Personally, I think it is several steps down from Halo 3’s Infection. While they did copy+paste Reach’s human loadouts option, and added Flood loadouts (more on why this actually sucks at the moment), they shoved the feel of gameplay from that of casual, unrealistic fun between friends to that of hardcore survival.
Using the flood appearance means that most of the multitude of Infection gamemodes in the past make no sense. Now, the only think that makes sense is mass zombie waves of Flood against defending humans; no more gimmicks, no more giving the Zombies guns, or hell, even just a HAMMER to fight Warthogs. You aren’t even given the option to choose zombies weapons, or even the zombie loadouts, even though in Matchmaking, the Flood clearly do, and they use an uber thruster pack that can’t be recreated (not to my knowledge, I just want to make a class or gametype where the thurster pack boosts you 5-10 feet, like an Evade, not a massive slingshot or 2 steps.
I’m just getting the impression that Halo is devolving as a series, adding better graphics and copy+pasting popular features from other popular games, like killcams, score streaks, and needless unlocks. I can’t believe not one of the simple options among hundreds the community has been asking for since Halo 3 in Infection has come true, and why will developers never do title updates that add some of these features in?