First off I want to say I’m impressed! Halo 4 and Halo 5 I was not a fan of but I grew up on Bungie’s Halo. This flight is proving to be promising in a world of great shooters. With heavy competition brewing this year in the shooter category between the major triple a titles, Halo is the first out with a taste of combat. This has a feel of a mix of Halo Reach and Halo 3 with the modern touch of 343i. It’s so far the most enjoyable game I have played in months. There are some kinks and some rough edges to it, but it shows more promise than it lacks.
Pros so far:
-Dynamic gameplay with a good focus on team input
-Fairly good weapon balancing
-The new pistol feels like the child of the Halo CE & Halo 2 Pistol (Halo CE had great damage, Halo 2 had great fire rate)
-Weapon aiming (ADS) is also a nice touch especially with guns like the AR so you can send rounds down range at a farther distance more accurately
-Equipment seems well balanced and enjoyable to use
-Good weapon spawning system (I love the A.I. announcement of weapons and equipment spawns)
-The addition of a slide in gameplay makes it more movement focused than traditional point and shoot in the past
-The bots actually give you a real life feel of an enemy, some good, some bad, some average, and some excellent.
-The variation of skill is great amongst the bots
-Armor customization is reminiscent of Halo Reach which is great
-Great graphics running at around 60-80 FPS on High Graphics with a 2070 Super Graphics Card/I9 10900K
-HUD is well made, not view hindering, and good to look at
-Battlepass design is good and the store is simple yet user friendly
-Overall it’s enjoyable and not as buggy as I would imagine for a test flight/beta
Cons/bugs so far:
-AR seems a bit underpowered (no surprise as it’s felt underpowered in every Halo)
-Sliding feels boxy and slightly clunky with an occasional head bobble that’s visible
-Some screen tearing/latency (not often though)
-Voice chat is extremely buggy, communication feels delayed, occasionally can’t hear teammates
-The skewer feels like more of an anti-vehicle weapon than anti-infantry (unlike the rocket launcher which accommodates both)
-For KBM it seems to reset the keybinds upon restart of the game
-Can’t select different armor coatings without backing out of the section and going back in to select a new one
-Finding a match sometimes is buggy, won’t load in and have to re-search for a match
-Stop ADS while being shot is annoying, would rather have flinch from damage
-Grapple hook is a little bulky to use, should be smoother to use
-Buggy upon switching prosthesis, will do left arm for visual instead of right arm when selected
-Rarely melee doesn’t register
-Icons don’t load for battlepass occasionally
Overall this flight is great and 343i is primed to create the best Halo we’ve seen in over a decade. There are some kinks that need to be worked out but that’s what we’re here for. Halo has a chance again to challenge for the throne of the top shooter and I look forward to playing more of this game.
I will update this post with new findings as well as more pros/cons when they are found 