Halo Infinite

Story – Halo has a very deep story with lots of lore found in all forms of media from games, to shows, to novels, to comics, trying to keep up to date with everything can be quite difficult. The story here does follow a very simple path from start to finish which is great, but among it is a lot of detail that can be found, and audio logs are scattered everywhere to add to the story. My only real concern comes from what happened after 5, I could be wrong but I feel like I was missing parts of what happened, and that Infinite tried to explain some of it, but I was a little confused at points. It may be that some of the story after 5 was explained in Halo Wars 2 or in something else, but hard for me to say. I felt caught up by the end for the most part, just felt a little confusing at first.

Graphics – Some might say its a little dated but I have absolutely no issues with the look of the game, I played on my PC with settings cranked to as high as possible and I thought it looked gorgeous all the time, I didn’t feel the game was lacking anywhere. Being out in the open world can be breathtaking at times, especially with the day and night cycle doing it’s thing. Maybe not the prettiest game to some, but I loved it.

Gameplay – It feels very much like Halo, but more traditional Halo with some abilities thrown it that you can use throughout the campaign or multiplayer from a grapple hook to a deployable shield to sensor that reveals enemy locations, all of which could be upgraded as you play. You get a wide variety of weapons to play with, and not once did I ever feel I was completely returning to the weapons I was familiar with, in some situations I was using whatever I could get my hands on and trying to make the absolute best of it. 343 smashed this one out of the park, not one time did I feel bored with the shooting.

Campaign – We are moving into an open world game here and for the better I think, it changed the formula a bit which is nice for Halo as it has been going for so long. This may not appeal to everyone but if you are familiar with open world games, expect to see similar traits found in those, such as respawning enemies when returning to areas, a variety of points of interest you can go to, capturing outposts, finding upgrades around the map, its all here and I get sucked into map completion in games like this, and Halo Infinite was no different. I played on Heroic for my first run and felt the game was quite challenging, you cannot just run into enemy locations and expect to come out with your life and for the most part I felt the AI was quite smart. Grunts were typically not the brightest as you’d expect but I found Brutes charging at me, Jackals slowly creeping up on me to box me in, Elites shooting from afar only until I would get close and then try to take me down with a sword, very good stuff here. Overall I felt the campaign was a very positive experience and completing it in around 20-23 hours was not a drag at all.

Multiplayer – I have only played the Multiplayer prior to the full game release so I am not entirely sure if anything else was added but there was Quick Play, Big Team Battle and Ranked modes, all of which you could not not choose your specific mode to play like Team Slayer, Swat, Capture the Flag etc, not sure if this has since changed but I would’ve like that option to choose. I am not huge into multiplayer but I loved my time with it here. it feels completely different to how I felt with Halo 4 and 5, this one felt more like I remember from 3 and Reach. Maps have a good amount of variety and all weapons from the campaign were in here too. The progression system was lacking a bit, you have a levelling system, as you level you gain access to certain rewards but it mostly seems littered with xp boosts, challenge swaps, player banners etc while a few are armour pieces, I know that this will be improved over time but it does feel like this is lacking and that they want you to spend real money for the better stuff. I hope they change this over time. Also making it so you earn xp just from playing games and not just from doing challenges would be nice too. It has some growing to do but still good!

Music – A very good chunk of classics and new here, you will not be disappointed!

Final Rating – There is so much more I could say about this game but 5000 max character limit. I don’t feel its my game of the year but I can assure you its close to the top of the list. 343 has given us a few good Halo games, but this one is definitely a huge improvement and feels familiar yet fresh. Play it!