a legitimate alternative to CoD/Battlefield.
While this review has been of the more critical nature, I did enjoy the weeks I’ve spent with this package. It’s just seeing the series most responsible for getting me into gaming stripped of so much of its distinguishing identity in this manner hurts a bit. The traditional linear stages were my favorite part, because even with the repetitive level design it’s where Infinite carries the same vibe and style that caused me to fall in love with the majority of its predecessors. Hence, I can’t recommend this if you’re looking for the next great Halo experience, but rather yet another solid open-world FPS. To conclude, I’ll say that with reports of trouble going on behind the scenes at Microsoft/Xbox currently and the doomsayers prophesying this to be the end of the sci-fi juggernaut, if they are in fact correct (not likely) it may not be the triumphant bang we all wanted the ride that started back in 2001 to go out on, but it is at least significantly grander than a whimper.
8/10
The pieces of the best Halo game are contained within this game, but they are not this game
If anything this game makes me extremely excited to dive into the rest of the series. Halo Infinite shines the most in linear areas. To get the negatives out of the way, the open world was quite frankly disappointing, with little to no variety. Although there was always something to do in the world, a lot of the optional missions felt repetitive. As I said the game shines during linear areas, which is what the entirety of the last couple hours of this game consists of. The endgame was straight-up great and made me start looking forward to playing the traditional linear Halo games. Also the multiplayer is fire. Would recommend this game to almost anyone.
Halo Infinite’s incredible mechanical foundation is sullied by the most uninspired environments and art direction the series has seen. When your Ubisoft-esque checklist open world is among the least offensive aspects of your game’s campaign, you know you messed up.
In all seriousness, Infinite is simultaneously fantastic and awful. Master Chief has never felt better to control and his moveset allows the player to react more dynamically than ever before. Plenty of moments throughout this campaign, I pulled stuff off that made me feel like the coolest Spartan ever born. A couple of bosses in particular are GOAT-tier for the franchise and I’ll never forget how it felt facing off against them.
But I cannot overstate the importance of spectacle in a Halo game. Most of this campaign boils down to running through samey Forerunner corridors. The open world is limited to a single biome, and much of what was revealed in the announcement trailer is not present. Where are the large animals? The rain? The oceans? The snowy mountains? The moonlit groves occupied by stags? The raging thunder? The shifting deserts? The coiling trees? The waves of great bulls stampeding? The underwater vehicles exploring ruins? The beaches?
I understand that trailer was just a game demonstration, but it’s indicative of how lacking this experience is creatively. And considering the safe narrative’s corporate-fueled attempts to provide Halo with a riskless reboot, Infinite is all the more lacking. The whole of this open world is just Combat Evolved’s second mission extended from 30 minutes to 15 hours.
Overall, feelings are mixed. There’s lots to love here from a mechanical perspective, but it’s uninventive and visually trite.
In all seriousness, Infinite is simultaneously fantastic and awful. Master Chief has never felt better to control and his moveset allows the player to react more dynamically than ever before. Plenty of moments throughout this campaign, I pulled stuff off that made me feel like the coolest Spartan ever born. A couple of bosses in particular are GOAT-tier for the franchise and I’ll never forget how it felt facing off against them.
But I cannot overstate the importance of spectacle in a Halo game. Most of this campaign boils down to running through samey Forerunner corridors. The open world is limited to a single biome, and much of what was revealed in the announcement trailer is not present. Where are the large animals? The rain? The oceans? The snowy mountains? The moonlit groves occupied by stags? The raging thunder? The shifting deserts? The coiling trees? The waves of great bulls stampeding? The underwater vehicles exploring ruins? The beaches?
I understand that trailer was just a game demonstration, but it’s indicative of how lacking this experience is creatively. And considering the safe narrative’s corporate-fueled attempts to provide Halo with a riskless reboot, Infinite is all the more lacking. The whole of this open world is just Combat Evolved’s second mission extended from 30 minutes to 15 hours.
Overall, feelings are mixed. There’s lots to love here from a mechanical perspective, but it’s uninventive and visually trite.
i hate you sully
Every week a new person brings up a new or pre-existing issue to 343, either on Reddit or Twitter. This dev then responds to the players issue by telling them how they are wrong, because their internal statistics show them something else. BULLSHIT. You have the player, right in front of you, talking to you, telling you how to improve your game, and then you just shrug all that off to be hard-headed and go your own way and keep the game in the bullshit state that it is in.
This game, like 343, is a complete failure. And it just gets me more mad every time I engage with it. Everyone knows that the core is fun, but 343 refuses, POINT BLANK REFUSES to fix the games issues. Fuck this game, and 343. Give Halo to a random person on the street instead. Would the franchise be in ANY worse a state??? Ridiculous.
This game, like 343, is a complete failure. And it just gets me more mad every time I engage with it. Everyone knows that the core is fun, but 343 refuses, POINT BLANK REFUSES to fix the games issues. Fuck this game, and 343. Give Halo to a random person on the street instead. Would the franchise be in ANY worse a state??? Ridiculous.
Only played the campaign and already had someone call me the N-Word (Even though im white)
Fans of Halo and Street Fighter have a lot in common - put ten of them in a room, and you'll get ten different opinions on what the best game in the franchise is.
I think the game you like the most from a franchise is a function of time and place rather than quality and content. I'm a diehard for Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, and it's undoubtedly because it's the one I played a ton of it on the original Xbox with my friends in the year following Daigo's straight-finessed blowup of EVO 2004; if I'd come to it cold-turkey on a Fightcade emulator in 2017 or whatever, I doubt the game would be able to hold me at all, despite its inherent 2D magic. I can look past its flaws - of which there are quite a few - because they're being covered up by falling rose petals of epic parries and hard-won comebacks.
Halo 3 is my favourite Halo game - exquisite graphics, a solid weapon roster, a campaign full of memorable "epic" moments and a flawless "it just works" multiplayer mode that highlighted every new strength of the Xbox 360. I played it religiously in the dying days of my teenage years, when time was plenty and money was scarce and I could give a good game the respect it deserved. With Halo 3, I couldn't have asked for more - it's been 14 years now, and I can still remember specific moments in time from that game like I'm watching them in Theater Mode in the present.
Ask the older boys on my hometown street what the best Halo game is, and they'd probably yearn for the perfect simplicity of the Halo: Combat Evolved pistol play, or champion the revolutionary nature of Halo 2's dual-wielding dual-protagonists and never-done-before online play. My old work colleagues might advocate for Halo Reach's gut-wrenching, grit-writhing story or the inclusion of cherry-picked gameplay elements from the juggernaut that was early-2010s Call of Duty (I thought that Reach was my favourite Halo, but replaying it in the Master Chief Collection revealed that the game's attempt to be a COD-contemporary has curdled it like blue space milk). Some jazz-loving freaks who read the Halo books might even try to convince you that ODST was The One. And someone, somewhere, is no doubt extolling the virtues of Halo 4 and Halo 5 - though it ain't me, nor anyone who I can find on Backloggd. They're definitely out there, though. Like the Street Fighter fans who swear down that EX 3 was the best one.
These subjective perceptions of Halo's appeal is why a Halo with the title Infinite was always gonna be an impossible ring for any game developer to jump through. It kinda feels like Halo Infinite has always existed as a sort of back-handed joke and a cack-handed game; a seventh-generation relic from a bygone era of shooters, hopelessly playing catchup with Fortnite, Apex Legends, and its old rival, Call of Duty. Infinite's botched reception last year was, of course, downright cruel - but also emblematic of how players have come to regard post-Reach Halo: a franchise that can no longer please anyone.
