Halo 5: Guardians feels like a game with an identity crisis; while 343i is putting their own mark on the franchise, instead of rehashing the same thing that Bungie has done with Halo for nine years, but also not getting what made the games resonate with fans so well.
There as some good things about the game. As you are always playing in a squad with three other AI-controlled Spartans by your side, Halo 5: Guardians give the player the ability to issue commands to your team; you can order them to move to a specific area, attack a specific enemy, pick up a certain weapon, heal you, etc. This command feature was something that I wish I had when playing Halo: Reach, a game where you supposed to be one member of a team but the game did very little to make you feel that you were part of a coordinated team.
The Promethean weapons, something that was a frequent complaint of being underwhelming to use, have been tweaked to make them a much more viable option in combat, even on harder difficulty levels.
The game also runs at a 60 frames per second. With the inclusion of the dynamic resolution, the action always remains at a silky smooth frame rate no matter how much action appears on screen.
However, Halo 5: Guardians is riddled with many problems that more or less persist from start to finish. You’re frequently bouncing from one planet to the next with each level, so you don’t get a real feel for the setting that you’re in before whisked away to some place different. The levels themselves, aside from a couple that I quote enjoyed, lack the interesting level design that I had come to expect from the franchise.
A gameplay tweak added to Halo 5: Guardians is the ability to use site-aim on nearly every weapon in the game, something that those who are versed in the Call of Duty series will be familiar with. While I don’t find this a problem in of itself, it’s an odd addition to make for the game that I never felt was needed, which further muddies the series identity. Is 343i trying to modernise the Halo franchise in a way that brings it up along with other modern first person shooters today? Or is 343i trying to entice the Call of Duty crowd over with features that they will be comfortable with.
The presentation seems to be all over the place too. Cutscenes feel that they’re only there to give the player the least amount of plot before awkwardly fading to black. I’m unsure if this is a result of running out of time or budget or a result of the story being reworked or a combination of the three. The game also features talented actors, such as Laura Bailey and Nathan Fillion, but they’re barely present in the story or gameplay that it makes you wonder why 343i went to the effort to hire such talent.
Along with the presentation issues with the story itself; the story does a very poor job of establishing the characters, the setting, and the stakes. There are some interesting themes that are brought up in the story, such as rebuilding in a post galactic war time where resuming your old life might bring back old tensions between independent living and the threat of government overreach, the idea of artificial intelligence being used to govern a colony, even though that AI is slowly breaking down, and the changing face of allies and enemies. All of these themes are never given any time to be fully fleshed out and explored before being binned and something else is brought to the forefront of the story. It’s like the developers couldn’t decide what kind of story they wanted to tell, so they mashed all their ideas into one game, making it come across as diluted as a result.
As a result of the messy presentation and story, it can be hard to really get a grasp on the urgency of the events that are unfolding before you, which makes it difficult to get invested. I never really held the stories in previous Halo games with any esteem but I always had a good idea of the setting I was in, the characters that I was with, and the stakes that were presented before me.
Halo 5: Guardians is not a bad game; I still had fun with the game despite the issues. However, Halo 5: Guardians isn’t a particularly good game, which is a problem for a first-party Microsoft title for the Xbox One. This is a game that I can only recommend to those who have a gap in their library and the game is going cheap in the Microsoft Store. I can only envision myself replaying this game if I were doing a run through the entire series from start to finish. Halo 5: Guardians is a game that doesn’t know what it wants to be; does it want to a Halo game or does it want to be like every other modern day shooter that was coming out in the mid-2010s?
There as some good things about the game. As you are always playing in a squad with three other AI-controlled Spartans by your side, Halo 5: Guardians give the player the ability to issue commands to your team; you can order them to move to a specific area, attack a specific enemy, pick up a certain weapon, heal you, etc. This command feature was something that I wish I had when playing Halo: Reach, a game where you supposed to be one member of a team but the game did very little to make you feel that you were part of a coordinated team.
The Promethean weapons, something that was a frequent complaint of being underwhelming to use, have been tweaked to make them a much more viable option in combat, even on harder difficulty levels.
The game also runs at a 60 frames per second. With the inclusion of the dynamic resolution, the action always remains at a silky smooth frame rate no matter how much action appears on screen.
However, Halo 5: Guardians is riddled with many problems that more or less persist from start to finish. You’re frequently bouncing from one planet to the next with each level, so you don’t get a real feel for the setting that you’re in before whisked away to some place different. The levels themselves, aside from a couple that I quote enjoyed, lack the interesting level design that I had come to expect from the franchise.
A gameplay tweak added to Halo 5: Guardians is the ability to use site-aim on nearly every weapon in the game, something that those who are versed in the Call of Duty series will be familiar with. While I don’t find this a problem in of itself, it’s an odd addition to make for the game that I never felt was needed, which further muddies the series identity. Is 343i trying to modernise the Halo franchise in a way that brings it up along with other modern first person shooters today? Or is 343i trying to entice the Call of Duty crowd over with features that they will be comfortable with.
The presentation seems to be all over the place too. Cutscenes feel that they’re only there to give the player the least amount of plot before awkwardly fading to black. I’m unsure if this is a result of running out of time or budget or a result of the story being reworked or a combination of the three. The game also features talented actors, such as Laura Bailey and Nathan Fillion, but they’re barely present in the story or gameplay that it makes you wonder why 343i went to the effort to hire such talent.
Along with the presentation issues with the story itself; the story does a very poor job of establishing the characters, the setting, and the stakes. There are some interesting themes that are brought up in the story, such as rebuilding in a post galactic war time where resuming your old life might bring back old tensions between independent living and the threat of government overreach, the idea of artificial intelligence being used to govern a colony, even though that AI is slowly breaking down, and the changing face of allies and enemies. All of these themes are never given any time to be fully fleshed out and explored before being binned and something else is brought to the forefront of the story. It’s like the developers couldn’t decide what kind of story they wanted to tell, so they mashed all their ideas into one game, making it come across as diluted as a result.
As a result of the messy presentation and story, it can be hard to really get a grasp on the urgency of the events that are unfolding before you, which makes it difficult to get invested. I never really held the stories in previous Halo games with any esteem but I always had a good idea of the setting I was in, the characters that I was with, and the stakes that were presented before me.
Halo 5: Guardians is not a bad game; I still had fun with the game despite the issues. However, Halo 5: Guardians isn’t a particularly good game, which is a problem for a first-party Microsoft title for the Xbox One. This is a game that I can only recommend to those who have a gap in their library and the game is going cheap in the Microsoft Store. I can only envision myself replaying this game if I were doing a run through the entire series from start to finish. Halo 5: Guardians is a game that doesn’t know what it wants to be; does it want to a Halo game or does it want to be like every other modern day shooter that was coming out in the mid-2010s?