Almost all the way through mission three now and honestly I’m already getting kind of sick of it. It’s just feels like another generic AAA open world game. Big forest map, bad, repetitive base assaults and squad save missions copy-pasted around each area of the map, grindy valor point system that’s basically just a battle pass, “unique bosses” that are just bullet spongier versions of regular enemies… I’ve seen it all before. It’s Destiny free-roam mission level stuff.
The sandbox is just… meh. On Heroic they spam enough enemies that you’re really only locked to a small set of the weapons, everything else just feeling weak or useless. Just taking potshots with precision weapons or abusing the grapple shot and melee weapons. Any unique weapon/ability combos may work momentarily and provide cool moments here or there but will generally just get you killed in any sort of serious combat. They way you have to zip around and cycle weapons and abilities so much makes it feel more like Doom than Halo sometimes tbh.
Main missions were made to fit into the open world so they’ve felt smaller and less tailored towards one specific experience.
And the big selling point, the new open world, as stated above, is lame. Standard side missions, just one giant forest map, it’s like constantly playing level one from CE. Driving around the forest saving marines (You do this at least 3 times per FOB) before hitting the Forerunner ruins. Regular linear Halo levels felt more interesting and explorable. They took a bite sized portion out of the Halo lore and made it in incredible detail, each allowing for different aspects of the sandbox to shine. In Infinite I open my map, put a waypoint on my 30th spartan core to go “find it” and look at the same ammo/weapon crate and wreckage assets surrounding it as the last 30.
What they advertised as making Halo “more” and more open/sandboxy just makes it feel watered down and less interesting to me. Oh well. Can’t wait for them to repackage all of the same side missions and mechanics into another $60 campaign down the line since Infinite is the Halo platform now.
The world itself and the battling in it feel a bit stale if you look at it the wrong way. Halo Infinite isn’t meant to compare to an open world or even be one, per se. Think of it as a normal, linear, Halo game. But instead of there being walls around the linear level, its open air, and there is a pingpong table on the side, perfectly optional. For a 10 year game that is going to have expansions an open world makes sense. Although I do agree the world is a bit bland in that it could’ve used more biomes. Loved the story writing though.
I agree it feels like a chore. I’m on legendary and it’s mostly stupid easy as well except for the massive difficulty spike of boss fights. Which so far are only hard because of the confined spaces you have to fight in.
The last decade has seen many open world action games and most of them have devolved to uninteresting cookie cutter objectives repeated over and over. Halo infinite more or less is exactly that but somehow even worse? I mean halo brings nothing new to the table in an already horribly worn out genre. AI seems to be a big step back from bungies games. Even on legendary they don’t dodge much, they don’t flank even when the enemies say they will. They don’t throw many grenades. Jackal snipers are the weakest compared to any prior games, etc.
Im only 5 missions in but the repeated environments, and lack of staple halo set pieces makes the game a slog.
Story is also not good but I could write a whole other long comment about that as well. I’d say it’s better than H5 but shockingly worse than halo 4. Doesn’t even come close to any bungie campaign.
The whole post halo 3 timeline of story and lore in both games and EU is just so bad. (Except for Halo wars 2). It’s practically as bad as the Star Wars sequel trilogy and it’s certainly just as disjointed.
Jackal snipers actually give me some of the most trouble still, only because sometimes they’ll three burst shot you out of nowhere. One of the only things I’ve encountered that can consistently melt your shields if you don’t pay attention to them. Still not as strong as previous games though, I agree.
Honestly I’ve just maxed out the Grapple immediately, and Grapple EMP Slam everything, while carrying the Variant Mangler and Variant Sword (mostly for speed and jump boost). Game is pretty stale and the open world is severely lacking a desire to explore, in fact, it’s almost entirely barren. Game feels like if Destiny was still in very early development. Also feels like Grapple Spam Simulator. At least the story cutscenes are amusing, even if it just feels like Destiny 2 Red War all over again. It’s meh. Hoping for expansions and waiting 6 months for Co-op. Already almost finished with Campaign and don’t feel like getting 100% completion either.
The open world didn’t feel like it added anything, and it was more of an annoyance trying to bring vehicles through so much mountainous terrain. Skyrim horsing warthogs and tanks was a slog. Once I got the wasp I almost exclusively used that instead. I also wasn’t too keen on the direction the story went although that might just be because how badly I wanted a certain faction to appear.
