The story leaves a lot to be desired, and honestly if it were better then maybe I'd be more interested in engaging with the open-world stuff.

As it stands, I found myself initially quite compelled. It's a fantastic FPS, and the grapple-hook ability fundamentally changes how you play Halo in such a significant, series-altering way that I don't see any future Halo title existing (assuming that it's not all just DLC for Infinite going forward) without the grapple ability as part of the Chief's arsenal.

Open-world (in terms of a map w/ objectives) is certainly new to the series, and while I enjoyed it initially it certainly got to the overly stale to-do-list feel that a lot of open world games fall into. It's a shame. And then, the opening two missions and the final four missions are basically all boring corridor shooter missions that don't really do anything new.

I do wonder how much more fun this entire game would feel with a second player. I'll be sure to give it another shot when co-op drops.