Respectfully, 343, you have a lot of work to do.
To put it blunt, everything is worse than MCC.
Aim assist still feels too little in too many places. It’s just stressful to get into gunfights that has to do anything with a precision weapon. Bump up the aim assist for these things to at least MCC level.
(And yes I get pc players will scream no because they don’t like it, so just let us choose to play crossplay or not please so we all can have nice things in our own right)
Vehicle physics just are nowhere near the fun of halo 3. Some vehicle feel too heavy like the ghost or banshee. Some vehicles feel too light like the hogs or mongoose. Adjust them accordingly to feel more similar to halo 3 and I would say we’d be having more fun then.
The weapon sandbox is very lackluster and feels like a beta at best. There are weapons that clearly underperform by a very large margin like the pulse carbine or ravager. There are weapons that clearly overshadow the rest like the br completely destroying the commando. There’s so many weapons in certain classes and almost none in others. Where’s the pump shotty to contest the sword? Where’s a good carbine replacement? Where’s a replacement for the smg? Where is the good UNSC pistol? Why did you add the halo 4 binary rifle back in the form of a giant staple gun with 1 less bullet? Why is there 3 banished sniper weapons and 3 banished pistols? Why is the pulse carbine so bad? Why is the commando so bad? Why is the assault rifle so good? Just so many questions that need to be addressed and fixed with the guns. Buffs where needed, nerfs where needed, additions of guns in empty slots, etc would make the game more playable and fun.
Maps need more variety visually. Covenant ships, flood infected forerunner structures, beaches, snowy mountains, etc etc all would be a fantastic change of scenery for multiplayer.
343 I hope you’ll take any of this into consideration.
I hate that a few of the maps look like CoD maps. WTH were they thinking knowing this is Halo, not CoD. This is an issue that should have been a priority that separates Halo from any other game.
One could certainly argue that several of the current maps do look like CoD, both in visual presentation to a small degree and the very typical and overdone “3 lanes” layout of basically every CoD map.
It’s also very worth noting that there is a distinct lack of “Halo” map features. What do I mean by this? Features that made Halo maps stand out and feel unique against other games are: Grav lifts, Man Cannons, Teleporters, Sheild Doors (like on Snowbound), Moving parts (Zanzibar/Last Resort Wheel), Openable Gates (High Ground, Last Resort), The Guardians (which enforced the boundaries of some maps by trying to kill you if you leave the safe zone), (And several other features that existed in H2 like the elevator in Ivory Tower, the train on Terminal, the conveyor belts on Elongation, etc)
Out of Halo 3’s 24 total maps, 18 of those possessed at least 1 of those features. Usually more.
In Halo Infinite, unfortunately only 4.5 out of 10 maps possess 1 of the features. And out of those that do, only 2 of them include more than 1 type (Behemoth and Launch Site both have a man cannon and a grav lift).
In fact, out of all the features I listed above, the only ones present AT ALL in this game are Man Cannons and Grav Lifts. I cannot count the loot caves on Fragmentation because they are not “map flow altering” like the gates on High Ground or Last Resort.
So, from a logical and data-driven perspective, these maps in Halo Infinite aren’t extremely “Halo” themselves.
Except…every Halo prior to 343’s takeover launched perfectly with more and more core features in each entry.
Features such as Campaign, Co-op, Forge, Working Theater (with party viewing), Working and deep Custom Games, File Share, Progression, Customization without stores or battlepasses, classic playlists and gametypes available, Service Records, a proper menu layout and lobby, and more.
The notion that “this is just how things go sometimes” cannot stand when bigger, more feature rich games came out with less dev time and less problems and nothing missing in the first half of this franchise’s lifespan. Not hating on 343, but people need to get real. Demand value for your money.
the maps wouldn’t look out of place in any generic future shooter. in arena there’s 6 human maps, only 1 forerunner map and zero covenant or banished maps. reach had a similar issue but still maintained a very distinct halo aesthetic, and at least had forge maps.
@TheHappyGoat That’s another great point that I wish I had delved into in my prior post about the features of Halo maps. The location/setting and the aesthetic also play a large part in what makes a Halo map. Heck, why not here and now.
Using Halo 3 again, we saw 3 purely Covenant maps, 11 Forerunner maps, and 10 Human maps. A couple of those maps had sprinkles of other types on them. Example, Valhalla is Forerunner but it has a crashed Pelican. Sandtrap is Forerunner but has a crashed Phantom (and Elephants =D ).
We also had a way better biome variety. Temperate, Savannah, Industrial, Urban, Snow, Desert, Swamp, Space(station), Covenant, Forerunner (yes I consider a purely indoors covenant or forerunner map like Midship or Cold Storage to be its own biome), Beach/Coastline.
As opposed to the current variety of Temperate, Desert, Lab/Station, Industrial?, Urban.
I think they have valid points.
Alot of the maps follow a 3 lane format which is very much like CoD/CSGO.
Bazaar, Livewire, Streets and even Behemoth are more or less 3 lane maps.
We need more maps like Recharge, where there is more pathing freedom and a large open area in the middle which has height difference to create an asymmetrical arena.
Recharge, and that Hangar map are more asymmetrical in nature and more “Halo” by map design standards.
If 343 are still headscratching, they can tide us over by revamping older maps, or even straight up copy pasting them.
Guardians would be a great addition to promote more map movement and for smallscale to larger scale games, Zanzibar could be remade to accommodate the new movement capabilities of the players.