Halo Infinite- Out December 8

[DjchunKfunK]

Other than the coop and Forge what is it missing?

[Mantis]

Level select? The main issues seem to be around the predatory multiplayer system and lack of playlists as far as I can tell. Check their forums and relevant Reddit pages out if you're interested.

Co-op is the big deal breaker for me. Halo is fundamentally a co-op game to me, has been since the very first one. So I'm holding off on playing the campaign until it gets patched in.

[Raid]

So I tried Halo 4 (resuming from the level I last played at, not that far in), and found it just a hellish experience. Aerial enemies that fly away from you when you shoot them, but you have to kill them first or they buff the ones on the ground. The ones on the ground kill you in one melee hit. You can't see them while you're aiming at the things in the sky because the view angle is so small. The aiming is horrible. The weapons are crap. There's just no semblance of balance in the mission design or arsenal.

I eventually got to an area that was utterly impenetrable due to the number of enemies. It's a massive area with nowhere you could safely hide to recharge your shield because of the amount of Banshees raining fuel rods and Ghosts whizzing around. It even gives you a Banshee to fly yourself if you're quick enough, but you can't use it because every enemy in that arena can aim upwards and hit you with pinpoint accuracy. After 45 minutes trying to make progress I gave up.

I think I remember why I fell out of love with this franchise. Halo 4 is terrible.

[Animalmother]

Yeah I started playing 4 a short while ago and have gotten to a point where I'm out of ammo and surrounded by enemies, it sucks. The first few levels are great but once the new faction shows up it all goes to pot. It's still better than Halo 5 though.

[DjchunKfunK]

Level select? The main issues seem to be around the predatory multiplayer system and lack of playlists as far as I can tell. Check their forums and relevant Reddit pages out if you're interested.

Co-op is the big deal breaker for me. Halo is fundamentally a co-op game to me, has been since the very first one. So I'm holding off on playing the campaign until it gets patched in.

It's an openworld game, having level select in a game structured like that probably isn't easy. As for the multiplayer it's a beta and they are going to be adding more playlists over time, some of which have already been announced. I'm not sure what people are finding predatory about the multiplayer, are the skins too much, yes but that isn't predatory and they are not set at a level above other games.

There will always be those on forums and reddit complaining about stuff but I don't think that is a good indication of the actual state of the product. I can't help feeling that some of it is down to the fact that some people expected it to be a mess after the stories of a troubled development and the delay, turns out it's actually a good game though and those people are not prepared to accept that and are finding anything they can to complain about.

Of the features that are missing coop is obviously the big one in terms of the history of the Halo games and I get that being a turn off for people.

[Animalmother]

Available to download and play right now, on the Xbox at least.

First hour in and I'm very much enjoying it! Still haven't hit the open world bit yet but that should be something to look forward to.

[Raid]

Halo 4 is terrible.

So I had to follow up on this, I refused to believe a Halo game, Microsoft's flagship title, could be as awful as the experience I had the other night. I instead downloaded it on the PC, and it's like a different game. Same difficulty, a little bit of tweaking to my mouse sensitivity, and I got through that same section I found impossible on the console on my third attempt, and on the first two I was being reckless. I figure it's a long time since I played a console shooter, so my lack of muscle memory probably wouldn't have helped, but I feel there's something very, very wrong with the way they've mapped the analogue sticks to the aiming. I never used to have as much trouble lining up shots on previous games. That's a pretty big problem when the only effective weapons you find have pinpoint accuracy (with no auto-aim when you're using the scope) and headshots are vastly more efficient on ammo. It's still not a very good Halo game from what I've seen, but it's at least a decent shooter.

I also tried Halo 5, which sadly is only available on XBox (I think it came out just before Microsoft started shipping all of its first party games on PC too), and that was a better experience on the console than 4 was. I'm probably going to continue with 4, I'll maybe continue on to 5.

Man, if you'd told me 15 years ago that I'd come to a point where I had 3 new Halo games to play at once, I'd have been totally confused.

[DjchunKfunK]

My initial impressions of Halo Infinite are very positive, the combat is a lot of fun probably the best FPS combat I have played in a long while and possibly the best Halo combat ever. The addition of the grappling hook is a real game changer, it gives everything such a good feel. Alongside that the environments are pretty and well designed. Story wise it seems fine so far, I've never really paid much attention to the story in Halo so I couldn't really say how it compares to previous outings.

