I mostly played CE back in the day, I did play Halo 2, but never really had a chance to play 3. In more recent times, I’ve played all three, plus Reach and ODST on the PC MCC.
In the interim I basically didn’t touch FPS games for over 10 years as I mostly played WoW, RPG’s, and other MMO’s
I do play on M&K on PC, and aside from Halo I’ve recently played Titanfall 2, Destiny 2, and DOOM Eternal in terms of FPS games. My level of FPS experience is basically about 18 months, but unlike when I played CE in 2001 I have a full time job and other responsibilities.
I have zero interest in Halo 4 and 5 due to differences in lore, artstyle, and feel.
That said, I was very surprised by Halo Infinite this past weekend. I started off feeling like it was good, but not particularly standout. However, over the weekend rather than losing interest as I expected, I started to gain interest. There’s something very Destiny in the feel of movement in combat to me, which I do not think is a bad thing. Again, specifically talking about movement, it feels like a beautiful hybrid of the two games, which extra things thrown in like Titanfall 2 Grapple Hooks Lite, and Thrusters (which I sadly did not get to test, but am aware that it’s at least in the game data.)
I’ve tried to get into MCC’s multiplayer, but between the 15 year or more period of absence from the game, the insane level of controller aim assist, playing high-mobility shooters recently, and general lack of skill, I found it aggravating to get into. Any mode that starts with the CE Magnum, Battle Rifle, or DMR has been absolutely cancerous from my perspective as a CE player, and not even because I get killed, even on matches where I do very well, it’s just long range shooting at people with none of the flavor or mixups that I had playing Multiplayer back in the day. Combine that with the feeling that I don’t feel like I can do anything to fight a player that has merely better aim than I do and it’s just frustrating.
I begin with all of that to explain how much I am actually enjoying Infinite. I don’t feel like every battle I am is decided by who shot who first, I don’t feel like there’s nothing I can do against someone with better aim. I’ve seen comments complaining that the AR is too powerful, but I haven’t felt this at all aside from being randomly headshot by someone far away once my shields were down fighting someone else. The only real gun balancing issues I’ve personally noticed in this flight is that hitting people with attacks that are supposed to be homing seemed like an effort in futility. Even though things like the grapple and Repulsor are limited equipment, it felt great to have tools to fight against aim.
The new guns are odd to me, but also feel pretty good to use, barring potential balancing-related number adjustments.
Vehicles are something that I find is very important to Halo. To me they are part of what connects the multiplayer to the campaign historically. There were lots of vehicles throughout the first three games’ campaigns, and that flowed seamlessly into legendary maps such as Blood Gulch. In Infinite I find that there may be a little too much EMP, especially if what I’ve seen is true and the Plasma Pistol is bugged and that it should be EMP’ing. In BTB this weekend, it often felt like if one person on the enemy team kept their attention on making sure to have EMP at the ready, the vehicles were basically worthless. It got to the point that I could go out of my way to grab disruption grenades just to completely shut down all attempts at the enemy team using vehicles. I don’t really want to get rid of EMP entirely, as finding routes to try and avoid people is fun, but there’s some feeling there that makes it feel more like luck than skill on whether I lose the vehicle or not, maybe it’s just a little too common, at least on Fragmentation, to run into a disruption grenade or shock rifle.
I personally honestly didn’t really notice the outlines that much, however, I’ve had a few people ask me what I thought about them, and a friend mention that it takes the immersion out of it for them, and aesthetic is what made them love Halo to begin with. I took some time to think about it, and I personally think that the outlines are fine, but maybe a little too obvious, and they should probably fade with distance. There were a few times where it became incredibly easy for me to see someone trying to sneak down a side path, and I’m not good at seeing those kinds of things. If the brightness was reduced, outlines a bit thinner, faded out with distance, it would probably be much better for more people. I personally don’t think the outlines are immersion breaking, as FoF systems would make sense for a Spartan to have, but I do agree with my friend that there’s a certain aesthetic that’s important to Halo that’s broken by it.
I’m extremely pleased with the art style so far. It’s relieving to have the Forerunners back, the real ones, in terms of the architecture that’s on display here.
Character customization in the flight confused me, I’m forced to assume that there were only male spartans in this flight, as the body slider was incredibly vague, and the options were basically ‘slim, average, thick’ all with narrow waist/hip ratios, and there was no voice option. I hope immensely that if there are/if there’s going to be female spartans that they’re based on Reach’s design, as it fits the lore, and I can identify with them better when it’s obvious that they’re female, as opposed to the vague ‘maybe’ that I got from the current options.
I’m not going to really talk about the aim assist as it seems that it was very inconsistent for people this flight. I didn’t notice a difference, other people had completely bugged red-reticle, and another friend said that he tried it and noticed not only that it was strong, but that some weapons behaved entirely different with the aim assist, so overall I’m going to assume that it’s extremely buggy right now.
Overall I’m surprisingly pleased with the game, and it may be the first new Halo game I try.