Halo 5, to me, looks like its shaping up to be a truly awesome game. I wouldn’t change many aspects of the game at all and so I probably have missed out many good things in my list below which just work well. I would like to address some issues I have found in this beta by putting them in a list however.
What is good:
- Spartan Abilities bring a much needed twist to the franchise. Gameplay remains to be balanced and quick but feels fresh with the new traversal and movement being your Spartan (however, the Spartan Abilities seem to be less useful when the starting weapons include a BR).- Map control is back and is so well done. I have found (less so with BR starts) that controlling areas of the map play a big part in Halo 5 and that is such a great thing as it makes players have a common goal in matchmaking instead of run and gun for yourself like you get in so many other games.- Map design is phenomenal! Eden, Truth and all the Breakout maps look and play incredibly well. I have found myself looking deeply into parts of the map whilst in games due to how good the art is. Traversal is also really well done, just perfect.
What is bad:
- Lighting in the game seems very hit and miss, sometimes the lighting makes the game seem more balanced, for example having a lot of glare on the energy swords hinders your field of view making the sword feel less OP but other times lighting seems to make the game very frustrating, especially on Orion when the opponent can not be seen when the sun is directly in your eyes.- Quick scoping is way too easy to do and makes precision weapons feel OP once a player knows how manipulate the Smart Scope ability. - Balanced matchmaking seems to have gotten worse since the beginning of the beta for me. I want to win some and lose some with close games, not win 10 out of 10 games like the case has been since the latest game update.- Why can’t I see other players armour in the lobby and why can’t I see my previous games stats when waiting for new players? Being able to see what medals have been earn’t seems to also be missing and was a great feature in previous Halo games. - Seem to get a lot of error messages regarding the servers having problems to find me a game.
Really excited for this games final release, just so worried about the matchmaking working properly when released!