It’s easy to forget just how ubiquitous Halo was a decade ago. If you owned an Xbox 360, there was about a 90% chance you also owned Halo 3. The game’s release was truly an event. Every single friend I know who played games had it. And…I liked it! But, outside of the excellent campaign of Halo Reach (which is still the best single player Halo, and no I will not be taking questions at this time), I never quite adored the series as much as others did.
And then time passed, and Halo just…kind of vanished into the periphery. 343’s installments being so polarizing meant I wasn’t as enthused to try them, and none of my friends were playing the multiplayer either. So, with Infinite being poised as the grand return to the Halo people remember, I was interested but skeptical.
But the second I played the first multiplayer beta, it felt like riding a bike. There is something strangely calming about the Halo combat flowchart — throw a grenade, shoot down the opponent with the assault rifle, switch to pistol if needed, rinse and repeat. It’s reliable, it feels good, and is easy to pick up. Unlike with 4 and 5, 343 didn’t try to fix anything that wasn’t broken, and the stuff they did add, such as the grappling hook, enhances what’s already there instead of feeling like it overshadows the core mechanics.
I feel similarly about the campaign — forgettable story aside, Infinite’s single player is exactly what I imagined an open world Halo to look and feel like. The firefights are tense and engaging enough that I actively seek out outposts to claim, and many of the campaign missions being in constrained indoor complexes balances out the open-ended mountainsides of ̶r̶u̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶W̶a̶s̶h̶i̶n̶g̶t̶o̶n̶ ̶S̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ Zeta Halo. If this came out immediately after Reach I might have been too tired by the formula to get into it, but since its been such a long time since I’ve played one of these games, it’s nice to remember why I enjoyed the series to begin with.
And then time passed, and Halo just…kind of vanished into the periphery. 343’s installments being so polarizing meant I wasn’t as enthused to try them, and none of my friends were playing the multiplayer either. So, with Infinite being poised as the grand return to the Halo people remember, I was interested but skeptical.
But the second I played the first multiplayer beta, it felt like riding a bike. There is something strangely calming about the Halo combat flowchart — throw a grenade, shoot down the opponent with the assault rifle, switch to pistol if needed, rinse and repeat. It’s reliable, it feels good, and is easy to pick up. Unlike with 4 and 5, 343 didn’t try to fix anything that wasn’t broken, and the stuff they did add, such as the grappling hook, enhances what’s already there instead of feeling like it overshadows the core mechanics.
I feel similarly about the campaign — forgettable story aside, Infinite’s single player is exactly what I imagined an open world Halo to look and feel like. The firefights are tense and engaging enough that I actively seek out outposts to claim, and many of the campaign missions being in constrained indoor complexes balances out the open-ended mountainsides of ̶r̶u̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶W̶a̶s̶h̶i̶n̶g̶t̶o̶n̶ ̶S̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ Zeta Halo. If this came out immediately after Reach I might have been too tired by the formula to get into it, but since its been such a long time since I’ve played one of these games, it’s nice to remember why I enjoyed the series to begin with.