After a few days of Halo Infinite's multiplayer, I think it's safe to say that they somehow found a way to please everyone across 20 years of Halo history. It's funny - most people I've played with so far have a Halo backstory that they wanna share with their fireteam - "Oh, I really liked Halo 3..." ; "hmm I think my last one was 4?" ; "Yeah they added sliding in Halo 5, it was pretty cool." ; and so on - but no matter their origin story, my headset usually lights up with plenty "AWW YEAH"s and "AWW FUCK YEAH"s within a minute or two of the Slaying getting underway.
I'm not sure what it is exactly that's working for everyone, but Infinite seems to be this very delicate blend of every Halo that came before - there's the power items from 3, the sprinting from 4, the armor stuff from Reach, the out-there soundtrack decisions of ODST (overwrought Mogwai/Imagine Dragons post-rock for Halo is a cool choice imo) - but none of it takes centre-stage in a dominant, overbearing way. It just feels good to be a spaceguy with a spacegun and drive a spaceship. The classic Halo shit, with a little bit of Quake III and Unreal Tournament's item spawning thrown in for good measure this time - could Infinite fill that wafer-thin market slice that's been crying out for a new arena shooter? One that doesn't involve dying every 10 seconds to guys who've been playing every day since 1999? Anything but another ADS military shooter, please.
For me, the mark of a good multiplayer game is that even repeated death is fun - and repeatedly running in fear from an xX_Xx-tagged pro gamer Spartan with a gravity hammer prompts just as many "HAHAH OH SHIT!! DUDE" moments as getting a killstreak with a Ghost does. 343 may have rediscovered the essential Halo energy that permeated the Bungie entries.
... In multiplayer, at least. It does feel a little weird to heap praise on what is essentially a glamorous beta test for the online mode. I know nothing at all about the campaign, apart from the fact it's some huge Halo of the Wild open world thing with Master Chief going back to the halo rings yet again. I will probably play it, get bored of following waypoints and climbing towers, and then put it back on the shelf - such is the power of GamePass Gaming! But I could see myself sticking around for Infinite's multiplayer - god knows I'll have to if I ever wanna unlock anything.
I think the game you like the most from a franchise is a function of time and place rather than quality and content. I'm a diehard for Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, and it's undoubtedly because it's the one I played a ton of it on the original Xbox with my friends in the year following Daigo's straight-finessed blowup of EVO 2004; if I'd come to it cold-turkey on a Fightcade emulator in 2017 or whatever, I doubt the game would be able to hold me at all, despite its inherent 2D magic. I can look past its flaws - of which there are quite a few - because they're being covered up by falling rose petals of epic parries and hard-won comebacks.
Halo 3 is my favourite Halo game - exquisite graphics, a solid weapon roster, a campaign full of memorable "epic" moments and a flawless "it just works" multiplayer mode that highlighted every new strength of the Xbox 360. I played it religiously in the dying days of my teenage years, when time was plenty and money was scarce and I could give a good game the respect it deserved. With Halo 3, I couldn't have asked for more - it's been 14 years now, and I can still remember specific moments in time from that game like I'm watching them in Theater Mode in the present.
Ask the older boys on my hometown street what the best Halo game is, and they'd probably yearn for the perfect simplicity of the Halo: Combat Evolved pistol play, or champion the revolutionary nature of Halo 2's dual-wielding dual-protagonists and never-done-before online play. My old work colleagues might advocate for Halo Reach's gut-wrenching, grit-writhing story or the inclusion of cherry-picked gameplay elements from the juggernaut that was early-2010s Call of Duty (I thought that Reach was my favourite Halo, but replaying it in the Master Chief Collection revealed that the game's attempt to be a COD-contemporary has curdled it like blue space milk). Some jazz-loving freaks who read the Halo books might even try to convince you that ODST was The One. And someone, somewhere, is no doubt extolling the virtues of Halo 4 and Halo 5 - though it ain't me, nor anyone who I can find on Backloggd. They're definitely out there, though. Like the Street Fighter fans who swear down that EX 3 was the best one.
These subjective perceptions of Halo's appeal is why a Halo with the title Infinite was always gonna be an impossible ring for any game developer to jump through. It kinda feels like Halo Infinite has always existed as a sort of back-handed joke and a cack-handed game; a seventh-generation relic from a bygone era of shooters, hopelessly playing catchup with Fortnite, Apex Legends, and its old rival, Call of Duty. Infinite's botched reception last year was, of course, downright cruel - but also emblematic of how players have come to regard post-Reach Halo: a franchise that can no longer please anyone.
After a few days of Halo Infinite's multiplayer, I think it's safe to say that they somehow found a way to please everyone across 20 years of Halo history. It's funny - most people I've played with so far have a Halo backstory that they wanna share with their fireteam - "Oh, I really liked Halo 3..." ; "hmm I think my last one was 4?" ; "Yeah they added sliding in Halo 5, it was pretty cool." ; and so on - but no matter their origin story, my headset usually lights up with plenty "AWW YEAH"s and "AWW FUCK YEAH"s within a minute or two of the Slaying getting underway.
I'm not sure what it is exactly that's working for everyone, but Infinite seems to be this very delicate blend of every Halo that came before - there's the power items from 3, the sprinting from 4, the armor stuff from Reach, the out-there soundtrack decisions of ODST (overwrought Mogwai/Imagine Dragons post-rock for Halo is a cool choice imo) - but none of it takes centre-stage in a dominant, overbearing way. It just feels good to be a spaceguy with a spacegun and drive a spaceship. The classic Halo shit, with a little bit of Quake III and Unreal Tournament's item spawning thrown in for good measure this time - could Infinite fill that wafer-thin market slice that's been crying out for a new arena shooter? One that doesn't involve dying every 10 seconds to guys who've been playing every day since 1999? Anything but another ADS military shooter, please.
For me, the mark of a good multiplayer game is that even repeated death is fun - and repeatedly running in fear from an xX_Xx-tagged pro gamer Spartan with a gravity hammer prompts just as many "HAHAH OH SHIT!! DUDE" moments as getting a killstreak with a Ghost does. 343 may have rediscovered the essential Halo energy that permeated the Bungie entries.
... In multiplayer, at least. It does feel a little weird to heap praise on what is essentially a glamorous beta test for the online mode. I know nothing at all about the campaign, apart from the fact it's some huge Halo of the Wild open world thing with Master Chief going back to the halo rings yet again. I will probably play it, get bored of following waypoints and climbing towers, and then put it back on the shelf - such is the power of GamePass Gaming! But I could see myself sticking around for Infinite's multiplayer - god knows I'll have to if I ever wanna unlock anything.
Nothing… Nothing ends.
Simplest point of comparison with Halo is Star Wars. Two original-borrowed trilogies of soft sci-fi fantasy that broke barriers of paradigm and profit, only then to be cast adrift in the outer space of an expanded universe, occasionally pulled out of statis by old gloryhunters and new profiteers in search of new-old money and not much else beyond. No one will ever be able to recapture their bottled god-fire because it now permeates and binds the air around us, invigorating countless other franchises and indies across the galaxy. You can’t really make a new Halo when a new Halo already exists within most shooting games on the market today. All that’s left for the forerunner is to try and make something new to itself with its own old tools.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve worked with Microsoft on software projects (at a thankfully comfortable distance). They know how to ruthlessly manage their first, second and third parties, and 343’s close-leashed position as custodians of Halo’s corpse makes for a fascinating case study - intrepid fans have dug out [countless examples](https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/g2wf8e/is_anyone_concerned_after_reading_some_of_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf ) from across Infinite’s lifespan that point to a game development studio that functions more as a monitor of revolving independent contractors than a true arbiter of a franchise’s will. Why is this internal drama important when talking about this game, though? Well, Halo Infinite, moreso than almost any other game I can recently recall, is a series of parts that don’t just fail to add up to a sum, but could be regarded as a P = NP math problem that no one can reasonably solve - by all accounts, Halo should be dead, but capital keeps trying to bring it back to modern life by stitching together disparate product-pieces.
