[1/20/24]
Okay, I've beaten the campaign now. Only took me 2 years. It's good! And it's 343's best campaign, but that isn't really a high bar.
The open world, unfortunately, is on the lame side. There's a few outposts and it's all the same biome. Ironically enough it feels less expansive and wonderous than the Halo rings in Halo 1 and 2 and the Ark in Halo 3, but I think that's because it's been 20 years. The new weapons are pretty good! The Ravager is the only one that's actually shit. The Disruptor, Heatwave, and the Cindershot rule.
This is honestly my favorite characterization of Chief. It has the human aspects that were purposely subdued in Halo 3 and overly apparent in Halo 4, balanced so he speaks less often like the classics, where each line holds value. It helps that he has a new companion dubbed The Weapon, who 's very naive and does the talking for him. Pretty good banter between the two. Also with him is this civilian who's the only human companion. Naturally he freaks the fuck out at the preospect of being stranded on a ring with Chief forcing him to stay to take him places, but he eventually warms up to it. Also he's Mexican so he's awesome.
Escharum is a pretty lame one-off villain. The Banished as a whole don't have the same impact as the Covenant. That's probably a side effect of being a splinter faction. The Harbinger doesn't get much time to develop, as do the Endless she leads. Yeah, much like the rest of the 343 games, it builds up villains and storylines and leaves them open for the extended universe. Still not a fan of that.
All in all, a fun time! Don't see myself replaying it solo any time soon, though. The multiplayer also has my favorite core gameplay in the series.
---------------------------------
(This is my original review from September 2022, before I beat the campaign. Season 2 was still in progress at the time this review was written. I'm not removing it because I don't want to delude myself into thinking the multiplayer was good the whole time.)
I like the core gameplay and aesthetic... and that's about it. I really want to like more, but 343 Industries was not prepared for a live-service game, let alone one intended to last 10 years, and it shows.
At least the battle pass is well-handled. They last forever, which is very generous when it comes to this monetization method of gaming.
A severe lack of content from the game's launch that only became apparent once the honeymoon phase ended was, and (as of the time of this review) is still the game's biggest issue. I don't know if they're using Twitch drops and events to introduce more cosmetics is an attempt at compensation. These events were also intended to introduce modes that have already been in previous Halo games, SWAT/Tactical Slayer being the most notable. Remember how they prematurely introduced them because of the backlash regarding the lack of modes?
Challenges: the easiest way to maintain player retention. Except for the part where they used to be so tedious or dependent on a mode that was pooled with others under a playlist that it was just better not to complete them. Not like the rewards at the beginning of the game's lifespan were worth it, though. They did fix it, and made the challenges easier to complete, but the aftertaste continues to linger.
Customization is a staple in Halo. The options are there in Infinite, just very severely limited. The core system is an arbitrary restriction that only serves to force armor pieces onto certain cores and to make you buy the same-looking things for different cores in the store (which I'll get to later.) Armor coatings not only remove the ability to freely change the color of your armor, but force them into arrangements that range from recoloring your shoulder pads and smaller items to asymmetrical designs. Some of them look cool, but like I said, they force the colors to the arrangement, restricting the freedom of customizing your Spartan. I typically use very simple palettes with simple colors (I currently run an ODST with the Mark V [B] core), so I personally do not care. But my neutrality with the system does not excuse it from being a poor one.
The store was overpriced. It's still overpriced, in my opinion. The entire shop rotating on a weekly basis is also quite annoying. They used to have a daily rotation in there, what happened?
As much as I like the gameplay, and genuinely believe that it is a better evolution of Halo's gameplay past 3 than Reach, everything else surrounding it, from the customization, to the store, to the events with their abysmal FOMO that live service games are built upon (I'm saying this as a Fortnite player since 2017, so I definitely know), it gets really, really difficult to remain optimistic about the future of this game and the series as a whole. To me, this game is a 8/10. Realistically, it's probably a 6.
Temper your expectations; you'll just be disappointed less.
