Halo Infinite is a brilliant weird balance of incredible and disappointing all at the same time. For a game Six years in the making, it certainly doesn't feel as such. The core of the game is extremely well done and polished, yet there are a bunch of things that made me think "Really?" or "That's it?"
First off, the greatness. Gunplay is tight as hell, polished, and each weapon feels greatly unique. I found myself constantly experimenting and switching different weapons in this game more than Halo 5, at least. Weapons all feel like they have a different purpose. The grappling hook is an amazing addition that brings great fun, and the open world provides more action than ever before in a Halo game.
The graphics are pretty decent on Xbox One X, but nothing far better than Halo 5. On Quality Mode, Zeta Halo can look absolute stunning however if you're a Performance Mode player it doesn't really look like anything to write home about.
The biggest fault of the game was going "Soft Reboot", and skipping a game's worth of story where Cortana and The Banished leader Atriox have a confrontation in the gap between Halo 5 and Infinite. It's baffling that they barely even show these events, only short teasers of what happened through fragmented data spread across Zeta Halo. It screams as though they're saving it for a prequel DLC.
I don't know how but they managed to make Chief incredibly humanized and powerfully strong, stoic and more book-like. His one liners return in fashion in this game with brilliant writing that strikes his character to the core. Steve Downes brings subtle inflections to Chief's voice during certain moments, really elevating them. The Weapon, voiced by Cortana's Jen Taylor, is not even close to a Cortana re-do, writing wise which is great. The Weapon stands out as her own character, with a level of new birth innocence we never saw with the original Cortana. Even though Jen Taylor uses the same Cortana voice, it's easy to distinguish The Weapon and Cortana through their vastly different speech patterns.
This game does fail on some levels, sadly, which is why I cannot give it five stars. The driving mechanics have been absolutely destroyed in comparison to previous games, and the choice of adding an open world with a selectable vehicle is questionable considering the amount of rocks and trees in the way of freely driving on a planet atmosphere. It's insane to think that in 2021, my Scorpion tank can get caught on a rock instead of just pushing it away. (There is sadly not a single element of environmental destruction).
Speaking of the Open World, while it's fun to play in at times it often does incredibly boring. It feels as though it was the last thing added to the game, and not with much effort. For example, the only wildlife in the game giving the world some vibrance is a few low poly birds and squirrel like animals running across the screen. No Space rhino's from the trailer, the only thing living on Zeta is marines and Banished. As mentioned before, the fact that not a single element is destructible is a questionable decision. I mean, even in San Andreas you could destroy fences and what not.
The side activities all feel the same, except for the Outputs which can have varying objectives. Hacking a FOB gets boring as all you have to do is clear enemies from the pad and hold X. There is also barely any variety in the open world landscape. No snow, no weather, even Combat Evolved had much more varying level designs.
Speaking of level design, the game also suffers in that department, I believe, as a symptom from the open world design. Now, don't get me wrong, the Art Direction is fantastic. It's the perfect blending of the modern 343 designs and the original Bungie artwork, bringing me back to feeling like a kid playing Combat Evolved again. However, it starts to get incredibly repetitive in the game.
Each Main Mission level almost feels like a copy/paste of each other. There's absolutely no variety in the main missions compared to the previous games. Each Infinite story mission consists of entering a forerunner structure (which is beautiful), digging deep into it and killing enemies and placing The Weapon on various consoles throughout the building. Oh, I also can't forget the annoying mechanic of searching for and placing power seeds just so they had a reason to add that mode in Multiplayer. Even though some may have a little bit of story and enemy variety, each main mission structure remains the same as it's core which is disappointing to say the least.
Overall, Halo Infinite is NOT a bad game. It is definitely a return to form for Halo, and something that feels like it was made to belong in the Bungie trilogy. However, after six years of development you'd think the game would have a lot more beef and vision to it, but the troubled production becomes very apparent as a lot of things feel rushed. Polished, but rushed.
First off, the greatness. Gunplay is tight as hell, polished, and each weapon feels greatly unique. I found myself constantly experimenting and switching different weapons in this game more than Halo 5, at least. Weapons all feel like they have a different purpose. The grappling hook is an amazing addition that brings great fun, and the open world provides more action than ever before in a Halo game.
The graphics are pretty decent on Xbox One X, but nothing far better than Halo 5. On Quality Mode, Zeta Halo can look absolute stunning however if you're a Performance Mode player it doesn't really look like anything to write home about.
The biggest fault of the game was going "Soft Reboot", and skipping a game's worth of story where Cortana and The Banished leader Atriox have a confrontation in the gap between Halo 5 and Infinite. It's baffling that they barely even show these events, only short teasers of what happened through fragmented data spread across Zeta Halo. It screams as though they're saving it for a prequel DLC.
I don't know how but they managed to make Chief incredibly humanized and powerfully strong, stoic and more book-like. His one liners return in fashion in this game with brilliant writing that strikes his character to the core. Steve Downes brings subtle inflections to Chief's voice during certain moments, really elevating them. The Weapon, voiced by Cortana's Jen Taylor, is not even close to a Cortana re-do, writing wise which is great. The Weapon stands out as her own character, with a level of new birth innocence we never saw with the original Cortana. Even though Jen Taylor uses the same Cortana voice, it's easy to distinguish The Weapon and Cortana through their vastly different speech patterns.
This game does fail on some levels, sadly, which is why I cannot give it five stars. The driving mechanics have been absolutely destroyed in comparison to previous games, and the choice of adding an open world with a selectable vehicle is questionable considering the amount of rocks and trees in the way of freely driving on a planet atmosphere. It's insane to think that in 2021, my Scorpion tank can get caught on a rock instead of just pushing it away. (There is sadly not a single element of environmental destruction).
Speaking of the Open World, while it's fun to play in at times it often does incredibly boring. It feels as though it was the last thing added to the game, and not with much effort. For example, the only wildlife in the game giving the world some vibrance is a few low poly birds and squirrel like animals running across the screen. No Space rhino's from the trailer, the only thing living on Zeta is marines and Banished. As mentioned before, the fact that not a single element is destructible is a questionable decision. I mean, even in San Andreas you could destroy fences and what not.
The side activities all feel the same, except for the Outputs which can have varying objectives. Hacking a FOB gets boring as all you have to do is clear enemies from the pad and hold X. There is also barely any variety in the open world landscape. No snow, no weather, even Combat Evolved had much more varying level designs.
Speaking of level design, the game also suffers in that department, I believe, as a symptom from the open world design. Now, don't get me wrong, the Art Direction is fantastic. It's the perfect blending of the modern 343 designs and the original Bungie artwork, bringing me back to feeling like a kid playing Combat Evolved again. However, it starts to get incredibly repetitive in the game.
Each Main Mission level almost feels like a copy/paste of each other. There's absolutely no variety in the main missions compared to the previous games. Each Infinite story mission consists of entering a forerunner structure (which is beautiful), digging deep into it and killing enemies and placing The Weapon on various consoles throughout the building. Oh, I also can't forget the annoying mechanic of searching for and placing power seeds just so they had a reason to add that mode in Multiplayer. Even though some may have a little bit of story and enemy variety, each main mission structure remains the same as it's core which is disappointing to say the least.
Overall, Halo Infinite is NOT a bad game. It is definitely a return to form for Halo, and something that feels like it was made to belong in the Bungie trilogy. However, after six years of development you'd think the game would have a lot more beef and vision to it, but the troubled production becomes very apparent as a lot of things feel rushed. Polished, but rushed.