Halo 3 and Halo: Reach is better in many regards due to what Halo: infinite is missing feature wise in comparison.
Halo: Infinite plays like trash performance wise on PC and has no exclusive fullscreen option, has too many artificially difficult boss battles, it lacks Coop, Forge, Firefight, marines being able to hop on the sides of the Scorpion tank, friendly AI can’t drive vehicles, lack of blood and explosion decals, vehicle destruction is not as detailed compared to Halo 3, has no Flood (Halo 3), plasma pistol has no EMP effect, lacks different biomes, lacks increment weather such as rain, Has no ODSTs, Has no assassinations, has no mission select or replay option. The list of missing features compared to past Halo games goes on.
For a game in development double the development time of past Halo games. For it to be missing this many features is mind boggling. And in my opinion an indicator of extreme incompetence and/or poor decisions from 343 industries leadership.
How did a Halo multiplayer experience launch without pre-game lobbies, we went from an extremely basic pre-game lobby in Halo 5 to nothing in Infinite …why?
The lack of social features in Infinite are quite off-putting.
It feels like they had an MP made ultra early, revealed the campaign, OHSHOOT THEY REALLY HATED IT, went back and rework the entire game, release MP as it is.
MP definitely feels stripped down, which is a real shame cos if you manage to get into a nice match, the game’s really fun.
They probably went the Battlefield 2042 route of less social features so as to curb online bullying harassment. Which is dumb in my opinion as it has too big of an impact on fun by limiting social interaction.
They basically had to rework the entire game since the first reveal, remember that.
They were forced to release it by this year.
It’s been revealed in interviews that the system they used to build Infinite was ridiculously troublesome to work with.
and so on the list goes.
Honestly in this day and age, just getting a game to work is a godsend. I don’t have any expectations from the gaming industry anymore these days. If 343 gets Infinite to work, improves it over time, and get it into a state where it can last as a f2p title for years to come, I’ll say it’s a win.
All I have to say is :
Whoever designed the customization system needs to be fired or replaced.
Whoever designed the season pass system needs to be fired or replaced.
Whoever designed the day-1 playlists needs to do some serious homework.
These three points I’ve mentioned feels like they are handled by people who don’t know their audience at all. (for the third point, they may just not know why Playlists matter)
It’s certainly frustrating that we don’t have a more fleshed out experience.
I, for one, am gutted that I’m not knee deep in scripting. Or the stats API. And that I’m not running around with shotguns on someone’s meticulous recreation of Beaver Creek.
But the skeleton is there. The core game rocks. We just gotta be patient.
Some of these are really hard nitpicks. But the point stands.
Okay seriously though, not having ODSTs isn’t some big missing feature, the ODST Corps hasn’t really been a thing in a long time. Almost all of them just became Spartans so they are an exceedingly rare breed of soldier now.
Others can be explained away. Like the weather, we are on an extremely busted up part of the ring so weather systems are likely set to always be as peaceful as possible to prevent complications while it repairs.
AI driving not being a thing makes a lot of sense in an open world. In a linear mission the AI has a path to follow, in an open world where are they gonna go? How are they going to path there? You would most likely get in a hog and have the driver take you in the opposite direction of the objectives you want to visit.
Marines riding tanks… Now I get it. Stick a few marines in a razorback with rockets, Sentinel beams, or shock rifles and see what happens. Now imagine if you were also a tank. Marines are INSANELY powerful in this game. They made a balance pick, you either get marines, or a tank, you don’t get both.
Missing Coop, and Forge in particular sucks for sure though. Those should have been ready to go at launch, no excuses.
‘oh but all the features will be added later, they’re working on it, be pacient you greedy player. god, they need more money for food, and the servers. stop being so toxic’ - 343 excusers
for surs though, like in the entire 6 years it took to make this game(s) it is so underwhelming…
is the campaign better? sure, but it’s riddled with visual bugs (texture stretching) same with the mp
mp just feels like a shop with a decent game attachet to it. needs ballancing, needs better pricing, needs more gamemodes that isn’t just the standared halo gamemodes (like infection) needs better incentive to keep playing the game. as right now, i don’t really care to play unless the weekly challenge isn’t a stupid nameplate/emblem
Reach had me keep on playing, keep on grinding for the cosmetics. was it tiring at times? yeah, sure. but i kept coming back to grind out the daily and weekly challenges, just to get another cosmetic for me to potentially use in the future for the heck of it. not only because of the challenges, but also because of the fun gameplay. it wasn’t ballanced as well, sure. but it was fun, from the amount of modes to the excesive amount of weapons. and hay, when i didn’t want to play mp. me and my siblings would go onto forge and make a map, or mess around in custom games. had a blast with 'em, couch co-op on ocasion, in split screen. it was fun
pre game lobbies, whiles yes, no one talked after a while, was nice. going over to the right and seeing the spartans i was going up against, or split lips. then who was on what team. it was simple, yet a nice touch
And no I’m not joking. I don’t care they took themselves way too seriously, especially reach. Would it kill for a little cuteness here and there in the multiplayer?
Why do they remove lobbies? Because people are being bullied? A lot more people will quit out of boredom after a while than because they got trash talked for 20 seconds before a game.
Microsoft doesn’t want us to communicate…but loves multiplayer and co-op games due to the potential revenue.
So,…
Greed of wanting money but also wanting to effeminize humanity to the point that we can’t speak because it might be “toxic.”