To return to the Star Wars analogy - Halo Infinite is the Force Awakens of the Halo saga: a grab-bag of all the things you remember liking about the franchise (there’s a mission where John Halo literally just walks through corridors listening to audio dramas of the old games), hastily bound together using a vague plot that promises explanations that will finally dig the series out of the lore-hole it has created for itself. Luke Skywalker has vanished / but that’s a story for another time / somehow, Palpatine has returned / etc. You know the drill. Hokey Big Picture lore-weaving aside, the core premise here - that Master Chief has in-media-resurrected himself in the middle of his own franchise reboot and is the only one opposed to the rebuilding of the Halo rings - is surprisingly rich for a series that’s usually as straight as a battle rifle’s burst, and coupled with nascent themes of classic hard-male stoicism in the face of 2D-wife grief and a new life in a present-future society that no longer really venerates government agents and supersoldiers, there’s plenty to work with here; but like the Star Wars sequels, an intriguing foundation can’t be meaningfully sustained or built upon because every member of staff involved in the project is working themselves to death to meet truly insane deadlines. Apparently the final year of delays gave 343 time to add a ton of new (often funny, creative!) dialogue, and it’s telling that so much of it is self-aware - “The Banished only have one idea and they keep reusing it” sighs your companion as you complete your fourth ‘find the battery for this door’ quest in the space of the same mission.
It’s really hard to articulate the feel of Halo Infinite’s campaign without playing it yourself. After a tedious tutorial section that evokes The Library from Halo: Combat Evolved, the game begins to present itself as a hacked-together Forza Horizon-like: a never-ending treadmill of disposable jaunts, enjoyable content you can mindlessly cycle through without greater thought and commitment. Set marker, follow line to marker, click on things that are marked, open map, set marker, follow line to marker. And honestly, when you’re burst from the stresses of reality, trying to fill out a spare lunch break or blow off steam after work? Idly driving a warthog to a big field where you can go back to 2004 and do some double-taps on shield jackals is not the worst feeling in the world to immerse yourself in. I did everything on the open world map, without even meaning to - and I enjoyed myself! Microsoft are beginning to properly stake a pitch for their coming generation, I think - assimilate previously beloved IP, distill their essence, and crush tired contractors under a corporate boot-heel until they can present the game in an easily consumable form that can satisfy broader and broader generational divides in the product marketplace. Games really can just be mindlessly tread-milling cyphers of low-level brain activity for kids and adults alike.
The hands-on gameplay - the moving of Master Chief, the shooting of his guns, the effects of shooting his guns at different targets, managing which guns should be doing the shooting, managing your position in the sandbox, etc. - is tight, and perhaps the best that I can remember it feeling since Halo 3. The grapple is a welcome addition for both traversal and combat, albeit one that overpowers all other equipment options to the point that it might as well be your third gun, a (perhaps unintentionally) radical departure from Halo’s unbreakable twenty-year two-gun tenet. I do think it’s worth putting a disclaimer on this review: about three or four hours in, I was being bore down upon by a Sword Elite on the edge of a cliff, and managed to beat him by pulling a nearby hammer into my hands as he ran towards me, leaping off the rock-face’s edge and then grappling myself back towards the poor guy at full tilt for a face-breaking gravity swing that sent him ragdolling into the horizon - a moment so awesomely Halo that it positively coloured my perception of the game for at least three or four more hours that followed. If nothing else, it’s worth trying Infinite’s open world just to see what grapple-hooking can do for the classic Halo combat pyramid.
Certain enemies, like elites, jackals and brutes, function the exact same as they always have, and it’s fun to watch classic Halo AI reckon with the new abilities of Spider-Chief - they’re often powerless to deal with an enemy that swings from post-to-post and can disappear in the blink of an eye. It feels like 343 were almost afraid of how powerful the near-unlimited use of grapple makes the player - I played on Heroic difficulty, and the game responded in kind by putting me in countless situations that would have been deemed unreasonably cruel in past Halo games - multiple hammer brutes, backed by rocket-launching grunts, covered by jackal snipers from all angles. It’s mad! Taking outposts and bases really can end up feeling like a miniature RTS or tactics game, with thought constantly being given to marine placement, jailbreaks, weapon loadouts and the front-lines of enemy encampment that need to be broken. Going in gung-ho is totally possible, though, provided you are willing to constantly web-shoot yourself from alien freak to alien freak with a god-almighty upgraded Sidekick pistol in hand - one of the best FPS guns in gaming history, and it’s a tragedy that they don’t have this thing in multiplayer!
As another reviewer said on here, this is, at its best, the second level from Halo: CE (aptly named “Halo”) spun out into a full video game - and it’s clear 343 are still building their stuff with Bungie’s software toolbelt. I don’t think having some things stay the same is necessarily a bad thing - why mess with success? - but there is something oddly perverse about 343 Industries doing a Weekend At Bernie’s on a digital corpse Bungie has long since discarded. Three core games in, and nothing 343 has originally developed thus far - the Promethean enemies, the new weapons, the dual Spartan protagonists, the squad-based shooting, the Cortana AI army - has stuck to the wall. The story here, about the Precummers and the Foreskinners and the Banished (totally not the Covenant!) and all these other meaningless alien factions - is pure, unadulterated “Somehow, Palpatine has returned” B-movie badness for readers of Kevin J. Anderson novels, and barely registered on my synapses as anything other than an obstacle that stood in the way of me filling another warthog with rocket launcher party boys on a one-way trip to blowing up more armoured monkey fellas. You’ll just need to steel yourself against an unceasing torrent of cutesy quippery/one-linery between Master Chief and a version of Cortana who’s been patched with all of Twitter’s “men, am I right ladies?” talking points of the past decade. It can sometimes all be worth it, though, when you land a clean sniper bullet right between a hunter’s eyes on the upswing of a well-positioned grappleshot.
Unfortunately, an otherwise mindlessly enjoyable game shits on the table and closes the door by ending with four unbroken hours of linear snap-map corridor shooting, a The Library on Spartan II growth supplements that only ceases marching down hallways to deliver static exposition delivered in a strict “Master Chief look at hologram” style that wordlessly screams “we already delayed this game twice and I haven’t seen my daughter in three weeks, please let me leave”. It’s so copy-and-pasted painful that I’d genuinely recommend just clearing out the open world and then shelving the game instead - unless you like struggling tooth and skewer for an ending so incomprehensible that all you can intuit is that you’re watching a bad-trip Battlestar Galactica cliffhanger of some kind.
Microsoft and 343 have talked a lot of talk about Halo Infinite as a platform for ten years of Halo games, and I can see what they mean - the meat and potatoes of this package in single and multi-player is hearty, fulfilling stuff. The problem isn’t really with how it looks or moves or feels or plays - it’s all fault of a hastily-wrapped enclosure that constantly deploys what I can only describe as “halo simulcra”, best exemplified by the game randomly letting you outside for ten minutes of the finale to drive a warthog and listen to the Halo theme song. Why? Because this is a Halo game, I guess, and Microsoft are giving you Halo as you most viscerally recall it. Don’t think too hard; like Forza Horizon 5, this is brain-off Game Pass Gaming at its very finest. Just don’t let it trick you into thinking it’s anything else. It will try.
