So, finally finished the campaign with my GF. This was our first playthrough. So I won’t talk about Glitches. But here’s my impressions. I split it into purely campaign, then purely co-op.
Campaign:
It was fun, but not worth $60. As it is now, it is worth $40. There is no armor in the armor lockers (why they didn’t just have the dead Spartans as the unlockable armor, I don’t know.) And now I know why people keep talking about campaign DLC. Because just like the multiplayer, it is not finished. The game was pretty, even if the flight was only on the Xbox One S and not my PC. And it was fun to explore, strategize how to attack bases, I had a blast. Its just there isn’t much going on once an area is completed. Unlike BOTW where I can boot it up at any time and just wander, the world just doesn’t feel alive. Except when we did explore, we would find many interesting places or structures that just didn’t have a purpose. Or an easter egg. Maybe it is meant to be mysterious, but the location of some of the sites look intentional, like there was supposed to be something, but they didn’t finish it.
As for the story, I’m happy with it. It closed off the created storyline, but the audiologs didn’t make Atriox’s motivation to go after the endless clear (We own the encyclopedia so we know now, but it would be nice if the audio logs shown that.) I was annoyed that they killed him off only to be faked out at the end, which initially annoyed me, but then I realized, that is definitely something Atriox would do. Take advantage of his faked death to work on his plan unopposed. My GF didn’t understand or like that they tried to redeem Cortana, but I don’t really see it as her trying to redeem herself, more that she didn’t want Chief to be alone after she abandoned him. That could have been clearer.
Zeta Halo looks cool, but we needed more biomes, I can only deal with the pacific north-west but space for so long before the locations all blur together. Also the villains are forgetable. The targets out and about were more interesting than the “hand of Atriox” whom I don’t remember any of their names. But Bipbap, Myriad, The Devourer, reading up on them was fun. I wish we had that with the main bad guys. Side note, why can’t we access the special chopper? We get everything else except that…
I feel like they tried to make the ending exciting so we would get hyped for DLC, but after waiting this long, flighting on my non-preferred platform, the narrative events being lack luster, and everything top to bottom feeling unfinished, I can’t say I’m disappointed because the campaign was fun, and I’ll stand by that the basic fundamentals of Halo Infinite is fun too, but all these small things stack up. It feels like I’m still waiting for the next Halo game rather than having completed one. It feels like I want more, but what little bit more I got isn’t as good as the first part.
Co-op itself:
Okay it is a flight, we’ve had glitches, we wrote them down and will report them. This isn’t what its about. Here are some issues/worries I had going in:
-
Custom Spartans
-
Player range
3.Balance -
Open World/ progress
-
Yeah, they said no custom spartans. It is still a missed opportunity. If they are worried about turning this into a non-master chief story) even though 4 Chiefs undermine the canonicity of a story) they could have had it. The other players are hidden anyway, they don’t have to be in cutscenes, they don’t need to be acknowledged. They could have easily done it and I hope they pursue this like the MCC team did with weapon skins in campaign.
-
We didn’t have any issues with the distance between players. Granted, there was only two of us, but the only time we hit the barrier, it was when we were in wasps skull-hunting, I was on my phone looking at memes, and my GF kept going and the barrier scared us. We spent a good amount of time searching around bases looking for UNSC logs on opposite ends and elevations. There is plenty of room, even in the bigger bases.
-
We played on normal and it was tough at points. Can’t wait to play it on solo heroic like I did in MCC.
-
Never had an issue with progress. The regular checkpoints made sure everything was in sync. We played together so we never had missing logs or cores between us. I think that if you’re scared about progress not working, you’re probably overthinking how it works.
Final thoughts: Campaign is good, but incomplete. Co-op is good, but definitely a flight. At this point I hope the campaign DLC will be free for campaign owners. The multiplayer store is controversial enough, but from how people react to the idea of MTX in MCC, the bare rumor that Forge might cost money, and spending this long with 343 losing alot of good-will with the community, more monetization of any kind will only end badly. Maybe I would have been easier on the campaign if I played at launch, but I can’t help but play it now and feel like it has the same symptoms as multiplayer. I won’t feel comfortable buying campaign DLC unless the current campaign gets a free overhaul. Co-op, replayable missions, earnable armor (not coatings, charms, and etc. ARMOR), MP spartans in co-op, more over-world interactions, future vehicles and weapons accessible in the FOB’s, regular banished/forerunner gear in the FOBs, changing certain areas into different biomes (The Road using the snow theme in a warm-weather pine forest was annoying) If all of these things are thrown into the main campaign, then I would gladly buy campaign DLC. And these features would have to be present in the campaign DLC’s too. (Biomes, okay we can have DLC centered around a single biome, we got pine, DLC 1 can be desert, 2 can be sand, etc). 343 wants this game to last, then it is a long road ahead to keep us on, those of us who are still here at least.