As for the open world it seems OK, when you take your first Forward Operation Base a few icons pop up on the map showing stuff you can do like rescue some trapped Marines, take out a high valued target and pickup a skill point, alongside the obvious story mission. Aside from the skill point I'm not sure what doing these activities gives you, there is a Valour system that is a currency which allows you to spawn in allies and vehicles at FOBs so maybe I am getting Valour. You do get cosmetics for multiplayer by taking some FOBs.

Overall then my first hour or so has been very enjoyable with the combat being more than enough to see me through and after the uproar over the look last year I've been pretty impressed with the graphics.

[Animalmother]

I retook a couple of FOB's, destroyed a fuel depot, rescued a few squads and killed some high level Elite. Yeah the more you do the better stuff you can call in later. When I rescued the first squad they just followed me around until they inevitably got picked off one by one, they do put up a decent fight but it seemed a bit pointless saving them in the first place. I found some containers that hold cosmetic stuff for the multiplayer but didn't notice what it was.

My initial impression is that this is a very good and well made game. The combat is fun and fluid, the grappling hook should always have been a feature, the graphics are gorgeous and the sound design and music are great. I do wish it was possible to stealth take an outpost but it's not that sort of game. And it's a surprisingly small download at 48Gb on the console, was expecting it to be nearer 60+.

[Rusty]

Just found out this is on GamePass (Do you get notifications of new additions?) so downloaded it this morning. Had a quick play and enjoying it so far. Nothing to compare it to as I last played a Halo game 20 odd years ago (or whenever the first halo to reach PC came out)

[DjchunKfunK]

Just found out this is on GamePass (Do you get notifications of new additions?) so downloaded it this morning. Had a quick play and enjoying it so far. Nothing to compare it to as I last played a Halo game 20 odd years ago (or whenever the first halo to reach PC came out)

There are notifications in the app sometimes.

[Mantis]

Caved in and gave the campaign a spin due to a lack of other titles to play.

Starts very strong with the linear missions but as soon as you hit the open world it becomes a snooze fest. Very dull rinse and repeat icon clearing filler. The story seems to be absolutely all over the place with no resolution from where it left off or any explanation as to what the heck is even happening currently. Like, the humans got wiped out six months ago but there's still a whole map full of them to save?

The moment to moment gameplay is as strong as 343 have ever been. The addition of the grappling hook makes movement feel much more responsive and is great fun in combat. Being able to just chuck power cores at enemies is a nice fun little new mechanic too. The gun sounds and explosions all sound nice and meaty too. Added bonus that pretty much everything seems to be highly explosive.

Overall though I would say it was a mistake to make this an open world game. It compromises the whole experience by just feeling like a game of busywork where it's clear that it's just buying time to make up for the utterly nonsensical story with no real amazing set pieces. Also, to say it's open world, the enemy variety is incredibly lacking. The new vocal lines they all seem to spout none stop are very amusing but you really are just fighting the same 4 enemy types for pretty much all of the game.

I intend to finish it because the general gameplay is very fun, but I won't be hoovering up every icon on the map. I would say it's 343s best Halo to date but it still isn't really in the same league as Halo 3 or Reach.

[DjchunKfunK]

I'd say the combat is the best it's been in any Halo game but I agree about it not needing to be an openworld. I was getting a bit bored yesterday as I was doing quite a bit of the side stuff but once I played a story mission I was feeling it a lot more.

As for the narrative I personally don't think that was ever the strong point of these games, even in the Bungie games it was just a mess of nouns. It's why these games are so good to play in coop because you don't mind that story in games is harder to follow in coop you just want to shoot some Covenant.

[Animalmother]

I've played every game in this series and have no idea what's going on in this story wise. It just drops you in assuming you know what happened with Cortana, I finished Halo 5 about 7 or 8 months ago and I remember none of it!

[DjchunKfunK]

I've played every game in this series and have no idea what's going on in this story wise. It just drops you in assuming you know what happened with Cortana, I finished Halo 5 about 7 or 8 months ago and I remember none of it!

IGN or Gamespot, I can't remember which, did a 22 minute video recapping the story of Halo which I watched and I hardly recognised any of the stuff that happened in the first three games.