Simplest point of comparison with Halo is Star Wars. Two original-borrowed trilogies of soft sci-fi fantasy that broke barriers of paradigm and profit, only then to be cast adrift in the outer space of an expanded universe, occasionally pulled out of statis by old gloryhunters and new profiteers in search of new-old money and not much else beyond. No one will ever be able to recapture their bottled god-fire because it now permeates and binds the air around us, invigorating countless other franchises and indies across the galaxy. You can’t really make a new Halo when a new Halo already exists within most shooting games on the market today. All that’s left for the forerunner is to try and make something new to itself with its own old tools.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve worked with Microsoft on software projects (at a thankfully comfortable distance). They know how to ruthlessly manage their first, second and third parties, and 343’s close-leashed position as custodians of Halo’s corpse makes for a fascinating case study - intrepid fans have dug out [countless examples](https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/g2wf8e/is_anyone_concerned_after_reading_some_of_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf ) from across Infinite’s lifespan that point to a game development studio that functions more as a monitor of revolving independent contractors than a true arbiter of a franchise’s will. Why is this internal drama important when talking about this game, though? Well, Halo Infinite, moreso than almost any other game I can recently recall, is a series of parts that don’t just fail to add up to a sum, but could be regarded as a P = NP math problem that no one can reasonably solve - by all accounts, Halo should be dead, but capital keeps trying to bring it back to modern life by stitching together disparate product-pieces.
To return to the Star Wars analogy - Halo Infinite is the Force Awakens of the Halo saga: a grab-bag of all the things you remember liking about the franchise (there’s a mission where John Halo literally just walks through corridors listening to audio dramas of the old games), hastily bound together using a vague plot that promises explanations that will finally dig the series out of the lore-hole it has created for itself. Luke Skywalker has vanished / but that’s a story for another time / somehow, Palpatine has returned / etc. You know the drill. Hokey Big Picture lore-weaving aside, the core premise here - that Master Chief has in-media-resurrected himself in the middle of his own franchise reboot and is the only one opposed to the rebuilding of the Halo rings - is surprisingly rich for a series that’s usually as straight as a battle rifle’s burst, and coupled with nascent themes of classic hard-male stoicism in the face of 2D-wife grief and a new life in a present-future society that no longer really venerates government agents and supersoldiers, there’s plenty to work with here; but like the Star Wars sequels, an intriguing foundation can’t be meaningfully sustained or built upon because every member of staff involved in the project is working themselves to death to meet truly insane deadlines. Apparently the final year of delays gave 343 time to add a ton of new (often funny, creative!) dialogue, and it’s telling that so much of it is self-aware - “The Banished only have one idea and they keep reusing it” sighs your companion as you complete your fourth ‘find the battery for this door’ quest in the space of the same mission.
It’s really hard to articulate the feel of Halo Infinite’s campaign without playing it yourself. After a tedious tutorial section that evokes The Library from Halo: Combat Evolved, the game begins to present itself as a hacked-together Forza Horizon-like: a never-ending treadmill of disposable jaunts, enjoyable content you can mindlessly cycle through without greater thought and commitment. Set marker, follow line to marker, click on things that are marked, open map, set marker, follow line to marker. And honestly, when you’re burst from the stresses of reality, trying to fill out a spare lunch break or blow off steam after work? Idly driving a warthog to a big field where you can go back to 2004 and do some double-taps on shield jackals is not the worst feeling in the world to immerse yourself in. I did everything on the open world map, without even meaning to - and I enjoyed myself! Microsoft are beginning to properly stake a pitch for their coming generation, I think - assimilate previously beloved IP, distill their essence, and crush tired contractors under a corporate boot-heel until they can present the game in an easily consumable form that can satisfy broader and broader generational divides in the product marketplace. Games really can just be mindlessly tread-milling cyphers of low-level brain activity for kids and adults alike.
The hands-on gameplay - the moving of Master Chief, the shooting of his guns, the effects of shooting his guns at different targets, managing which guns should be doing the shooting, managing your position in the sandbox, etc. - is tight, and perhaps the best that I can remember it feeling since Halo 3. The grapple is a welcome addition for both traversal and combat, albeit one that overpowers all other equipment options to the point that it might as well be your third gun, a (perhaps unintentionally) radical departure from Halo’s unbreakable twenty-year two-gun tenet. I do think it’s worth putting a disclaimer on this review: about three or four hours in, I was being bore down upon by a Sword Elite on the edge of a cliff, and managed to beat him by pulling a nearby hammer into my hands as he ran towards me, leaping off the rock-face’s edge and then grappling myself back towards the poor guy at full tilt for a face-breaking gravity swing that sent him ragdolling into the horizon - a moment so awesomely Halo that it positively coloured my perception of the game for at least three or four more hours that followed. If nothing else, it’s worth trying Infinite’s open world just to see what grapple-hooking can do for the classic Halo combat pyramid.
Certain enemies, like elites, jackals and brutes, function the exact same as they always have, and it’s fun to watch classic Halo AI reckon with the new abilities of Spider-Chief - they’re often powerless to deal with an enemy that swings from post-to-post and can disappear in the blink of an eye. It feels like 343 were almost afraid of how powerful the near-unlimited use of grapple makes the player - I played on Heroic difficulty, and the game responded in kind by putting me in countless situations that would have been deemed unreasonably cruel in past Halo games - multiple hammer brutes, backed by rocket-launching grunts, covered by jackal snipers from all angles. It’s mad! Taking outposts and bases really can end up feeling like a miniature RTS or tactics game, with thought constantly being given to marine placement, jailbreaks, weapon loadouts and the front-lines of enemy encampment that need to be broken. Going in gung-ho is totally possible, though, provided you are willing to constantly web-shoot yourself from alien freak to alien freak with a god-almighty upgraded Sidekick pistol in hand - one of the best FPS guns in gaming history, and it’s a tragedy that they don’t have this thing in multiplayer!
As another reviewer said on here, this is, at its best, the second level from Halo: CE (aptly named “Halo”) spun out into a full video game - and it’s clear 343 are still building their stuff with Bungie’s software toolbelt. I don’t think having some things stay the same is necessarily a bad thing - why mess with success? - but there is something oddly perverse about 343 Industries doing a Weekend At Bernie’s on a digital corpse Bungie has long since discarded. Three core games in, and nothing 343 has originally developed thus far - the Promethean enemies, the new weapons, the dual Spartan protagonists, the squad-based shooting, the Cortana AI army - has stuck to the wall. The story here, about the Precummers and the Foreskinners and the Banished (totally not the Covenant!) and all these other meaningless alien factions - is pure, unadulterated “Somehow, Palpatine has returned” B-movie badness for readers of Kevin J. Anderson novels, and barely registered on my synapses as anything other than an obstacle that stood in the way of me filling another warthog with rocket launcher party boys on a one-way trip to blowing up more armoured monkey fellas. You’ll just need to steel yourself against an unceasing torrent of cutesy quippery/one-linery between Master Chief and a version of Cortana who’s been patched with all of Twitter’s “men, am I right ladies?” talking points of the past decade. It can sometimes all be worth it, though, when you land a clean sniper bullet right between a hunter’s eyes on the upswing of a well-positioned grappleshot.
Unfortunately, an otherwise mindlessly enjoyable game shits on the table and closes the door by ending with four unbroken hours of linear snap-map corridor shooting, a The Library on Spartan II growth supplements that only ceases marching down hallways to deliver static exposition delivered in a strict “Master Chief look at hologram” style that wordlessly screams “we already delayed this game twice and I haven’t seen my daughter in three weeks, please let me leave”. It’s so copy-and-pasted painful that I’d genuinely recommend just clearing out the open world and then shelving the game instead - unless you like struggling tooth and skewer for an ending so incomprehensible that all you can intuit is that you’re watching a bad-trip Battlestar Galactica cliffhanger of some kind.
