Halo Infinite is a very good game *MegaThread* (Gaming)

by HawaiianPig, Tuesday, October 25, 2022, 11:58 (548 days ago) @ Claude Errera

That’s it really. I enjoyed it a lot. Both campaign and multiplayer.

The campaign felt like a return to roots which was clearly the intent. It mainly suffered from lack of biome diversity. Otherwise the encounters were fun, the story didn’t feel pointless, and the characters didn’t feel flat (like a certain Bungie-made game I had strong opinions about). I was really satisfied with the way the Cortana plot-line came to an end. Yes, off-screen time jumps can be annoying, but it provided some mystery and, more importantly, the character arcs hit emotional notes far better than any entry in a decade. Equipment was fun to manage; the D pad combos used to deploy them quickly in battle felt like a small skill to master which was fun. For a while, exploration of the open world was very enjoyable. It delivered on something this teenager playing Halo 1 always wanted. They nailed that sense of “if I can see it, can I go there?” The only drawback is that the open world eventually felt sparse. It clearly had more potential (which you could tell they were aiming for, but didn’t have the time to complete). Anyway. If we’re going to embark on the exercise of comparing this entry with past Bungie entries, I can say hands down that this open world beats wandering around in the empty darkness waiting for Veronica Dare to call you in to actually do something.

Multiplayer is excellent. I mean that. When it works, it reminds me more of Halo 2 or 3 than any of the installments since. Desync, live service stuff, lack of content (that would normally come out of the box) and a clunky UI hold back what is actually a very strong core experience. Movement has some good depth with sliding and skill jumps. The BR feels good. Ranking is a constant sweaty prizefight (that’s good). Social playlists would probably be better off without SBMM. Despite the warts, if games played is a measure of satisfaction, Infinite ranks just after Halo 2 and 3 for me.

This isn’t to say the bad things are not bad. Forge and co-op coming a year late is brutal mismanagement. Live service seasons lasting almost a year is bad for player population. Still, there’s a lot of positive about this game. The kind of stuff I think many were singing praises about in the first few months of release. Those things haven’t really changed.

Anyway, this is all just off-the-cuff rambling with my thumbs while muted on a Teams call. The GNet group chat reminded me this place still exists and this thread was too tempting.

Bottom line: as one of the series’ harshest critics of Reach, ODST, 4 and 5, it turns out I have a lot more positive to say about Infinite than negative.

It’s a lot of fun to play and I’ll probably keep playing it.