The crushing weight of continuing a big franchise, be it in TV, film or games sits heavy on the shoulders of the people building it. Time and again we see that weight be too much, and continuations of a popular work simply not being able to live up to the immense hype of such expectations - looking at you The Matrix Revolutions!
Sometimes, however, the end product meets and maybe even exceeds those expectations, and this is the case with 343 Industries and Microsoft Game Studios latest entry into the storied Halo franchise, Halo Infinite. It contains everything you have come to expect from the series, while modernizing and expanding where it needs it to give Halo its most impressive makeover since 343 took over the franchise from Bungie.
The campaign kicks off with new character Echo 216 finding that quintessential action hero Master Chief floating in space. He picks him up, reactivates his armor and Chief is ready to kick ass and chew bubble gum but as is normally the case, he is all out of gum. You are launched into the first and most deceptive mission of the game from there, and everything is immediately familiar to Halo veterans.
The weapons are right, the level looks like a Halo level but with more polish, the enemies are what we have come to expect, with grunts, elites, jackals and brutes all present and correct and even the sounds and quips of those enemies hitting you right in the nostalgic feels. If you take Halo Infinite based solely on this opening level, then you would be forgiven for being a little disappointed. The hype told you to expect an open world, which this definitely is not.
You get tidbits of the changes made, such as ammo stations that refill all your ammo of a given type, such as kinetic or plasma. You get your first taste of the grapple hook, probably the single most important change to the series yet, but it isn’t until you get past this first level and head down into the atmosphere of Zeta Halo itself that you see what Halo has truly become.
Here you find that the Banished, former Covenant soldiers that formed their own army after ‘The Great Schism’ from the original Bungie games, have won and they have taken over the ring and any UNSC/human outposts that were created. Humanity's most badass ship, The Infinity, has been destroyed and it is up to Master Chief, Echo 216 and a new AI companion to stop them.
The temptation with open world games is to fill the map with collectibles and icons and make sure the player always has something to do. Infinite does do this, but it doesn’t fall into the trap something like the later Assassins Creed games do and has so much stuff it just becomes a boring checklist. There is just enough on the map to keep you moving forward and, more importantly, make you feel like you are having an effect in the overall battle for Zeta Halo.
This is down to the Forward Operating Bases, or FOB’s can you liberate from banished control. These will then unlock things to find on the map, but also provide a stock of human NPC’s you can jump in a warthog with and joyride around the map taking out random patrols and liberating other personnel or more FOB’s. It makes the world feel like you are having an effect on it and changing as you play. Does it fundamentally change the game as you progress? No, not really but its a neat addition none the less.
The FOB’s also provide access to various vehicles dropped onto them by Echo 216, quite where he gets these from no one knows but they are useful for getting around. Not quite as useful, however, as the two best additions to a Halo game: the spring button and the grappling hook. Running around the map at a pace that befits the genetically enhanced and armor augmented Master Chief gives the game a speed that no previous Halo has managed, and couple that with the ability to fire your grappling hook to almost any surface and make your way up mountains without having to take the scenic route returns that sense of the ‘combat puzzle’ that made the original Combat Evolved so magical.
When you do get into fights, and you will, often, Halo Infinite excels. It feels exactly how a Halo game should feel when it comes to gun play, and returning players will instantly be at home with its combination of firearms and grenades but also can find ways to integrate the new abilities such as the grappling hook, drop wall, thrusters and threat sensors. Breaking an elite's shields using your gun, watching them roll out of the way of a grenade only to take a hit to the face as you stick them with your grapple and reel yourself in will never get old.
I played on Heroic, and while a lot of encounters were a breeze, some of the bigger bases and bosses were no joke and took more than a few attempts to get through. I felt this was the right level to play at, with the best combination of ease and difficulty spikes, though legendary still exists for those who want even more of a challenge. What I played on was definitely the best for me though.
Without getting spoilery, the story isn’t the best Halo tale ever told, but it works and has one or two twists that were genuinely surprising, though earlier games do far surpass Infinite in this regard. The writing is well done for the most part, but the absolute worst part of the story is Echo 216. Did you find Hudson from Aliens annoying as hell the second the shit hit the fan? Well Echo 216 is worse. To be fair, he does have some legitimate reasons for this, and I have to admit the voice actor had to be very special to be that annoying, but it did get grating after a while. What's weird is that if you order a vehicle through him, he just appears with it and is all professional, there are no fun lines about it and it is a missed opportunity.