Microsoft and 343 have talked a lot of talk about Halo Infinite as a platform for ten years of Halo games, and I can see what they mean - the meat and potatoes of this package in single and multi-player is hearty, fulfilling stuff. The problem isn’t really with how it looks or moves or feels or plays - it’s all fault of a hastily-wrapped enclosure that constantly deploys what I can only describe as “halo simulcra”, best exemplified by the game randomly letting you outside for ten minutes of the finale to drive a warthog and listen to the Halo theme song. Why? Because this is a Halo game, I guess, and Microsoft are giving you Halo as you most viscerally recall it. Don’t think too hard; like Forza Horizon 5, this is brain-off Game Pass Gaming at its very finest. Just don’t let it trick you into thinking it’s anything else. It will try.
I’m obsessed with aesthetics and environment design. Striking ideas woven into something's presentation gets me giddy. My tendency to undervalue a game's positives when its art direction is lacking—and vice versa—is my most identifiable bias. I often say I’m a visual person and that’s something I take pride in, but it can be a curse.
I loved how Halo Infinite felt when I first played it. There is immense joy in grapple-hooking across its open-world, using my full kit to come out unscathed against a dozen bosses, and the bone shattering explosion when popping an Elite’s head with a sniper rifle. Gunfights, the new utility equipment, and the sound/feel of each weapon is accompanied by exceptional weight. Approaching battles in any number of classic Halo ways, and adapting when things go wrong, is enormous fun.
But Infinite’s campaign didn’t click years ago. It’s obsession with rehashed aesthetics stretched over the franchise’s longest campaign to date underwhelmed me. I thought I might have just been overly cynical, so after the addition of co-op (alongside the latest update finally letting me play without crashing), I was itching to revisit it.
Yet not much has changed. Infinite is painfully uninventive. Its biome is limited to homochromatic grassy plains littered with identical trees and hexagonal pillars. It does a decent job keeping this region fresh with mountain peaks, ravines, and little swamplands, but it feels more like a single MMO zone than the focus of a full game. Some adore the way this world looks and I don't necessarily disagree; it's lovely in a vacuum. If this were a slice of what Infinite had to offer, I'd speak of it fondly, but the over reliance on that concept loses its novelty fast.
On the other hand, its missions are properly dire, with few memorable set pieces alternating between minimalist forerunner structures and dark metal military bases. In particular, the last four or five missions are chock full of reused blue corridors. I have no love for the spiritless presentation of this campaign. It’s as if it was designed by the only person on Earth whose favorite part of Halo is The Library in Combat Evolved. Regardless of their many mechanical flaws, both Halo 4 and 5 are significantly more exciting in scope.
Infinite ends up coming across as a demo; an unfinished experiment revealing what this franchise could look like when thrust into an open-world. It successfully proves that Master Chief running, gunning, flying, driving, and grapple-hooking throughout a massive map is tons of fun, but it doesn't have much meat on its bones.
I've never been narrative-obsessed when it comes to Halo, but it’s fitting that the plot boils down to a convoluted attempt to get a Cortana-esque A.I. quipping with the Chief like the good ol’ days. It’s a “here's what the next big step for Halo looks like” without actually taking steps to push the series forward. It's 343’s attempt to get back on the “right track” through a reboot of sorts.
But even after the launch, there was reason to be excited for its future. “Infinite” as a title wasn't related to its themes, but instead signaled the beginning of a 10-year plan. No more numbered entries or sequels. Infinite would house Halo for a long time. And that was exciting. Its first expansion could have knocked it out of the park.
That reportedly fell apart. Story expansions are not in development, the Slipspace Engine might actually be a total mess, and the campaign was originally planned to be much more. You can watch the Infinite engine demonstration on YouTube to see how few of these ideas made it into the final game: In my review at launch, I wrote “much of what was revealed in the announcement trailer is not present. Where are the large animals? The rain? The oceans? The snowy mountains? The moonlit groves occupied by stags? The raging thunder? The shifting deserts? The coiling trees? The waves of great bulls stampeding? The underwater vehicles exploring ruins? The beaches?”
So yeah, Infinite feels like a demo. And after revisiting, it’s still an unbelievable mess on PC. My girlfriend crashed dozens of times, and I couldn’t play for years because it wouldn’t stay open for more than a few minutes. Half of the time we respawned, we couldn’t swap equipment. During the final mission, we had to do it without dying because checkpoints were broken, and if we failed, it would reset the level. Sometimes we’d lose big chunks of progress out of nowhere when loading our save.
And I'm sad to see Halo once again promise the start of something new yet end unfinished. We were meant to explore more of this Halo ring, see what the Endless would turn into, and probably get new weapons, fight more bosses, and unlock extra equipment. With the potential for more environments and less dire campaign missions, I was looking forward to it.
Infinite is tons of fun when it works, but it's rarely exciting to look at. I can see why people love it; it feels great in your hands, but the other half of what I look for in Halo isn’t here.
I loved how Halo Infinite felt when I first played it. There is immense joy in grapple-hooking across its open-world, using my full kit to come out unscathed against a dozen bosses, and the bone shattering explosion when popping an Elite’s head with a sniper rifle. Gunfights, the new utility equipment, and the sound/feel of each weapon is accompanied by exceptional weight. Approaching battles in any number of classic Halo ways, and adapting when things go wrong, is enormous fun.
But Infinite’s campaign didn’t click years ago. It’s obsession with rehashed aesthetics stretched over the franchise’s longest campaign to date underwhelmed me. I thought I might have just been overly cynical, so after the addition of co-op (alongside the latest update finally letting me play without crashing), I was itching to revisit it.
Yet not much has changed. Infinite is painfully uninventive. Its biome is limited to homochromatic grassy plains littered with identical trees and hexagonal pillars. It does a decent job keeping this region fresh with mountain peaks, ravines, and little swamplands, but it feels more like a single MMO zone than the focus of a full game. Some adore the way this world looks and I don't necessarily disagree; it's lovely in a vacuum. If this were a slice of what Infinite had to offer, I'd speak of it fondly, but the over reliance on that concept loses its novelty fast.
On the other hand, its missions are properly dire, with few memorable set pieces alternating between minimalist forerunner structures and dark metal military bases. In particular, the last four or five missions are chock full of reused blue corridors. I have no love for the spiritless presentation of this campaign. It’s as if it was designed by the only person on Earth whose favorite part of Halo is The Library in Combat Evolved. Regardless of their many mechanical flaws, both Halo 4 and 5 are significantly more exciting in scope.
Infinite ends up coming across as a demo; an unfinished experiment revealing what this franchise could look like when thrust into an open-world. It successfully proves that Master Chief running, gunning, flying, driving, and grapple-hooking throughout a massive map is tons of fun, but it doesn't have much meat on its bones.
I've never been narrative-obsessed when it comes to Halo, but it’s fitting that the plot boils down to a convoluted attempt to get a Cortana-esque A.I. quipping with the Chief like the good ol’ days. It’s a “here's what the next big step for Halo looks like” without actually taking steps to push the series forward. It's 343’s attempt to get back on the “right track” through a reboot of sorts.
But even after the launch, there was reason to be excited for its future. “Infinite” as a title wasn't related to its themes, but instead signaled the beginning of a 10-year plan. No more numbered entries or sequels. Infinite would house Halo for a long time. And that was exciting. Its first expansion could have knocked it out of the park.
That reportedly fell apart. Story expansions are not in development, the Slipspace Engine might actually be a total mess, and the campaign was originally planned to be much more. You can watch the Infinite engine demonstration on YouTube to see how few of these ideas made it into the final game: In my review at launch, I wrote “much of what was revealed in the announcement trailer is not present. Where are the large animals? The rain? The oceans? The snowy mountains? The moonlit groves occupied by stags? The raging thunder? The shifting deserts? The coiling trees? The waves of great bulls stampeding? The underwater vehicles exploring ruins? The beaches?”
