I really enjoyed the first five-ten hours but was pretty disappointed after that. Once you've screwed around in the open world for a few hours, the game really doesn't throw many new ideas at you. The last like 5 missions that are all linear were really boring and too many of the boss fights were bullet sponges.
It felt like if they came up with one or two more grapple-hook level tools, then polished a few more things, didn't repeat the same three environments the whole game, it would have been something really special. As it stands, it really falls short of what I thought it was trying to be. It's hard to finish the game and not feel like they were just trying to reach a minimal viable product.
First outdoor bridge, jump off to the left immediately outside the door onto the snow ledge. Jump down to the canyon floor from there. Ezpz.
Even if you miss that you can also hijack a banshee when you first get to the control room later on too, but that shit was in the strategy guide.
Genuinely one of the most repetitive and boring campaigns I've ever played. The first Halo game literally repeats multiple levels backwards and still makes those levels more interesting and engaging than anything in this game. I don't thing you can possibly get a better lesson in game design than that. Completely agree with your entire post.
Every single main story mission where you go underground in the ring is the exact same thing. Same corridors, same rooms, the only thing that changes is sometime you fight a bunch of normal enemies at the end, sometimes it's a boss. Then the other main missions are just "climb this slightly different tower to fight this other boring big bad thing".
The combat is fun, the mix-up of the game-play is good, little bits like the unique upgraded weapons are cool, filling an armored limousine with marines and handing them lasers is great. But you only get to use any of those things to do any one of 40 copy and pasted bases scattered around the map. At least I can enjoy some of the good parts in the multiplayer, I guess.
It starts very strong, peaks early, and totally fizzles out in the end. There are so so so many great ideas and things that in isolation are fantastic (best hunters for sure, and enemy variety) but none of it quite gels together.
Imo the biggest problem is what smoke and mirrors the "open world" really is. The truth is that this isn't really an open world Halo so much as it is a fairly meh standard Halo campaign with a potentially cool but ultimately incomplete open world aspect sort of grafted onto it and it shows in the fact that so much of the plot happens in instanced sections and how little reason there is to go explore in the hub world.
Story wise I really think I'm done with this series...and that says a lot given just how formative it was to me (I have an entire library shelf full of Halo crap for fucks sake). Halo 5 may have sucked but the one genuinely cool idea that made it worthwhile was the epic Cortana heel turn and reveal of the ai as the dark horse faction of the universe.
Atriox is fine as a villain but goddamn it....the way they just retconned and handled all that shit off screen just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
Also where the fuck is the god-damned Arbiter, or Rtas, or the two elites who were part of your squad in Halo 3?!?
All in all...I checked out the legendary ending online already and I think if I'm ever going to sate my nostalgia I'll just play master chief collection.
Story was whatever, the open world is cool and works with Halo better than I thought it would but there's not a lot to do after a while. Not as good as the older games, but the gameplay improvements like climbing ledges is so stuck in my brain I kept trying to do it when I went back to play Reach. I will say I hate quirky MCU-humor wacky-zany style characters and Weapon crossed that line a couple times for me.
I absolutely loved Halo Infinites campaign. While you're right about the same-y level design and the bad boss fights, i still enjoyed the campaign. Hunters are absolutely perfect, and i would call them the best hunters in halo. The red ones are a bit of a pain in the ass though. My main problem is that the high level brutes and brute bosses are too bullet spongey, and the elite bosses are the exact opposite, having weaker shields and way less health. I liked the grappleshot, and the multiplayer is the most fun I've ever had in a halo. Also, brute cheiftans are scarier than any boss. I did like that they kept all the brute cheiftan armour designs across all the games to keep it fresh.
I'm almost done with it. I'm enjoying it, but after I get all the collectables, I doubt I'll play the campaign again though. I do like that they basically took the second level from CE and turned it into an entire game.
I'm curious how the "Halo Infinite is the platform for Halo for the next 10 years" will work out. It needs work (BTB ATM lmao), but multiplayer is a lot of fun.
I noticed that about level 2 in CE too. Glad to see I'm not crazy.