The heart of the story is once again about Master Chief’s relationship with Cortana, though Infinite adds a wrinkle to this with new AI The Weapon. Supremely naff name aside, Weapon replaces Cortana as Chief’s companion and despite him being basically a face plate, you can see he struggles with that sometimes. Weapon is also extremely annoying sometimes, but that's more due to a childlike naivety than anything else, though one section of the game did make me laugh out loud a couple of times with her.
The game does introduce a new, never before seen enemy in the Skimmers, and a new potential ‘big bad’ in The Harbinger. The skimmers are basically flying grunts, similar to the bug enemies of earlier games but able to use more advanced weapons. The Harbinger is introduced, she does a couple of things that are only vaguely alluded to, then you have a boss fight and that's that. Her arc sets up the future of the series, but it's not exactly something I am chomping at the bit for.
So the campaign is generally excellent with a few annoying bits, what about multiplayer? The multiplayer is actually separate to the campaign and can be played entirely free. It has all the modern trappings of a free to play game, with a store and a battle pass, plus events that happen on a fairly regular basis. It plays great, the modes are fantastic and even if you have no interest in the campaign, play the multiplayer, it's smooth, fast and feels fantastic.
It’s the simple things that make it such a joy, like the big red ‘X’ that appears when you kill a spartan and the sound effect that accompanies it. It’s just so satisfying, especially if you get that no scope headshot with new weapon, the skewer, probably my favorite weapon that has ever been in any Halo.
Modes like Slayer, Team Slayer, Capture the flag and Arena return among others and each retain that classic Halo feel. The maps are generally well designed, allowing for close range fights and the use of snipers at the same time. My favorite mode is Fiesta, new to Infinite, that has no weapon pickups but each respawn you are given a random set of weapons and abilities. Getting a rocket launcher and the skewer as your spawn weapons makes for some fun times and those no scopes and double kills come thick and fast.
Some of the voice lines that are spouted as you rack up kills, like “You’re a surgeon with that scope” and “There’s nothing more satisfying than a three round burst” just feel good to hear, and add to the fun of any given match.
Unfortunately it's not all great, I experienced quite a lot of frame rate hitches (not helped by the fact I was streaming while playing it) and I had a couple of hard crashes to the desktop, both during the campaign and multiplayer. Sometimes the matchmaking can take an absolute age as well, and you have to be careful because trying to look at the current set of multiplayer challenges while waiting for it can result in the search being stopped for, as far as I can tell, no reason at all.
No amount of messing with the setting fixed the frame either, though just before I finished the campaign an update was applied that seemed to stabilize it quite a lot. The worst thing about multiplayer is the cosmetic system. You can’t create a truly original Spartan, at least so far and that's a shame. You have armor cores that you can then change things like the helmet, chest piece and gloves on, but you get only certain additions that apply to that armor core, not a set that will apply to all.
For example, I had some credits left over after getting the battle pass and so headed into the store and purchased a very cool looking black and turquoise spartan skin. The color scheme looked ace, but once I had purchased it that was that, I couldn’t change any part of the armor, nor could I apply the color scheme to any other armor cores. It was for that core and that core alone. It’s a shame cause it's a real missed opportunity and adherence to something so rigid under the already kinda of ridiculous multiplayer mode just seems off. I do appreciate that making games, and especially 3D models with the level of detail that Infinite’s does is hard, and that is probably why this decision was taken, but seeing something that would look really cool on another armor core only to not be allowed to apply it is just frustrating.
Halo Infinite is a fantastic game, even if you only play the free to play multiplayer. The campaign, while not the best story in the series, is fantastic to play through and modernizes the Halo formula while keeping its classic feel. The Multiplayer is just satisfying to play through and has modes galore, getting hectic in all the right places and just being plain fun. The fact that Halo Infinite is on Game Pass makes it a must have if you subscribe, but even if you don’t want a great shooter, definitely check this out.
