Review: Halo Infinite

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. 

Review: Backbone

It’s very easy for games to fall foul of ‘style over substance’. The medium inherently sets developers up for this trap, as so many components make up any given game that leaning too much on one or two aspects sacrifices the substance to enhance the style, and it is a balancing act that all too often fails and leaves the game worse than it could be. 

Backbone, the new game from developers Eggnutt is, unfortunately, a Style over Substance game. It looks great with a cool jazz tinged noir theme that runs throughout, but gives way to a hard pivot into a twist that comes out of the blue with little setup and makes no sense given the world that has been created up to that point. 

You play as Howard Lotor, a private detective in a Dystopian version of Vancouver. He is also a raccoon, as this version of Vancouver is populated by anthropomorphic animals, ruled over by the apes, who are the higher class. The story sets up an interesting world of class and social issues, gangsters, drugs and all the same rubbish stuff that we humans have to deal with - just with talking animals. 

It starts off with Howard getting a fairly normal P.I case, as such post-noir stories do, with a wife wanting to know if her husband is cheating. From there, it becomes a fairly standard point and click adventure, with a heavy emphasis on talking. The dialog is the game's main thrust, and at first it seems that paying attention to what is happening really does help. Unfortunately, that feeling doesn’t last long, and you soon begin to question if you are actually affecting any conversations as while you might be able to be an arse or be nice and understanding, if at first it does seem like you have messed up it will always loop around and get the result you need. 

This is disappointing, because it makes the conversations you have feel kinda pointless, and you can just button mash through without paying attention as the game will always feed you the right thing. Once you find out there are no multiple endings, it makes it all the worse, as that would allow multiple playthroughs and make the conversations feel meaningful. As it stands, when you complete you game you feel like your time was wasted a little. 

That feeling is compounded by the fact that there is very minimal sound in the game. I appreciate that Eggnutt is a small developer, and that voice acting is expensive and beyond many studios, but Backbone is a game that could have really done with it. The minimalist sound design makes the game more than a little boring, and voice acting could have really helped with it. This is a nit pick that isn’t really the developers fault, but the other issues with the dialog just adds to the idea the game wasn’t respecting your time. 

I will say that the graphics look fantastic, with great animation for the characters when moving around and background art that really invokes the dystopian city feel. It is enough to propel you through the story, though again, those other issues do make the game's completion feel wasted.

The story itself, without getting to spoiler heavy, is weird. As I say it starts off with a standard ‘cheating husband’ case, and spirals out into a deep, conspiracy heavy and potentially world changing mission from there. The problem is that the game invoked in my head one story which would have been really cool to see play out, but that twists into a story that makes absolutely no sense, has no real resolution and the motives in the final act for some of the characters seem completely at odds with the overarching narrative on display. The game would have been so much better had it leaned into it’s early politically motivated ideas and had real, grounded characters that made sense in the world, but that twist just sends it off on an completely unneeded tangent that spoils the rest of the game. 

Had this happened, some of the genre splicing the story does would still work, it would just make a hell of a lot more sense and give a much more satisfying conclusion. It's a shame that it doesn’t because it would have made for a very cool detective story, an in-over-his-head tale in the best traditions of the thriller genre, just with a talking racoon as a protagonist. 

If you plan to pick up Backbone, do so on Xbox Game pass. It makes the sting of how it all ends and lack of multiple endings less painful. It will provide a game that looks great, but is ultimately disappointing and makes little sense. Be warned.

Review: Crackdown 3

I remember, back in the day, playing the very first Crackdown. It had its problems, but it was so fun to power up to point where you can leap tall buildings in a single bound, blast generic bad guys in the face and have a good time. It was an original IP for the Xbox 360 and a brilliantly fun, turn off your brain time. 

Fast forward twelve years and we have Crackdown 3, released for Xbox and PC earlier this year. Unfortunately, while the same basic formula applies, and this time features loveable tough man Terry Crews, the magic hasn’t translated because games have evolved over the last few years leaving the third game feeling stuck in the past. 

That’s not to say it doesn’t do what it says on the tin: Crackdown 3 is very much a Crackdown game, but that is kind of the problem. Rather than evolving the formula in any significant way, a few half baked ideas from other games have been added, then the same method of progression has been kept in while a lock on mechanic makes the shooting a little too easy and formulaic. This results in a competent game, but one that isn’t overly exciting and can quickly devolve into boredom. 

In it’s defence, Crackdown 3 fails to fall into the trap a lot of open world games do - over filling the map. There is plenty to do, but not so much that it becomes a slog to get through and the overall game becomes nothing more than a checklist. The developers at Sumo Digital managed to get the balance just right, with enough things to do to keep you playing but not so much that its overwhelming. It’s just a shame that this is the best thing the game does. 

