Halo Infinite

I had a lot of fun with this one. Not much replayability with a pretty shallow open world. The open world also forces most of the campaign to be indoors... just walking down hallway after hallway - super dull stuff.

The grappling hook is amazing. It just needs a better campaign. I imagine semi-open maps like from CE could have worked quite well.

Still a huge improvement over 4 and 5... the combat is actually fun!

343 Industries has had a less than stellar track record with the franchise so far, but with Infinite, for the first time in their 12-year tenure, they have made something that dares to step outside of the 22 year old Halo formula laid out by Bungie in Halo CE and in doing so, have created their best game to date and the best in the franchise since 2011. Small praise of course, but Infinite is, for the most part, very good. Of course, the Bungie Formula is still evident, that ‘Golden Triangle’ which laid out the 30 seconds of fun that apparently only the Halo franchise has ever done, if you were to read the number of words written on this aspect of the games design online.

343 Industries began life as the developer of Halo with the underwhelming but still ‘Kinda alright’ Halo 4. This was still a monumental step down from both Halo 3 and Halo Reach though, both in Single Player and Multiplayer. A game that wanted to ‘branch out’ and get more people playing, those people being Call of Duty players, it just didn’t really feel like a Halo title a lot of the time. It also didn’t really look like a Halo title either, 343 having redesigned the look and sound of basically every single thing in the game. Understandably the developer wanted to put their own touch on the game, but the redesign belies a gigantic Call of Duty influence, taking the bright colours and sounds of Halo and turning everything darker, louder, and more… COD-esque. Halo 5: Guardians continued with this new look, and also just had an absolute mess of story… It didn’t bode well for Infinite then, with many fans having already given up on 343.

343 have obviously done a lot of soul searching before realising that their enemy and weapon designs are ultimately, just not what fans want from a Halo game. So it is with great aplomb that Infinite returns to the Bungie designs from erm… I think a mix of Halo 3 and Halo Reach. How fantastic! Teleporting the design back in time to a mix of 2007 and 2010! Modern AAA gaming is alive and well my friends! But I digress, it is actually a welcome return and it goes and incredibly long way to making the game actually look and sound like a Halo game for the for the first time in over a decade. Further to this, the entire game is actually just a remake of the levels Halo and The Silent Cartographer from Halo: Combat Evolved. That is literally all of the campaign in a nutshell.

It’s resulted in the game being open world, which was initially met with a groan from my self because I just do not like those kind of games. Far Cry and Assassins Creed, which are the same game with a different gameplay loop attached to killing people, are so fucking boring to me. Just copy paste awfulness. Infinite is actually very similar to these games in its design; Access a base in an area, kill everything and now you can fast travel there as your safe haven in the area, and the world map fills with objectives in the local area. The only thing saving Infinite here is that the open world is thankfully quite small and the gameplay loop of killing things is the Halo gameplay loop, so its actually fun. Having said that, rescuing marines (Kill everything in a location), killing ‘High Value Targets’ (Kill everything in a location), take a new Forward Operating Base (Kill everything in a location) and destroy a production plant (You guessed it, only this time you have to click three buttons and blow up a silo as well) does get a bit samey, but there isn’t that many of these things to do and, like I said, the Halo gameplay loop is the best its been in over a decade.

Story wise, the game has a lot of work to do to fix the mess of the previous game. It actually kind of succeeds here, or rather it just says the story of the last game is over, Masterchief has been floating in space for 6 months and the bad guys from Halo Wars 2 need to be stopped before they do some bad guy stuff and kill everyone in the universe. Cortana is dead now I think, kind of. Masterchief is very sad about this. Honestly, the one saving grace of the 343 games (And also their weakness given that the series is about shooting aliens in the face) is the clear and obvious PTSD that the Chief is suffering from. He’s saved the universe, but everyone he knows is dead and he couldn’t save Cortana.

So, of we go onto Zeta Halo, fighting The Banished (Read: The Covenant). Que the glorious return of Halo as a franchise. The combat is stellar, taking the Bungie Formula and making it feel modern. Chief now has 4 new toys to play with as well, and these all feel similar in design to the equipment from Halo 3; We have a dash ability, where Chief erm, dashed 5 foot in any direction at the tap of a button. The wall ability where chief deploys a semi bullet proof wall. The ‘Reveal cloaked enemies in a small area’ beacon and of course, the grappling hook. All the abilities are useful, and on higher difficulties, you’ll need them all, but it’s the grappling hook that is the star of the show. Its pure Just Cause, working exactly the same and it fits the Halo formula incredibly well, especially with the new open world.

You can grab weapons and random exploding cubes that a strewn everywhere to yourself, you can also go climbing with it, to the point of swinging like Spider-Man (Especially useful on Legendary in order to completely avoid a fucking horrendous gondola Section later in the game) and you can pull yourself to enemies to melee them super hard, though on harder settings you will die doing this if you aren’t incredibly careful. All in all, the look, sound and feel of Infinite is absolutely spot on, a Halo fans wet dream. The weapons all feel incredible and all fit so well in the sandbox and… Halo is back bitches!

