Good solid game play. This Halo feels like a mix from 3 and 5, taking the best parts from both. Only got to play a little of the PvP, but every match was a ton of fun. 343 did a really good job with this one. If anyone at 343 is reading this, t****hank you all for working so hard on it.
PC PERFORMANCE was pretty bad. I have a 3080, 3700x, 16 GB 3600 and I was struggling to push above 70 frames on 1080p on High.
From what I understand is this preview was a fairly early build of the game and has not been optimized yet, but if it is this bad on my PC I can only imagine how rough it would be with older hardware.
The game cannot launch in this state or a lot of the player base on PC will leave.
GAME PLAY was really good. I was hooked for a while just shredding the Bots and the limited PvP I got to try out was a ton of fun.
- Sprint is perfect. Please don’t change it. The community will probably be split on this, but I thought the Clamber and Slide was really fun as well. - Radar is will take some getting used to, but I really enjoyed the little bit of experience with it in PvP. - Grappling Hook was phenomenal. One of the best mechanics in Halo in a long time. - Outlines vs the traditional Red vs Blue were really neat and there should be everything done to keep a game accessible to everyone, so I applaud everyone at 343 for this to help out the people that are color blind. For the purists though, there should be an option to have a player set it to be the classic of each team one solid color if they desire that only they would see on their end. - Bring back player to player collisions. Phasing through teammates does not feel like Halo. - An Explosion should propel you through the air a little bit (ex. grenade jumps).
GUN BALANCE is really good. I love the fact that every weapon has killing potential. If it launched in it’s current state, I would be happy with it. Only changes that I would suggest are possibly:
- Buffing the Pulse Carbine - Maybe just a little bit faster fire rate, no reason to ever use this gun as it is. - Buffing the Ravager - Definitely needs more damage. Again, no reason to ever use this gun as is. - Small Nerf to the Commando - At range it was really easy to out damage anything thrown at you, maybe a little more damage falloff or recoil. Encroaches too much on the BR in long range killing potential, as well as being really reliable at close range. - Gravity Hammer could have a little more AOE damage instead of only doing damage right in front of you to make it different than the sword.
MAPS in the preview were good to great. They all had a pretty cool setting and they were pretty different from one another. Feedback on this is based on a pretty limited number of PvP matches I got in though.
- Bazaar is definitely the highlight of the three in the preview. Love the setting and all the alternate routes throughout the map. Can tell this will definitely be a crowd favorite in Infinite. A ton of potential for Objective based game modes. - Live Fire flowed really well. Enjoyed the 3 lanes and how the outsides went under the middle giving different routes as well as the option to drop down on people if you are on top. This one also seems like it will be a ton of fun playing Objective based game modes on this, especially CTF. - Recharge was my least favorite of the three, but I still enjoyed it. Setting was pretty cool, but it seemed way slower paced than the other two maps since you really have to stick to the corridors on the sides of the map, or you would be instantly shredded crossing that bridge. Gravity Hammer and Grappling hook was a ton of fun.BOTS were inconsistent. Sometimes they would instantly shred you with a pistol, other times they seemed to only take off a third of your shields before you’d be able to finish them. Seemed like at the beginning of the match, they could keep up vs players, but since they followed a basic pattern throughout the maps they were easy to get Steaktakulars on without really trying. The one thing the bots really excelled at was getting grenades right at your feet like 90% of the time.
CUSTOMIZATION is something that can use some work. You can tell a ton of work went into everything, but Armor Coatings instead of making your own color scheme is a terrible change from past Halos. A good alternative would be you unlock the coatings (they all have a different pattern), but you can manually change the colors yourself. For example, in the preview for each you can see which colors are present in the little wheel diagram while you equip them. Just let us select the colors to fill in each of those sections and that way everyone will be happy with customization, and they would be really excited to unlock different coatings that way. All the Armor I’ve seen so far has looked phenomenal. The team did a really good job with that and I can already tell you there will be full lobbies rocking that samurai armor set a few months after release.
BATTLE PASS needs to be reworked a little bit. You should be able to progress through it with Kills/Medals on a Per Match Basis. One of the things that hooks myself and others is a solid unlock progression. Only being able to do challenges to advance it is frustrating since once you finish your Dailies and Weeklies you will be capped off from XP until the reset. Also, the Challenges were pretty bad in the preview. There should be a variety of Challenges like “Stick a player with a Spike Grenade” or “10 kills with the Battle Rifle”. Challenges for only playing a certain amount of a game type are uninspired and do not encourage you to complete them.
I’m sure there will be a ton of people weighing in and saying what should and shouldn’t be changed, so to everyone at 343, thank you again for listening to our feedback.
I and all the other fans want Halo to succeed and go back to being the top dog FPS. So far it is really looking real good though. I was optimistic for Infinite from the recent trailers, but after this I am really excited to put a bunch of hours into it when it launches.