TL;DR - I don’t really say too much in here and waffle about how the game feels pretty good, but (OBVIOUSLY) we need to see more.
Let me say at the front that I didn’t play much of the Infinite Flight, this is just initial impression and what I want to see going forward, as opposed to my opinion on changes etc.
Gameplay:
Gameplay felt really good, this was something that gave me a lot of hope for Halo Infinite right off the bat, even when facing bots. Although I find sprint and armour abilities to be basically useless in the games loop, as I found myself just playing the game like it was Halo 3 (but with climbing), I still think that’s not a bad thing as playing my own way worked absolutely fine and having these additional things did not take away from my experience, they just added nothing. The same went for spike grenades too.
There are a few guns that seem to not quite know where they sit in terms of their power-levels and such, I’m wondering if some will be addressed but I don’t have enough time to give overall thoughts and opinions on most guns, however the needler MIGHT be a tad stronger than I remember in previous iterations of Halo and that burst-fire Carbine seems a bit too much in some scenarios.
Maps:
I didn’t actually play Bazaar, but I played Live Fire and Recharge and I really enjoyed those maps. For Recharge, Good spawn points, good rotation spots and lots of verticality to get those powerful positional advantages over your enemy.
Live Fire seems like your typical basic map that will get a game over and done in about 4 or 5 minutes, just absolute chaos across the board, but I enjoyed how simple it is.
Bazaar I didn’t play, but it doesn’t look like a Halo map on the surface. Hopefully when I do play it, I can gauge a better opinion on how it actually plays and feels.
Visuals/Performance:
I believe that optimisation wasn’t really in this build, or at least I will assume based on my experience with the game that this is something we have to see in a future test build?
70fps no matter what settings I chose (low or ultra) at 1080p didn’t seem right, so I think while the game looks good graphically, I hope to see actual performance statistics and get a look at the real optimisation of the game, because if this is all I personally get to experience leading up to launch, I am concerned.
Visually, as I said, the game looks good. It looks like Halo. It looks nice. Not too much detail needed.
Customisation:
I love the level of detail going into this and the fact we can FINALLY have our own spartan colours in a match. I can’t wait to see it on launch with all the challenges and systems in place, including vehicle skins and such.
I just hope (really HOPE) that the challenges are not super super simple or the best armour sets are behind the Battlepass system. At least, I hope there are some extra sets that go into the harder challenges, so while the new comers and casual players can get what they desire, there are those skins for players with more desire to complete high-tier challenges.
In short:
Game feels good, looks good and will be good. I have high hopes and hopefully any small concerns are dealt with before launch and hopefully we can see those improvements in future tests.
I’m looking at Big Team Battle as the major telling point during the test phases (if we get the mode to test, since it has a higher player count now and vehicles, would make sense).