Okay, I've beaten the campaign now. Only took me 2 years. It's good! And it's 343's best campaign, but that isn't really a high bar.
The open world, unfortunately, is on the lame side. There's a few outposts and it's all the same biome. Ironically enough it feels less expansive and wonderous than the Halo rings in Halo 1 and 2 and the Ark in Halo 3, but I think that's because it's been 20 years. The new weapons are pretty good! The Ravager is the only one that's actually shit. The Disruptor, Heatwave, and the Cindershot rule.
This is honestly my favorite characterization of Chief. It has the human aspects that were purposely subdued in Halo 3 and overly apparent in Halo 4, balanced so he speaks less often like the classics, where each line holds value. It helps that he has a new companion dubbed The Weapon, who 's very naive and does the talking for him. Pretty good banter between the two. Also with him is this civilian who's the only human companion. Naturally he freaks the fuck out at the preospect of being stranded on a ring with Chief forcing him to stay to take him places, but he eventually warms up to it. Also he's Mexican so he's awesome.
Escharum is a pretty lame one-off villain. The Banished as a whole don't have the same impact as the Covenant. That's probably a side effect of being a splinter faction. The Harbinger doesn't get much time to develop, as do the Endless she leads. Yeah, much like the rest of the 343 games, it builds up villains and storylines and leaves them open for the extended universe. Still not a fan of that.
All in all, a fun time! Don't see myself replaying it solo any time soon, though. The multiplayer also has my favorite core gameplay in the series.
---------------------------------
(This is my original review from September 2022, before I beat the campaign. Season 2 was still in progress at the time this review was written. I'm not removing it because I don't want to delude myself into thinking the multiplayer was good the whole time.)
I like the core gameplay and aesthetic... and that's about it. I really want to like more, but 343 Industries was not prepared for a live-service game, let alone one intended to last 10 years, and it shows.
At least the battle pass is well-handled. They last forever, which is very generous when it comes to this monetization method of gaming.
A severe lack of content from the game's launch that only became apparent once the honeymoon phase ended was, and (as of the time of this review) is still the game's biggest issue. I don't know if they're using Twitch drops and events to introduce more cosmetics is an attempt at compensation. These events were also intended to introduce modes that have already been in previous Halo games, SWAT/Tactical Slayer being the most notable. Remember how they prematurely introduced them because of the backlash regarding the lack of modes?
Challenges: the easiest way to maintain player retention. Except for the part where they used to be so tedious or dependent on a mode that was pooled with others under a playlist that it was just better not to complete them. Not like the rewards at the beginning of the game's lifespan were worth it, though. They did fix it, and made the challenges easier to complete, but the aftertaste continues to linger.
Customization is a staple in Halo. The options are there in Infinite, just very severely limited. The core system is an arbitrary restriction that only serves to force armor pieces onto certain cores and to make you buy the same-looking things for different cores in the store (which I'll get to later.) Armor coatings not only remove the ability to freely change the color of your armor, but force them into arrangements that range from recoloring your shoulder pads and smaller items to asymmetrical designs. Some of them look cool, but like I said, they force the colors to the arrangement, restricting the freedom of customizing your Spartan. I typically use very simple palettes with simple colors (I currently run an ODST with the Mark V [B] core), so I personally do not care. But my neutrality with the system does not excuse it from being a poor one.
The store was overpriced. It's still overpriced, in my opinion. The entire shop rotating on a weekly basis is also quite annoying. They used to have a daily rotation in there, what happened?
As much as I like the gameplay, and genuinely believe that it is a better evolution of Halo's gameplay past 3 than Reach, everything else surrounding it, from the customization, to the store, to the events with their abysmal FOMO that live service games are built upon (I'm saying this as a Fortnite player since 2017, so I definitely know), it gets really, really difficult to remain optimistic about the future of this game and the series as a whole. To me, this game is a 8/10. Realistically, it's probably a 6.
Temper your expectations; you'll just be disappointed less.