So yeah, Infinite feels like a demo. And after revisiting, it’s still an unbelievable mess on PC. My girlfriend crashed dozens of times, and I couldn’t play for years because it wouldn’t stay open for more than a few minutes. Half of the time we respawned, we couldn’t swap equipment. During the final mission, we had to do it without dying because checkpoints were broken, and if we failed, it would reset the level. Sometimes we’d lose big chunks of progress out of nowhere when loading our save.
And I'm sad to see Halo once again promise the start of something new yet end unfinished. We were meant to explore more of this Halo ring, see what the Endless would turn into, and probably get new weapons, fight more bosses, and unlock extra equipment. With the potential for more environments and less dire campaign missions, I was looking forward to it.
Infinite is tons of fun when it works, but it's rarely exciting to look at. I can see why people love it; it feels great in your hands, but the other half of what I look for in Halo isn’t here.
Tired: The hardest part of Infinite's LASO mode is the entire UI (including whatever weapon you're holding) being invisible
Wired: The hardest part of Infinite's LASO mode is the "Boom" skull augmenting all the explosions, so when you're supposed to clear out all the enemies in an outdoor area, you accidentally launch a Brute 15 miles away while they're still alive, Team Rocket style, and The Weapon won't let you push a button to open a door because one of the enemies you were supposed to kill is still alive even though they're now on the other side of the ring
Spire'd: The hardest part of Infinite's LASO mode is that a buddy and I beat it all in co-op, and the only mission that took us over 2 hours ("The Sequence", in which you traverse a large portion of the map activating four spires) did not get marked off in the missions list. Every other mission has the Legendary icon marked in white. But The Sequence is still blue on Legendary! We replayed it without any fast traveling or backing out to the menu, which took 2.5 hours. STILL DIDN'T WORK!
I had a good time embracing the challenge of Infinite's LASO mode, and it really was hard as balls. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it though, playing on Heroic was more enjoyable, and Legendary without all the skulls could potentially be even better. But there were a few too many issues that made our LASO run frustrating at times.
I have completed LASO. I just didn't get the achievement to pop because of a tracking glitch. Booooo.
Wired: The hardest part of Infinite's LASO mode is the "Boom" skull augmenting all the explosions, so when you're supposed to clear out all the enemies in an outdoor area, you accidentally launch a Brute 15 miles away while they're still alive, Team Rocket style, and The Weapon won't let you push a button to open a door because one of the enemies you were supposed to kill is still alive even though they're now on the other side of the ring
Spire'd: The hardest part of Infinite's LASO mode is that a buddy and I beat it all in co-op, and the only mission that took us over 2 hours ("The Sequence", in which you traverse a large portion of the map activating four spires) did not get marked off in the missions list. Every other mission has the Legendary icon marked in white. But The Sequence is still blue on Legendary! We replayed it without any fast traveling or backing out to the menu, which took 2.5 hours. STILL DIDN'T WORK!
I had a good time embracing the challenge of Infinite's LASO mode, and it really was hard as balls. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it though, playing on Heroic was more enjoyable, and Legendary without all the skulls could potentially be even better. But there were a few too many issues that made our LASO run frustrating at times.
I have completed LASO. I just didn't get the achievement to pop because of a tracking glitch. Booooo.
Replaying the campaign about a year later made me realize how barebones the game actually is. The open world concept is not utilized at all really with most of the ring being empty and a single biome. The vehicles don't feel like they fit in either with them getting stuck on every little rock / shrub, which really feels like a missed opportunity being open world and all.
Then the story, man you can just feel the development hell leaking through as almost every cutscene is just exposition being dumped on you through a growling brute. I don't mind the direction of a more character driven story, it did have some nice moments, but you learn just about nothing by the of it end. So many questions are still left in the air seemingly for DLC that will never come. The overall lack of epic set pieces and little to no variety in levels makes it feel so shallow compared to the other games. Halo 5's story was much worse but at least it had its scarab-equivalent level.
I do admit the general gunplay and enemy variants are still really fun to fight, especially in co-op. The selection of weapons are pretty versatile and each of them feel pretty good to use. The visual style and audio design are also really nice, grounding their roots back into the original trilogy. Not the best technically looking game, especially when it comes to the facial animations, but the art design is there. Sadly that's about all Halo: Infinite has going for it.
I won't even go into the multiplayer side of things as that's its own conversation. It's exhausting being a fan of this franchise these days, don't even get me started on Master Cheeks over on Paramount...
Then the story, man you can just feel the development hell leaking through as almost every cutscene is just exposition being dumped on you through a growling brute. I don't mind the direction of a more character driven story, it did have some nice moments, but you learn just about nothing by the of it end. So many questions are still left in the air seemingly for DLC that will never come. The overall lack of epic set pieces and little to no variety in levels makes it feel so shallow compared to the other games. Halo 5's story was much worse but at least it had its scarab-equivalent level.
I do admit the general gunplay and enemy variants are still really fun to fight, especially in co-op. The selection of weapons are pretty versatile and each of them feel pretty good to use. The visual style and audio design are also really nice, grounding their roots back into the original trilogy. Not the best technically looking game, especially when it comes to the facial animations, but the art design is there. Sadly that's about all Halo: Infinite has going for it.
I won't even go into the multiplayer side of things as that's its own conversation. It's exhausting being a fan of this franchise these days, don't even get me started on Master Cheeks over on Paramount...
so many awesome ideas that are completely wasted due to 343 not dedicating to the open-world approach. the game's identity is all over the place, and frankly it feels like 2 unfinished games being slammed together to create an utter clusterfuck of a game. there are a handful of flashes of brilliance that show how cool this game could have been, which is pretty infuriating because there is just so much wasted potential.
Mais uma vez, Master Chief tem que lutar. Mais uma vez, à deriva no espaço: o começo não importa, os detalhes não importam, e portanto a conclusão menos ainda - mais uma vez, sabemos que a roda vai girar até este ponto zero. Halo Infinite é o Tanker de MGS2 reanimado, desprovido de sua camada transgressiva; um invólucro cansado e vazio sendo forçado mais uma vez à reviver glórias já solidificadas, a dançar com os mesmos companheiros em pele nova - Banished, Novo Covenant, lhes dou um desconto pois Escharum tem carisma raro para vilões da série; Endless, Novo Forerunner, entra por um ouvido e sai pelo outro; Weapon, Nova Cortana, marvelificação de uma laranja que já não tem nem bagaço mais. Master Chief TEM que lutar. Marionete dada vida pela criação via comitê - a armadura se move, mas ninguém está lá dentro.
Ainda assim, é ele. Monolítico. Mais capaz do que nunca, sempre fazendo o impossível. Seja uma bastardização por meio de Far Cry ou um épico de sci-fi, encarnar este titã nunca é uma experiência desagradável. Que venha uma luta vazia, um enxame de demônios conjurados por acionistas, eu estarei lá.
Ainda assim, é ele. Monolítico. Mais capaz do que nunca, sempre fazendo o impossível. Seja uma bastardização por meio de Far Cry ou um épico de sci-fi, encarnar este titã nunca é uma experiência desagradável. Que venha uma luta vazia, um enxame de demônios conjurados por acionistas, eu estarei lá.
Halo Infinite is a welcome shake up of the Halo formula, which has become stale in the past couple entries, feeling both fresh and familiar. The open world of Zeta Halo is the game’s biggest innovation. There are still some linear missions, but a good chunk of the campaign consists of open world sections which provide a lot of flexibility with how objectives can be approached. Not to mention Zeta Halo is full of side missions and collectibles. Unfortunately, ‘quality over quantity’ seems to have been the approach taken with these side missions. There are a few standouts with the high value targets which have detailed back stories on their ascents to becoming feared killers and audio logs which provide intriguing lore. However, there is little to no context with most side missions other than kill everything in sight and it can often feel like you’re doing a check box ticking exercise.