Or is it?

Well, yes and no. The biggest problem with Infinite, the thing every other problem with the game stems from, is that even now, its clearly unfinished. Firstly, there is only one biome. The open world is based on the level Halo from the first game, and it looks like a 2023 version of that level. Great, but that was one level, this is an entire game. Its incredibly samey and just a huge let down for the series given the variety earlier games offered. This forestry, Halo-y environment is broken up by copy and pasted Forerunner facilities that all look exactly the same as each other. Then of course, all of the side missions are identical to each other as well.

The main missions rarely feel like much more than an extension of the open world. An achievement popped for me for clearing all Banished Strongholds whilst I was playing, and I honestly had no idea I was even doing them, I thought I was just doing campaign missions. There is also a complete and utter lack of ‘events’ in the game. The open world is crying out for a Scarab battle but there isn’t one. There is no use once animations or AI routines like in earlier games that make it feel alive. Enemies are just ‘there’ and that is that. Yeah, the Elite General is at the final door of the mission, but he’s not doing anything special. It just feels unfinished, its so barebones it hurts the game.

I must also mention the boss fights, which I am sure are fun on lower difficulties, but they are nothing but a chore on Legendary. And I hear you, “Just play on normal”. But the game is so easy, even on the hardest setting, until you reach a boss battle, which come thick and fast in the campaign, and the difficulty just ramps to absolutely insane levels. These bullet sponge, one shot kills you battles are just not fun. Another example of the game not being finished as surely no one tested these and thought “Yeah, that is it, this is what we need”.

It’s a shame because the gameplay loop itself is absolutely superb. This is the best feeling Halo game ever, and easily the best looking. Infinite feels like it needed another year or two in development and I have no idea why Microsoft didn’t afford Bungie that time. Its strange as there is a lot of things in the open world that seem to promise something more; areas with environmental story telling that just shout that the game wasn’t given enough time to be properly fleshed out. The mechanics are perfect, but the world is bare and undercooked. It is still a fun game, a very, very good game in fact and the most fun I’ve had in a Halo game since at least Reach and maybe even Halo 3. If only a company worth billions like Microsoft could have afforded to let 343 flesh it all out…

Then of course, the live service multiplayer. I didn’t get this game in 2021, but I know how undercooked and unfinished this aspect of the game was. Today, in 2023, its up there with Halo 3 in terms of content. More so in fact, given Firefight mode now exists and you can also add AI to Forge created maps, opening up community-built campaigns for the future. The game is superb online. The enhanced movement mechanics and increase in overall speed make it the game you remember from 2007 rather than the actual game from 2007. The maps, the modes, the sheer wealth of options are all amazing and best of all, its completely free. I sobering thing to say given the awfulness of the FTP model, but here it is entirely limited to cosmetics.

And I know, customisation is a big part of the series and now having it all behind a paywall is a disgrace, but if it’s the cost for 343 to continually update the game, bring new modes and maps and seasons, then so be it. It’s the most fun I’ve had online with Halo since 2007 and that really is saying a lot.

Overall, the game is great, I just wish it felt more finished in the campaign. I doubt anything new will be added to the single player given it took a year just to get co-op there and 343 have recently announced that they are only working on the multiplayer and are hiring developers for a new project. A shame, but Infinite is easily 343’s best game and maybe better than Reach. It took a long time, and its far from perfect, but it seems Halo finally going in the right direction.

I feel this is a return to form for halo given how the previous entries moved away from its fps roots in favour of team-based strategies and mmos. Admittedly its story picks up where those games left off which means some of it will be alienating to those who didn't check those out, but I doubt anyone has cared about the lore of the franchise once bungie game up its rights to 343 studios.

This is the first in the franchise to be an open world sandbox, admittedly this does take away from the core element of mowing down enemies and even feels like it fell into the same trap as the original game by having so much wide empty space with very little to explore. What costs this a perfect score from me is how frustrating it is to find all if the collectibles as I had to look up where some of them were as they don't appear on the map. This is made worse by them being inconspicuous in the environment which makes you wonder what the point even was for including them. I also don't care much for the multiplayer, admittedly I was never that big into this franchise’s multiplayer so it's not too much of a deal breaker for me, but even then, it's multiplayer is lacklustre due to limited events and long wait times to enter matches. It's also forgivable as the multiplayer aspect is free with the campaign being considered as it's dlc on certain platforms.

As usual, the positive elements far outweigh the negatives, this might be the best-looking game in the franchise, which is emphasised on its art direction, if only the main world wasn't so barren, and it took more notes from odst instead of the original game in that regard. The "levels" (the parts not included on the main map) are also really good and are a true return to form with their more linear structure as well as the enemies you face. I also like the comedic callback to guilty spark and what the story does with it in this game (which I won't spoil here.) All of the best elements from the bungie era of the franchise return from the vast enemies to the weapons (including the coveted on foot scarab gun) with a few new features to not make it a complete rehash of older titles.

