As of writing, I am near 250 hours in Halo Infinite.
Halo Infinite launched as a really promising new start for the Halo franchise, unfortunately it has quickly become almost entirely abandoned by the devs with releases only for new battle passes to sell more customization to players.
I really enjoyed the campaign‘s approach to a semi open world. Exploring with a warthog full of marines was a blast and I loved coming across patrols and outposts to clear. The mountain terrain with tight paths was not very well suited for the scorpion, but the other vehicles felt great in most of the spaces. The story was very interesting for new and old fans, and I would have loved to see where 343 took the next chapter, because it was seemingly meant to be picked up in a future Infinite DLC, unfortunately it seems almost all of the infinite campaign team was laid off or moved away from campaign, so it will become another 343 story thread that just gets dropped.
Multiplayer in infinite is probably the closest to classic Halo I think fans have seen in a long time. 343 did a great job of combining the new movement features from H5 with the classic feel of older Halos to make it broadly liked. The weapon sandbox feels very well tuned and I enjoy using most tools given to players. Maps are great, but 343 has heavily relied on fan-made maps in Forge to supplement most of their playlists, I do not think a non-forged, dev-made map has been released in almost a year and a half.
Forge is probably the best part of infinite. I am not a forger, but the tools that 343 have made available to players are nothing short of incredible. It is a shame that there is still no action sack playlist almost four years in, but you can still play through the customs browser if you would like.
Firefight’s silent death was a big disappointment. 343 promised it would be out soon, released firefight king of the hill, and then silently pushed back and then canceled the release of true firefight. Halo 5’s warzone firefight was at least an interesting twist on the firefight formula, KOTHFF is just spawning forge AI and making them go to a point, wave after wave.
Customization has improved in a lot of ways and gotten worse in others. 343 has slowly broken out of their core set up that came at launch and now allow shoulders, helmets, and visors to be used on any core, which is a great change. Unfortunately, so much content is locked behind paywalls that feel exploitative, which is the modern live service game landscape. The costing system was a cool idea, but it should not be a total replacement for selecting your own colors. It took over two years to have the color white, which is ridiculous. It sounds like 343 put themselves in a significant amount of tech debt in designing the customization system, and breaking out of it has been a technical challenge, which is a shame.
I think Infinite can be summed up with the unofficial motto of 343 Industries, “3 steps forward, 43 steps back.”
Halo Infinite launched as a really promising new start for the Halo franchise, unfortunately it has quickly become almost entirely abandoned by the devs with releases only for new battle passes to sell more customization to players.
I really enjoyed the campaign‘s approach to a semi open world. Exploring with a warthog full of marines was a blast and I loved coming across patrols and outposts to clear. The mountain terrain with tight paths was not very well suited for the scorpion, but the other vehicles felt great in most of the spaces. The story was very interesting for new and old fans, and I would have loved to see where 343 took the next chapter, because it was seemingly meant to be picked up in a future Infinite DLC, unfortunately it seems almost all of the infinite campaign team was laid off or moved away from campaign, so it will become another 343 story thread that just gets dropped.
Multiplayer in infinite is probably the closest to classic Halo I think fans have seen in a long time. 343 did a great job of combining the new movement features from H5 with the classic feel of older Halos to make it broadly liked. The weapon sandbox feels very well tuned and I enjoy using most tools given to players. Maps are great, but 343 has heavily relied on fan-made maps in Forge to supplement most of their playlists, I do not think a non-forged, dev-made map has been released in almost a year and a half.
Forge is probably the best part of infinite. I am not a forger, but the tools that 343 have made available to players are nothing short of incredible. It is a shame that there is still no action sack playlist almost four years in, but you can still play through the customs browser if you would like.
Firefight’s silent death was a big disappointment. 343 promised it would be out soon, released firefight king of the hill, and then silently pushed back and then canceled the release of true firefight. Halo 5’s warzone firefight was at least an interesting twist on the firefight formula, KOTHFF is just spawning forge AI and making them go to a point, wave after wave.
Customization has improved in a lot of ways and gotten worse in others. 343 has slowly broken out of their core set up that came at launch and now allow shoulders, helmets, and visors to be used on any core, which is a great change. Unfortunately, so much content is locked behind paywalls that feel exploitative, which is the modern live service game landscape. The costing system was a cool idea, but it should not be a total replacement for selecting your own colors. It took over two years to have the color white, which is ridiculous. It sounds like 343 put themselves in a significant amount of tech debt in designing the customization system, and breaking out of it has been a technical challenge, which is a shame.
I think Infinite can be summed up with the unofficial motto of 343 Industries, “3 steps forward, 43 steps back.”