Shooting enemies becomes rote quickly, and despite there being the ability to target individual body parts when getting close to bad guys, you rarely need to do it, plus how this is implemented is strange. I played on PC, so to target an enemy is a click of the right mouse button, fire the left, but when I got closer I could do a quick little movement of the mouse to target the head or arms. It was a weird way to do it because it feels counter intuitive to move the mouse in such a way. More than that though, I didn’t need to do it, I could kill the guy only slightly quicker with headshots than I could just targeting them normally. 

Once I gave up on trying to do headshots, the combat got better but so easy that the only times I died were down to poor positioning on my part. The variety of weapons, I must admit, were pretty cool, nothing spectacular apart from a couple of the bigger rocket launchers, but I always had the right tool for the job. Getting better over time with them helped a lot too, but again this added to the ‘this is a crackdown ass crackdown game’ feel. 

As for the other main part of the gameplay - running around the city, that again does the job but I wouldn’t call it Mario levels of precision, far from it. The jumping is just a little too floaty for the number of platforming puzzles available to you, and while this is compensated for as you level up your agility skill by grabbing glowing agility orbs dotted around the world, the over reliance on platforming challenges in the form of towers you have to climb to get rid of the bad guys propaganda leads to frustration as its all too easy to jump over the platform. 

What is that propaganda replaced with? Terry Crews. The setup for the story is that the agency (the ‘good guys’) sent a team to the city of New Providence as the source of a global power outage had been traced there. The opening cut-scene sees the transport shot down, and thus the only agent left is you (unless playing co-op). There are several agent models to pick from, but let's be honest, play as Terry Crews, he is the biggest draw here. Unfortunately he is also massively underused. 

Cutscenes don’t feature any lines from him, apart from the opening one, and while jumping around the world and getting into fights gives you little quips it's not enough. The biggest thing is that when you complete a tower, the giant red hologram of the games big bad is replaced with a giant blue hologram of Mr Crews, spouting lines about how the bad guys are bad. Which you don’t really hear unless stood directly underneath a tower. 

It’s a shame because he is a funny guy and has a singular brand of angry, so any previous experience of his work makes his use here disappointing at best and outright terrible at worst. The marketing all surrounded him, but don’t be fooled, you can play as any other character and get just as good results, but still, play as Terry Crews cause you might as well. 

The term ‘It’s a shame’ pretty much sums up the whole experience. Keeping the essence of Crackdown is possible while still evolving the game, but that didn’t happen here. Even the more modern aspects are a let down. There is a very lite version of the Nemesis system from the Shadow of Mordor games here, but it's just not what you want from such a thing. Where in that game if you took out a nemesis they are replaced by an upcoming orc, here you are given basically the same screen but when you take one out, that's it, they are done and you move onto the next. Once they kill them all you get to take on the head of the organisation they work for. 

Speaking of that big bad, while I appreciate that I put the game on easy, that final boss battle was one of the easiest battles I have ever played. I honestly had more trouble with the lower level bosses than I did the last one. In part this was because I was at a much higher level, part because I had probably the best explosive weapon in the game, but mainly it really is just that easy and it left me feeling unsatisfied with the end game. 

I did try the Wrecking Zone multiplayer mode, which was actually kinda cool. Jumping all over the map blowing it up as you hunt down the other team was cool, but there was so little skill involved it became boring quick. The same lock on system is here, so it's not a challenge to take someone down, and the environmental destruction, while cool adds little to the experience. So few people were playing I got into three matches with the same set of people then the last one took longer than five minutes to match make so I gave up. 

Again, it’s a shame, a bit more thought and wrecking zone could have been really ace but at present it feels like a tacked on afterthought that has had half the resources thrown at it that it really needs. This is especially bad considering that when the game was first announced a huge deal was made of this mode and how it used the cloud to power its destructive environments. It might still do that, but the cloud isn’t a substitute for good game design and ultimately this is where the mode falls down. 

Overall,  Crackdown 3 is a game of missed potential, a game who's core essence could have been kept while taking on more modern elements that would have given it a fresh feel. It could have used its celebrity protagonist in so many better ways that it feels like the money spent should have been used on improving the game and had it followed through on its promise of cloud powered multiplayer become one of the best games of the year. 

Unfortunately, my reaction by the end of my time with it was a definitive ‘meh’. It is a half decent way to while away a few hours but nothing that will stick with you and a game that is easily outshined by more modern takes on open world games. It's on Xbox Game Pass, so to be fair if you have that then it is worth a play, but don’t be fooled, even then it is outclassed by other games on the same service. It’s a shame.