It’s not the best in the franchise, however it's clear that there was passion put into the story campaign even if its multilayer campaign is a bit lacking. I say check it out I'd you're a fan of the earlier games but have been put off by the more recent entries.

pathetic

Halo Infinite is the first game from this franchise i have played since the original, a few years ago. The first thing that struck me was just how little the franchise as evolved all this time. The story is still a bit too goofy for my taste, the combat is very polished against above average enemy AI, and finally it seems that its game developers love to put the player in repetitive extremely linear alien dungeons.

This game was supposed to be a big departure by going open world, unfortunatly that only seems true for the first half of the campaign, and it still feels half baked at that. Besides the main missions, there are optional objectives to tackle in the open world, like saving marine squads, killing elite enemies and capturing outposts. Its all designed to the dot by Ubisoft open world rules, which means that these activities soon start to blend with each other and playing the side content makes the game very dull too soon.

An interesting idea that feels underdeveloped is how pursuing the side objectives gives you points, allowing acess to better marines, weapons and vehicles on the outposts. The best parts of the game for me were spawning a vehicle and loading it up with marines, as we head towards optional activities. The mayhem caused by the bigger fights tends to be underwhelming however, as the marines are really imcompetent and die too quickly. I understand why they choose this for balance reasons, but this is one of the cases where i wouldnt mind the NPCs being stronger, as the resulting chaos is that much interesting to see.

Mechanically the game is as solid as you expect a Halo game to be. It has extremely satisfying hit and death markers,. lots of variety of enjoyable weaponry, enemies whose AI can pose a challenge, and just enough innovation in the grapple hook and ability to grab and throw explosive containers. The grapple hook really adds a lot of layers of movement to the gameplay, making it resemble more something like an arena shooter, but unfortunatly the regenerating shield and lack of health pickups/killing blows means that hiding behind cover is still incentivized.

First half of the campaign attempts to do some mission on the open world, and these unvariably result in "destroy these 3 bases", or "activate these 3 levers". Very unimaginative. The latter half opts to these extremely linear and very repetitive alien dungeons, which is similar in design to the first entry of the series, but feel very restrictive and homogenized. I couldnt really distinguish any of the latter missions from each other because of this.

Cant comment too much on the story as i started skiping it about half way through, when the annoying side characters and terrible villain interjections became too much for me to tolerate.

Its still above average when it comes to AAA; but that says more about how terrible certain game design ideas have been homogenized, rather than the merits of this game. Besides the highly polished FPS feel, i cant find many other reasons to play this one, but that game feel is enough if you are out of fresh FPS's to play.

The grand return of Halo after all this time and the flagship franchise for Xbox, this game had a lot of pressure to succeed and I think it does for the most part. While I'm definitely not in the boat of a masterpiece and one of the best shooter experiences that I've seen thrown in the past few days, I did enjoy myself in the Halo Infinite campaign. The game has a great engine and the shooting and movement feel just right, something that I was slightly disappointed with Halo 3 when I played earlier this year... and I think that's the most important aspect in a shooter, for the shooting part to feel good and it does that well.

All the classic enemies and weapons are back, so if you've played a few of the titles you will feel right at home recognizing and rediscovering them all over again. It does feel like they were aiming to please the core fans with that and didn't stray away too far from the formula. However the game does introduce a "Ubisoft-like" open world aspect that I don't think fully works here, at least in my experience it felt mostly irrelevant to the game. This is something that can mostly be ignored as none of it really affects the main storyline, you can just move on straight ahead with the main missions and ignore most side areas. There's some rewards to them (most importantly spartan cores to upgrade your shield and abilities) but after a few upgrades none of it feels very essential. Like the game rarely prompts you to go do those side things and your scanner will always point you to the main mission. I feel that they kinda tried to cram this aspect that is seen in modern gaming into the old core Halo systems, and the two don't really blend so well... or at least the execution is not great for it.

That's a lot of talk about the open world stuff, but all in all it's mostly irrelevant... the main campaign itself it most of the time in closed areas and similar to older Halo titles. Objectives to complete and move forward and some great shooting and dodging in the process. This is where I had my fun, and even playing the game on normal mode some of the boss fights were quite challenging with one shot kills. The game is generous with the checkpoints, so most of them can be overcome with trial and error tactics and mastering the right movements. When focused on that, this is what the game does best and I think could be said about the franchise in general. The fluff around it is mostly just fluff. The story leaves a little to be desired, the humor of "Weapon" completely missed me and wasn't very funny... otherwise it's your typical science-fiction war story and I guess is fine if you are into the Halo lore. While most of the big AAA games feature great compelling narrative, I can't really say this is one of the better ones in that aspect.

So while not a game without its flaws, if you just focus on the main stuff of progressing the main missions and doing some cool shooting stuff there is a good experience to be had with this game. Note that this is only about the main campaign content and the multiplayer element is most probably the best aspect of the game, but I'm just way too mediocre to compete with all these crazy FPS players to even stand a chance. A good game? Yes. Game of the year? Hell no. Especially when I think of now Microsoft franchises Doom and Wolfenstein, this game feels a little behind the times and cannot match the excitements of those. But at least it's good and enjoyed my time, so worth giving a shot if you have game pass.