The sheer quality of the graphics kept me on board though. The team that’s behind that really deserve a raise, and a round of applause.
Vehicles are so worthless that it was faster to just spam Grapple everywhere, since vehicles flip and get stuck constantly, unable to drive off the main road at all. The second I saw I could unlock a Wasp, I did every side quest first to get the valor for it immediately. Like you said, I just fly everywhere now, which makes the open world feel practically valueless.
I haven’t played it yet but I already know when a company creates any content and it’s not replayable like an open would? Most that are saying how fun it is to them will be over it within a week or 2 asking themselves, now what do I do.
Incentive is a big part of any pve, and when it’s not there most will stop playing this game especially with the weak at best f2p MP.
That’s exactly how I’m thinking about it. Halo, but more open and sandboxy. Except weapon/enemy balance means there’s not much of a weapon sandbox, I’ve had little vehicle play outside of what I spawn in as well.
And old Halo’s gave you the pingpong table as well. Plenty of easter eggs, hidden weapons, extra items, weird insane marines, etc to find off the beaten path in each level. They give you the ping pong table, and then the next level it’s a foosball table, and then an arcade. Infinite takes the pingpong table, switches it out for the cheapest, crappiest one possible, and then pukes it all over the game. The missions suffer as well. No environmental variety whatsoever, shorter, and they had to all be crammed into one map so they feel smaller as well. I’d trade in this “open air” for well crafted, meaningful levels and environments any day.
Yeah the trick is they take like a year to aim and with the lame telegraph mechanics they put into multiplayer and campaign I often find them before they even fire. I have been killed by them a few times but they aren’t really a major threat that reviewers made them out to be.
Especially with how generous the headshot hitbox is for them.
You’re crazy for using the mangler, even the special one felt weak to me. I’m rocking the arcane sentinel beam and special disruptor pistol. Either of them take care of most enemies in seconds, which has been more fun to me than slogging through all the enemies with regular weapons.
Well the Mangler is a bladed weapon that does increased melee damage, so I can just spam Grapple EMP Slam, snap melee, Grapple EMP Slam, snap melee, repeat, to stunlock kill almost anything besides bosses pretty quickly. The Variant Mangler fires 3 bullets at once, which is great for headshots, if you land them. When Co-op comes, I might just go straight for Thruster Cloaking instead, when I do Legendary with friends. It’ll at least guarantee I survive until they can respawn. Honestly a shame Assassinations were removed.
The open world felt worthless to me as soon as I saw the contents of it. Generic missions, barren map, the “secrets” you “find” are all pasted on your map other than skulls and are either multiplayer cosmetics or spartan cores (in other words basic game progression) that they spread around as “secrets” to pad game time and so they could say there’s more than a few actual Easter eggs to find, rather than cleverly hidden fun secrets like in previous games.
Yeah, anytime I actually see them (most of the time) they’re gone in seconds. It’s just those few time they actually get to sneak in mid combat and burst you from behind that they’re any trouble.
I’ve seen a handful of questionable Easter Eggs, like a T-posing black doll on a cliff, and some classic Brute helmets surrounded by bananas, with of course the many Craig Easter Eggs. No achievements or anything for finding them though. Not even an acknowledgement. The Armor Lockers don’t unlock anything if you play offline, and who knows when that gets fixed. Plus, Armor Lockers are only in the first area, which is incredibly stingy on top of only being coatings and junk anyway. To put the nail in the coffin, if you miss anything in special mission areas, like a skull for example, you have to start a whole new campaign to get it, because you can’t go backwards after it autosaves. Whole new Legendary campaign, how fun. Thanks 343.
Even on legendary I primarily use the mangler. Also that BR that shoots faster. Low level to mid tier enemies get absolutely shredded by the mangler. 2-3 shots for basic brutes. 1 for any grunts or jackals.
It’s useful against slightly stronger enemies too. Oh and there’s basically unlimited ammo since it’s so common.
Yeah the open world feels pretty pointless so far…it’s basically just a ton of empty space between either missions or samey, repetitive “rescue or destroy the thing” optional side content. The travel time between them feels like wasted time since it’s usually just grappling or driving in a single direction for several minutes just to reach the actual gameplay. I personally would have much rather had regular, replayable missions at various locales. Most of the locations in the game look and feel overly similar to one another. A very average experience thus far, not bad, but it definitely could be a much tighter experience.