I usually play through on normal & legendary but idk if it'll be worth replaying this one. Idk that legendary difficulty will work well with the lack of rails, even if it's the post-3 "legendary".
Yeah, I usually do my first playthrough on an easier difficulty to enjoy the story, but Heroic is fairly easy tbh.
LASO is also pretty easy, but also, people are using the new scarab gun.
Meanwhile I keep dying on normal, but I play a pretty cowboy style on the easier difficulties (:cope:)
Haven't played it at all, but the free multiplayer is infinite (no pun intended) fun.
The story, while very much about saving the galaxy, is very much about overcoming grief for all three if our main characters and I think it's kinda nice. I'm interested to see where it goes and hope they don't drop the ball.
The actual missions themselves are very repetitive. The only one that sticks out is the first mission on the ship, and the one leading up to Escharum boss fight.
The real variety is in the open world. The big bases you can destroy are all different enough to justify doing them all. That being said, the lack of biome diversity is extremely noticeable and could have been bumped up a bit. The Graveyard with the AA guns and the swampy parts in the last section were nice but not enough of a change to really engage me. The swamp could have been played up way more especially.
The saving grace is that playing the game is fun. The abilities you have work seamlessly, and traversing the world with boost and grapple makes me wish it was in every Halo. The weapon sandbox is fun to fight against but, unlike multiplayer, I feel like you're genuinely always better off with just a BR and Commando.
The gameplay seems fine (the grappling hook is a better addition than the open world, which I'm still not convinced is the right direction), but narratively HALO has been adrift since HALO 3 concluded the central defining conflict of the series. What's left is trying to find a decent plot to justify what is essentially the same old HALO. The plot, to me, is mostly a failure.
The way Infinite is set up, I think it really needed better character writing, the likes of which frankly I don't think any of the HALO games were great at. Specifically, HALO infinite is a plot (or rather, a needless withholding of plot) that depends on strongly written, charismatic villains.
Instead, we get a bunch of interchangeable space gorillas doing pro-wrestling heel promos, and not even especially good ones. The HALO writers should also declare a formal moratorium on "The Thethethe" factions. The Banished, the Forerunners, the Flood, the Covenant, the Endless, etc. get a better name-scheme.
Whatever else there is to say about the HALO series' writing overall, you can say there was always a clear sense of what was happening, and what was at stake. Maybe it's because I skipped 5 and never played the HALO Wars games, but I honestly had no idea what the fuck was going on for the majority of the game.
I didn't understand who "The Banished" were or why we were fighting them, or why their leader was named after the horse from Neverending Story , or what the fuck had actually gotten us there, or what their actual goals with the ring were (obviously we assume they'll use it against humanity, but why? Give me some details, that's what makes me care!).
Then, at the ass end of the game, "Oh, yeah, here's the plot btw." And I'm like, "oh, that's actually not bad, it would have been nice to have played through the game knowing that. Would have provided useful framing, helped give me motivation for all the onscreen action as a player." But no, having an actual plot is effectively presented as the "twist" of the game. The hook to keep you playing for the entire rest of the game is "why is any of this bullshit happening?"
The gameplay is superb, if it's not the best it's just behind Halo 1. Grapple and thrusters are really strong even before upgrading, throwing coils is a solid plus as well. The ai actually attempts to return to what halo 1 tried where they are believable, fun to fight, and imperfect enough. The sandbox might be the best it's ever been even though it's not saying much. The interior sections are really good throwbacks to Halo 1 and run perfectly. The open world is somewhat empty but still enjoyable because the core gameplay loop is great.
I don't think Halo needs bosses but none of the ones in Infinite are as bad as the bungie ones. Only a few were actually difficult.
I didn't play Halo 5 so I didn't really care that they swept in under the rug. I overall liked the plot where it's relatively simpler than the trilogy, although I think they shouldn't have revealed the Harbinger in the trailers. I will admit that I find it kind of hard to view anything other than the Flood as a major threat in Halo now, it seems like the only thing that could be more dangerous than them would be an actual Precursor. Sometimes it felt like the characters gave exposition dumps and some of the bosses taunted too much. I like how they gave Chief some character in 4 and I liked it even more in Infinite. Definitely looking forward to whatever expansions come.
