First, I’m just going to get this out of the way, I came into Halo 5 with reasonable expectations. Never hyped it up like a lot of people seem to have. Wasn’t even too excited about it. Just had a moderate desire to play. The multiplayer is fun as expected and definitely an improvement over the atrocious Halo 4 multiplayer, which I’m happy for. Campaign however was rather disappointing, this coming from someone who knows a good amount of Halo lore. Didn’t have any issue understanding it and thought it was a well enough concept for the next chapter in the Halo universe. However, I found it poorly executed and underwhelming, suffering from uninteresting characters, poor pacing, and significant scenes turning out underwhelming.
Now, with that said, I played the game extensively on its first week of release, and since then do not feel compelled to play anymore. The campaign I find disappointing and see no reason to replay it again so that’s out of the picture. The multiplayer is fun and all, but even then is disappointing in its own way and lacking in content. Being limited to just Arena and Warzone really doesn’t help. It’s as if 343 tried ridiculously hard to appeal to this esports crowd (that struggles to stay relevant in an industry that cares little for Halo anymore) with Arena while thinking Warzone would be enough to accommodate for the casual crowd when its not. Not to mention the overall lack of variety in maps in both game modes, with Arena only having a handful of maps (some of them just being redesigned versions of the same map) and Warzone having only three maps, with sometimes getting stuck playing the same map for HOURS.
So what’s left besides campaign and multiplayer. Well, there are custom games, but that is just as lacking in content as matchmaking itself in what you can do. And honestly, custom games have been dead since Halo Reach. I remember when I could just go on my recent players list in Halo 3 and join any random player in a custom game but gone are those days. There is also no forge to improve upon that lame custom games experience either. Plus no cooperative PVE mode like Firefight or even Spartan Ops, because 343 thought Warzone would solve that problem as well (it doesn’t). A lot of people like to think these issues don’t matter because “we’ll get it eventually, they’re coming in later” but that’s missing the point. The game should strive to be full of content and gather an audience at release, not make your fan base play the waiting game.
And with that, I’ve just lost all desire to play anymore. Maybe I’m just growing tired of this franchise as many people already have since the golden days ended with Halo 3, but what I know is true is there is a severe lack of content at the moment, and it doesn’t help keep me engaged with this new Halo experience. I look at a game like Fallout 4 (a series I’ve been a huge fan of even before Halo existed) and I think to myself “that’s a game with hours and hours of content”. That’s a game that I’m excited to play and keep entertained by for a long time. I wish I could say the same for this Halo game, or the future of the franchise in general.
Long post, but that’s just the way I feel about Halo 5 and the franchise altogether. No doubt this will get some sort of negative feedback from the overly fanatic ones of this fan base, but I wonder if anyone else feels like same or feels differently.