Zeta Halo itself is visually impressive, and the game’s fantastic audio design and soundtrack really help immerse the player in the world. A more varied colour pallet and more biomes wouldn’t have gone amiss, but there is enough differentiation to make areas feel distinct from one another. Traversing this open world with the new grapple hook is a joy. Grappling up mountains and across ravines successfully is incredibly satisfying. Moreover, the grapple hook adds a completely new dynamic to combat, creating a more frenetic experience if you choose to grapple onto enemies and get in their faces at the risk of being overwhelmed by his comrades. Other abilities like the boost thrusters and shield barrier are a tonne of fun to use, and I often found myself switching between these to play off their strengths in encounters. What’s more, unlike a lot of games, the upgrades you can unlock for them are meaningful and can add further dimensions to their use.
To match your expanded arsenal, there are a host of new enemies as well as familiar faces which provide plenty of variety and, combined with how the game mixes linear and open world sequences in the main campaign, create a well-paced experience. Not to mention, this is the first Halo game which nails bosses. Most missions have bosses, and these bosses have diverse and engaging designs. They’re nothing groundbreaking, but it feels like Halo has finally caught up with its competition in this regard. It’s just a shame that this game’s story is forgettable, as I didn’t really have any emotional reaction to defeating bosses pivotal to the game’s narrative. What’s more the game relies too heavily on its gunplay. And while this gunplay is sublime, it can grow repetitive. More vehicle focussed missions and environmental puzzle solving would’ve really help mixed things up.
On a more positive note, Infinite’s multiplayer, in its current state, is a treat. There are plenty of game modes on offer, a good balance of community and developer created content and even a wave based objective based mode. There truly is a bit of something for everyone, whether you’re looking for a fast-paced 4v4 experience, a more strategic affair with 12v12 big team battle or wave-based combat against the banished AI.
Halo Infinite is a huge stride in the right direction for the franchise. While there is still plenty of room for improvement, it has a strong single player offering and a top notch multiplayer experience. Here’s hoping 343 can capitalise on the momentum they have created with Infinite in the future with the inevitable sequel(s) fighting the banished and the titular Atriox.
2021 Ranked
Halo Ranked
Ranked Shooter Campaign Recommendations
Ranked Open World Recommendations
Zeta Halo itself is visually impressive, and the game’s fantastic audio design and soundtrack really help immerse the player in the world. A more varied colour pallet and more biomes wouldn’t have gone amiss, but there is enough differentiation to make areas feel distinct from one another. Traversing this open world with the new grapple hook is a joy. Grappling up mountains and across ravines successfully is incredibly satisfying. Moreover, the grapple hook adds a completely new dynamic to combat, creating a more frenetic experience if you choose to grapple onto enemies and get in their faces at the risk of being overwhelmed by his comrades. Other abilities like the boost thrusters and shield barrier are a tonne of fun to use, and I often found myself switching between these to play off their strengths in encounters. What’s more, unlike a lot of games, the upgrades you can unlock for them are meaningful and can add further dimensions to their use.
To match your expanded arsenal, there are a host of new enemies as well as familiar faces which provide plenty of variety and, combined with how the game mixes linear and open world sequences in the main campaign, create a well-paced experience. Not to mention, this is the first Halo game which nails bosses. Most missions have bosses, and these bosses have diverse and engaging designs. They’re nothing groundbreaking, but it feels like Halo has finally caught up with its competition in this regard. It’s just a shame that this game’s story is forgettable, as I didn’t really have any emotional reaction to defeating bosses pivotal to the game’s narrative. What’s more the game relies too heavily on its gunplay. And while this gunplay is sublime, it can grow repetitive. More vehicle focussed missions and environmental puzzle solving would’ve really help mixed things up.
On a more positive note, Infinite’s multiplayer, in its current state, is a treat. There are plenty of game modes on offer, a good balance of community and developer created content and even a wave based objective based mode. There truly is a bit of something for everyone, whether you’re looking for a fast-paced 4v4 experience, a more strategic affair with 12v12 big team battle or wave-based combat against the banished AI.
Halo Infinite is a huge stride in the right direction for the franchise. While there is still plenty of room for improvement, it has a strong single player offering and a top notch multiplayer experience. Here’s hoping 343 can capitalise on the momentum they have created with Infinite in the future with the inevitable sequel(s) fighting the banished and the titular Atriox.
2021 Ranked
Halo Ranked
Ranked Shooter Campaign Recommendations
Ranked Open World Recommendations
They say if you love your job, you'll never work a day in your life.
So believe me when I say, I fucking love playing this game but levelling up the Battle Pass genuinely feels like a soul-crushing 9-5
So believe me when I say, I fucking love playing this game but levelling up the Battle Pass genuinely feels like a soul-crushing 9-5
• waits 5 minutes in a lobby, gets stuck playing Oddball
• goes pistol only when it becomes obvious it's still better than the assault rifle
• gets teabagged after dying for the first time
• gets rocketed from part of the map that looks inaccessible
• spawns into the path of someone's melee
Yep, it's Halo all right.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
UPDATE (11/18):
In all seriousness, though, the more I play Halo Infinite the more I like it and the more obviously polished it seems. I'll get to that in a bit. But first, not that anyone asked for it: an exegesis of my original review.
I think the snark I felt on Day 1 of Halo Infinite's beta week probably arose out of something I'd sort of repressed: that I've always found the Halo series somewhat alienating, somewhat opaque. Maybe it goes back to high school, when my friends with Xboxes couldn't stop raving about Halo. I joined in for a few of their LAN parties, where my latent GoldenEye prowess at least gave me a fighting chance, but I never really "got" it. The shooting felt good for a console game (I was more of an Allied Assault and, later, original Call of Duty guy), but the washed-out aesthetic rubbed me the wrong way and the Gregorian chants made me snicker.
It wasn't until 2008 that I owned a Microsoft console, and even then, neither Halo 2 nor Halo 3 held my interest for very long. (To date, I have only finished one Halo campaign: the first one, and that was in 2020.) The only game in the series I ever really connected with was Halo: Reach, which I played to fill the hours of one of the loneliest years of my life. Reach was the first Halo confident enough to shake up the series' formula, and to lean into its sillier side by featuring its wackiest, dumbest game modes just as prominently as Team Slayer.
Most of my time in Reach was spent playing Grifball, a "sport" in which one player attempts to suicide-bomb the opposing team's goal while everyone else gives chase with giant hammers. Sure, modes like this technically had existed in Halo 3, as user-created custom games -- but in Reach, they had the full weight of developer Bungie's resources behind them. For the first time, it felt like Halo saw through its own pretentiousness to create the kind of multiplayer experience my high-school friends had raved about a decade earlier.
I think it's safe to say that Halo Infinite is the most comfortable Halo since Reach, and I mean that as both compliment and critique. On the one hand, handling Halo's signature arsenal and piloting Ghosts has maybe never felt better; the presentation is slick beyond belief, every audiovisual aesthetic smoothed to the gaming equivalent of glass. The maps available so far aim for different swathes of the color palette, from a desert marketplace to a neon-glowy nightclub district to what resemble paintball arenas evoking the primary-color blockiness of Halo 3.
But on the other hand, what's missing out of the gate is official support for all the game modes that made Reach a more singular experience. And not only can you forget about playing Grifball, Hockey, Headhunter, or Race, among others -- you won't even find an official playlist for free-for-all Slayer. The lack of variety in game modes disappointingly betrays the obvious efforts developer 343 has undertaken to both improve and diversify Infinite's visuals since its disastrous showing at E3 2020.
