I’d like to begin this by saying the gameplay is phenomenal. Best halo gameplay I’ve had in a long long time. That is the ONLY good thing about this game.
If I could rate this game -1/5 stars, I would rate it -2/5. This game is the single most poorly optimized game to ever cross my computer, and allow me to elaborate.
Upon joining for the first time, I realized I wanted to change my username on microsoft so it matches my other usernames. I changed it to my preference, Sporey, and it gave me a 4 number ID tag. That’s fine, I understand ID tags for games, it helps keep things separate. Upon relaunching the game, halo gave me a SECOND ID tag, meaning my name is now Sporey followed by 8 random, ugly numbers. It is the most pathetic username I’ve ever worn and I have to pay to change it, regardless of the fact that microsoft is double tagging people for whatever reason. Strike one.
After changing my name, my friends and I tried to get into a party together. The friends menu system is ABYSMAL. How can you have a MMO shooter with no working friend system? How do you maintain contact with cool people you meet? Not only that, but I tried adding him on steam, then discord, then invite directly from the game, and only then did I realize I had to set up the windows overlay and invite from that. Not only is that menu extremely convoluted to navigate and friend/invite people with, but it’s incredibly misleading that there are THREE OTHER METHODS advertised to invite people to your party, yet none of them work. The one that does work is the one that is mentioned nowhere. The only way I even knew there was an overlay was because my friend told me and helped install it. Strike 2.
After spending 45 minutes (yes, 45 whole minutes to invite a friend to my party), I went to go remap my controls so I could play comfortably. A prominent bug appeared where I would go to keybinds, click one to remap it, and upon pressing my desired mapped key, nothing happens. I could press any button on my keyboard to remap and it simply refused to let me. This made me very angry, so I started streaming my game to my friend to show him the issue, and it vanished. We’ve played on a few other occasions since then, and not only do my controls reset seemingly randomly (sometimes when I restart, sometimes they’ll just reset in the middle of a game) but I physically cannot rebind keys unless I stream the game to him. I know, weird solution. I’ve found this to be the case constantly, and if I want to rebind my keys, I have to join a voice channel and stream my game in order to do so. Unable to rebind keys, and random control resets. Strike 3 and strike 4.
I decided I wanted to customize my character a bit, even with the limited cosmetics given upon installation. I just wanted to change the color of my armor, which I did; from grey default to purple. That was the last time I was ever able to access the customize tab. Every time I go to that tab, and any sub tab (AI, body, weapons, armor, etc) I simply get slapped with an infinite load screen. Every single time. Now I’m locked with my current cosmetics, which isn’t a big deal now but will be when I get more and want to use them. Not just that, but it seems to be about a 25% chance I’m actually the purple armor in a game, and the other 75% of the time it resets me to default grey upon loading into a game. In the lobby my armor is purple still, yet it just converts me to grey most of the time. After finishing the game, I return to the lobby, and I’m still purple, and even if I wanted to confirm that’s what I was wearing, I can’t access the customize menu because it has an infinite loadscreen. Glitchy cosmetics, and unusable locker. Strike 5 and strike 6.
Last but not least, there are so many random bugs and glitches all over the place that it is incredibly immersion breaking. Half of the time I can pick up guns off the ground, half the time I can’t. Sometimes when I slide, I teleport back to the starting point of the slide after finishing it. Often times, if I drop a weapon, be it accidental or intentional, I can no longer pick it up off the ground. Sometimes my push to talk activates and sometimes the control itself resets and I have to do the streaming thing in order to restore it. Not to mention that even while streaming I cannot change controls while in a game. This, combined with a litany of other random and unjustified lag spikes (My wifi is 500mbps and my computer averages 144fps on almost every game) has made the game not only frustrating to play, but downright infuriating. I can’t even focus on learning the gameplay loop because I’m too busy tying up loose ends that 343i was too lazy to polish out. This game was released 40% done, and it’s pathetic that such a big title, a 500 million dollar game, is released in this condition. It’s not just unacceptable, but for the game that was hyped up game of the year, it’s downright insulting. It’s like a spit in the face that the developers don’t care enough to fix a game millions of people were dying to play.
I love the gameplay so much. It’s incredibly fun sliding around, grappling, shooting people and meleeing. It’s hard, and I’m still learning, but the gameplay is super solid. YOU CANNOT HAVE A GAME THAT IS INCOMPLETE BESIDES GAMEPLAY. How could you play elden ring if the main menu didn’t function properly? How could you play R6 siege if you couldn’t rebind your controls? Why bother playing Valorant if you can’t add people as friends? Gameplay alone is not enough. You need to have actual, WORKING UI’s in the game that do their job and do it right. I simply cannot fathom that a series as famous, nostalgic, and hyped up as Halo would come out like it was made by a team of 5 novice college programmers. Fix the game and you’ll revolutionize gaming as a whole, or leave it as a half-baked backroom project and watch people fall away left and right. Personally, I’d like to see the fixes, because the gameplay is so fun. Help us play YOUR game.