Topic: Halo Infinite

Expand

My spoiler-free critical review of Halo Infinite’s campaign

Finished last night it is a really solid and fun sandbox game, but in going open world I feel it’s lost so much.

It’s lost the tempo and cadence of previous halo games, there’s too much lull between the fun fights and action. It’s also lost some of the best scripted set pieces that made Halo. Worst of all there are so few ‘Fu*k yeah!” moments, nothing like Chief taking on a war of the worlds style scarab tank… or three.

That said the moment to moment gameplay in a fight is staggeringly good and should be praised. It’s a great start, but not capitalised on in other areas either.

I didn’t enjoy many of the boss battles. Being locked In a tiny room with a guy who is a bullet sponge with a gravity hammer with no where to go wasn’t fun especially with unfavourable checkpointing leading to death, over and over.

Same with jackal snipers killing you from half a km away when you don’t have a rifle. It’s frustrating.

The last room in particular was absolutely unbalanced: Sniper drones being able to kill you from afar and a guy with a gravity hammer hunting you down. I got there in the end but it took 20 tries and cheese. That’s objectively bad game design.

These difficulty spikes were harsh at times and often it came down to figuring out how to subvert or cheese patterns, again that’s not fun or good design.

I played on Heroic as usual first time on Halo. I’ve always finished Legendary too, but honestly don’t think I will this time. The way the game design and bosses are set up I think it will just be unfair and tedious.

The verticality of the world is great, but there feels like little need to explore. Not least mapmarkers but also lack of diversity and interest. There were no different areas, it all looked the same. If you were to show me a photo it could be virtually anywhere, the ring had little to no personality. So why go open world?

I had maxed out the Spartan cores after about 5-6 hours so why were there another 15 pointless ones to collect? Dropped features? Something for later? It was odd but again gave no incentive.

The grapple is simply brilliant and is the best new thing in Halo Infinite. It’s momentum based control gives so much versatility. Unfortunately, on console at least, it doesn’t have a dedicated button. I often found I was on the scanner or shield and had to take my finger off the stick, or crab like reach across, and have to press the dpad twice to change. In the heat of battle this felt clumsy at best and took me out of the moment constantly leading to many deaths. It felt like trying to type accurately on a phone sceeen in the middle of a train wreck. I didn’t even use the dash for this reason. I don’t know if you can remap the back triggers to these 4 powers on elite controller but in my head that would help immensely.

On the subject of vehicles. Firstly they flip too easily. Second the vertical and rough terrain made it difficult to drive fluidly. Both of these made it often frustrating like I was fighting the controls and vehicle and took me out of the moment and enjoyment.

I feel the story was overly simple. It could be written in the back of a matchbook but it is drip fed out so slowly, which is frustrating that isn’t good narrative. It did have a few interesting threads but these were either A) unresolved or B) resolved unsatisfactorily. I had so many unanswered questions at the end. Yes you can leave plot points unresolved but you have to do so in a satisfying way.

Characters… mixed bag but generally not a fan. Pilot was annoying, though he did have an arc at least as did the Weapon. Wasn’t a huge fan of where they took chief either but that’s mostly spoilers so I’ll skip it. Escharum was that one dimensional guy that writes in ALL CAPS and constantly brags about his legend… yet we never see it. Show don’t tell 343. Terrible B movie villain.

The sound design was excellent guns felt meaty and visceral, the world more alive audibly than it was visually. But sadly I wasn’t a fan of the music, one of my favourite things in Halo. I was looking forward to this as Gareth Coker of Ori fame was on board, as well as two other composers. It’s never bad but it’s never really that memorable either especially the new tracks. The only bit I remember was the ride up to the Final base (I was in a Scorpion) when the main Halo battle theme kicked off and it felt bad ass. Yet even then is was a poor version of the theme with what sounded like a guy on a triangle playing over the top. It reminded me of non-musicians playing on top of a band… at least in made me lol.

Lastly I did have a few technical issues. It crashed twice, once right at the beginning and once near the end, the second time I had a saving bug where instead of saying “checkpoint saved” it said “saving failed” or something similar. This was when I got my second crash and when I booted back up In had lost 4 hours play. As this was at the very end of the story, after two tough back to back boss fights it was very disheartening.

Despite all that I had fun, GAMEPLAY is king and when this is good it’s excellent. Hence I want to go back and play some more. I’ve been critical here but in fact most of these issues are less important than that core gameplay which holds it all up magnificently.

Ultimately it’s a good game but also a missed opportunity. A bit disappointing as it could have been so much more.

8/10