Although it will probably be patched sooner than later, it's worth considering the multiplayer's abysmal progression system as effectively an extension of 343's overconfidence in launching with, for lack of a better term, "lowest-common-denominator Halo." The game rewards a flat 100 XP per match played, no matter the length, no matter whether you win or lose, no matter whether you're the top player or the worst of the lot. You might get a few hundred more XP on occasion if you manage to, say, rack up five kills with some non-optimal weapon.
What's egregious here isn't that it takes forever to get enough XP to unlock a single cosmetic that looks like it wasn't designed by an AI. What's egregious is that you could play the best game of your life in Halo Infinite, and you'll be rewarded the same as you would for getting absolutely stomped. This is particularly frustrating for players of average skill, like me. The fact is that I don't have the same twitch reflexes as when I played Reach a decade ago (let alone OG Halo a decade before that). Simply put, I'm not as good at competitive shooters as I used to be. Getting rewarded a little extra for performing well is critical to my engagement with games like this, in which I'm almost certain to be dominated by teenagers and by people who have been playing Halo games more consistently for the past twenty years.
On my second night with the game, I wiped out the opposing team in Oddball with five or six successive swings of that weird little skull, a remarkable feat for a Halo player as untalented as myself. It felt amazing, but it felt almost as bad a few minutes later when Infinite rewarded me the same as if I'd spent the entire match AFK. (You can already start to see players using this as a strategy to farm XP, by the way. The number of AFK players I've been saddled with, especially in Ranked, is nothing short of alarming.)
Needless to say, games can have meaningful progression systems that are also monetized; Apex Legends kept me on the hook for over two and a half years. Even the novelty of a shiny new Halo only lasts for so long. What's more, "new Halo" is not a sustainable identity for this (or any future) game in the series. 343 will need to inject more personality into Infinite and fundamentally rethink its progression systems for me to still be playing it in a few weeks' time.
• goes pistol only when it becomes obvious it's still better than the assault rifle
• gets teabagged after dying for the first time
• gets rocketed from part of the map that looks inaccessible
• spawns into the path of someone's melee
Yep, it's Halo all right.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
UPDATE (11/18):
In all seriousness, though, the more I play Halo Infinite the more I like it and the more obviously polished it seems. I'll get to that in a bit. But first, not that anyone asked for it: an exegesis of my original review.
I think the snark I felt on Day 1 of Halo Infinite's beta week probably arose out of something I'd sort of repressed: that I've always found the Halo series somewhat alienating, somewhat opaque. Maybe it goes back to high school, when my friends with Xboxes couldn't stop raving about Halo. I joined in for a few of their LAN parties, where my latent GoldenEye prowess at least gave me a fighting chance, but I never really "got" it. The shooting felt good for a console game (I was more of an Allied Assault and, later, original Call of Duty guy), but the washed-out aesthetic rubbed me the wrong way and the Gregorian chants made me snicker.
It wasn't until 2008 that I owned a Microsoft console, and even then, neither Halo 2 nor Halo 3 held my interest for very long. (To date, I have only finished one Halo campaign: the first one, and that was in 2020.) The only game in the series I ever really connected with was Halo: Reach, which I played to fill the hours of one of the loneliest years of my life. Reach was the first Halo confident enough to shake up the series' formula, and to lean into its sillier side by featuring its wackiest, dumbest game modes just as prominently as Team Slayer.
Most of my time in Reach was spent playing Grifball, a "sport" in which one player attempts to suicide-bomb the opposing team's goal while everyone else gives chase with giant hammers. Sure, modes like this technically had existed in Halo 3, as user-created custom games -- but in Reach, they had the full weight of developer Bungie's resources behind them. For the first time, it felt like Halo saw through its own pretentiousness to create the kind of multiplayer experience my high-school friends had raved about a decade earlier.
I think it's safe to say that Halo Infinite is the most comfortable Halo since Reach, and I mean that as both compliment and critique. On the one hand, handling Halo's signature arsenal and piloting Ghosts has maybe never felt better; the presentation is slick beyond belief, every audiovisual aesthetic smoothed to the gaming equivalent of glass. The maps available so far aim for different swathes of the color palette, from a desert marketplace to a neon-glowy nightclub district to what resemble paintball arenas evoking the primary-color blockiness of Halo 3.
But on the other hand, what's missing out of the gate is official support for all the game modes that made Reach a more singular experience. And not only can you forget about playing Grifball, Hockey, Headhunter, or Race, among others -- you won't even find an official playlist for free-for-all Slayer. The lack of variety in game modes disappointingly betrays the obvious efforts developer 343 has undertaken to both improve and diversify Infinite's visuals since its disastrous showing at E3 2020.
Although it will probably be patched sooner than later, it's worth considering the multiplayer's abysmal progression system as effectively an extension of 343's overconfidence in launching with, for lack of a better term, "lowest-common-denominator Halo." The game rewards a flat 100 XP per match played, no matter the length, no matter whether you win or lose, no matter whether you're the top player or the worst of the lot. You might get a few hundred more XP on occasion if you manage to, say, rack up five kills with some non-optimal weapon.
What's egregious here isn't that it takes forever to get enough XP to unlock a single cosmetic that looks like it wasn't designed by an AI. What's egregious is that you could play the best game of your life in Halo Infinite, and you'll be rewarded the same as you would for getting absolutely stomped. This is particularly frustrating for players of average skill, like me. The fact is that I don't have the same twitch reflexes as when I played Reach a decade ago (let alone OG Halo a decade before that). Simply put, I'm not as good at competitive shooters as I used to be. Getting rewarded a little extra for performing well is critical to my engagement with games like this, in which I'm almost certain to be dominated by teenagers and by people who have been playing Halo games more consistently for the past twenty years.
On my second night with the game, I wiped out the opposing team in Oddball with five or six successive swings of that weird little skull, a remarkable feat for a Halo player as untalented as myself. It felt amazing, but it felt almost as bad a few minutes later when Infinite rewarded me the same as if I'd spent the entire match AFK. (You can already start to see players using this as a strategy to farm XP, by the way. The number of AFK players I've been saddled with, especially in Ranked, is nothing short of alarming.)
Needless to say, games can have meaningful progression systems that are also monetized; Apex Legends kept me on the hook for over two and a half years. Even the novelty of a shiny new Halo only lasts for so long. What's more, "new Halo" is not a sustainable identity for this (or any future) game in the series. 343 will need to inject more personality into Infinite and fundamentally rethink its progression systems for me to still be playing it in a few weeks' time.
so 343 CAN make good games, it just takes them 6 years!
if you're a big fan of the bungie halo games and felt very letdown by 4 and 5, there's a good chance you'll like this game. it feels way more "halo" than those two did despite innovating and changing it up the most
if you're a big fan of the bungie halo games and felt very letdown by 4 and 5, there's a good chance you'll like this game. it feels way more "halo" than those two did despite innovating and changing it up the most
Literally so amazing. Fast paced, systemic open world shooter. Everything I look for in this type of game is here.
Easily the best 343i Halo game. Lets be honest, its not got much competition.
Can't really complain about what's in the game, im more disappointed with what's not in the game currently.
Can't really complain about what's in the game, im more disappointed with what's not in the game currently.
343 can't be trusted, man. Keep the combat design team and throw everyone else in the trash can and then shit in said trash can.
Environment is beautiful. A new skill system and it's very good actually. Especially Grappleshot. Open world is also new in halo but it's not empty there's always something to do. Scripted missions are nice. I played the game at normal difficulty but Bosses in this game are tough. Multiplayer mode is cool as always in halo series.