Halo Infinite

Starship troopers without the fun.

On a side note, I'm gonna need a primer on what the hell is going on. I haven't played Halo Wars 2, but to be honest, I don't even remember what happened in Halo 5.

Who are the Banished? Who's this Atriox guy? What happened to those Covenant who followed the bad guys in 4 and 5, whose name I can't be bothered to recall? And how much time is supposed to have passed between 5 and Infinite?

I keep thinking the game will eventally answer my questions, but that's starting to look unlikely. And then again, I don't really care.

I didn't play either of the Wars games so fair game if they're from those, but I just assumed these were new villains created for this game.

That's an odd choice. I was thinking I'd just forgotten what had happened.

It does fill in the gaps in the final missions, you haven’t missed anything.

I love it so far. Have moved into the open world, cleared two FOBs, rescued a few squads and cleared out some sort of fuel station.

It does have the slightest hint of Far Cry but I quite like some Far Cry games...but it's a lot more streamlined.

More importantly the environment feels like the ring on the first Halo. It really does feel like a spiritual successor to me.

Unlocked the first Warthog variant. Really chunky and fun to drive.

Met any of the different ones yet? The basic grunt ones do hurt you if you are close to them but aren't any trouble at range.

Looks like they scraped a lot of stuff in favour of the Halo Wars 2 bad guys.

I expected a several days earlier message to appear after the intro

First thing I did. On legendary, in the beginning your shield lasts fuck all against even basic enemies. Once upgraded, it's now a lot more like the old games. Possibly even a tad easier: Jackal snipers give you some time to react and you can see their laser sights, and Elites are just a little bit dumber than usual, enough for them to not feel like much of a threat anymore. Enemies in general are much less likely to try and chase you as well (the few that do, are most annoying). I'm not done yet, but I must be getting close enough to the end, and so far I'd say Reach was harder. Not counting the bosses of course.

I've completed all the FOBs and outposts, and they didn't really get any harder with time. That's a bit of a problem with the game's open world imo: there isn't a real feel of progression, you are always doing the same things.

It's also missing the big setpieces from the older games. It all feels like very basic Halo. That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind (I hated some of the gimmicky vehicle sections from Reach and 4). But again, it does make the open world feel even more like padding.

They totally nailed the gunplay this time, though. Best in the series.

Gotta say, was a bit disappointed when the villain in the beginning there introduced himself as whatever his name was, and not Craig.

I'm not really sure what's changed, but every time I try and launch Halo Infinite on PC - from the start menu shortcut, via the Xbox app, or even from within the Store - the game just launches the Gaming Services screen within the Microsoft Store app.

WTF.

No rose tint, Elites have always been more fun to fight.

Finished. A bit less than 18 hours, 58% done. Yes, I've played a lot these past four days.

I'm never doing this again. Missions generally let you coast along just fine, to the point that you think you've got it, then you get to a boss and die a million times. The final wave of the final boss in particular made me rage harder than any Halo game before, probably harder than the goddamn triple Warden fight. Good thing for randomly triggered checkpoints just at the right time to restore my faith in humanity and give me some reprieve.

Overall, Legendary difficult was actually pretty okay, forcing you to play smart but still giving you some room to feel badass, which is more than I can say about 5 or Reach (with the caveat that you need to those shield upgrades as soon as possible). But I hated the bossed. Really hated them. They are not smartly designed or fair, they are just shit. I don't think this game could be finished without at least the grapple cooldown upgrade, because so many of the bosses can only be survived if you use the grapple momentum to jump far ahead... as often as humanly possible.

Overall rating: fun but disappointing.

Not gonna bother with the rest of the open world, but since I've finished all the FOBs and outposts, I guess I'll go back in later to kill the last few high value targets.