Now that Halo 5 has been around for a few days, I feel its right to review a game AFTER launch rather than just see the perspective of some organizations that get advance copies/special pre-launch servers to test things.
Anyways, this in no way touches upon the multiplayer aspect of the game. Warzone I feel is fun (just dont enter a match with friends much higher ranked or you will be helpless against vehicles) and Arena is classic, takes some getting used too.
Anyways, onto the aspect at hand, for once, in a halo game, the campaign has left me, perplexed.
Bare in mind, this is my opinion, thats all.
Its almost like a complete reversal from Halo 4 where the campaign was at least entertaining with the multiplayer kinda run down, but this time its the campaign leaving a what the heck kind of impression.
My issue with the campaign has ultimately been, who we need to see and like many others, not what was entailed with the adveristments.
Dont get me wrong, its still a halo campaign, still a halo action game itself. If anything is good with the campaigin its
-The new promethain soldiers are a nice touch to fill the gap between crawler and knight
-We finally got to see shangellos, homeworld of the elites
-Blue team made their first in game debeut alongside MC
-Buck returned as well from ODST and his cameo in Reach (kinda funny how Nathion fillion is in 2 big shooters this year with some sarastic wit)
-We finally got a forerunner vehicle
-While most of the aresenal is returned from halo 4, there are still new toys to fool with in the campaign as well
-Alternate paths in some obvious walls at least give us more points of engagement you we are not in a cluster screwed event.
But there are also downsides and these are my gripes:
-The damn checkpoint system is still a horrid prankster respawning you in terrible conditions
-Playing alone on legendary is a test of patience, when your own teammates take ages to respond even 5 feet from you.
-3 of the missions are not even missions, they are just pointless filler
-We dont even get to see Blue team that much.
-The story has no tension until the cliffhanger at the end
-Abirter just seems there to give you a nostlagia factor
-Any story from what people saw to the end of 4 is dismissed at the start here.
-Fireteam Osiris is a boring bunch of characters. (Save Buck)
Guess I’ll explain it like this:
Remember star wars episode 2 to 3? Remember the character count dooku and how he got away but at the start of 3 he is just killed off ASAP? Remember how there was an animated series in 2003 and later 2008, there was material to elaborate on this stuff. My point is, in the halo universe we get practially the same occurance, if you played to the end of spartan ops, you remember how the character Jul Mdama got away with the item the Janus Key? Half of it? Well the same thing happened, unless you saw the expanded universe stuff, this Janus key, just vanished, its no longer important. It was dealt with in the comic series Esclation, but here, its just gone. Jul is killed, no need to continue.
But it gets worse due to the pacing.
We have 15 missions, but unlike other halos where say, maybe at best 1 or 2 of those “missions” were cutscene levels, we have 3 that are just damn filler. No seriously, 3 of these missions are just go talk to people and thats it. Seriously? Combine this with the fact that only 3 missions otherwise leave us playing as blue team. This is not like the halo 2 campaign at all.
If we had at least 5 levels with blue team, I would be fine, but 343 just injected so much on this new team, it feels unnatural. Even Nightfall was a horrid mess of no one cares, and that was supposed to introduce us to Locke. Which brings me to my next point:
Locke is not a good character, not at all in anyway. He is just the most generic supersoldier ever. Do this, go here, do that. MC at least had an aspect of fighting for something, Locke just seems more like any general ONI lapdog. And it doesnt help with newcomers Vale and Tanaka, having even less material to get an understanding of them.
When you play a game with a premade character, usually its good when you have some basic knowledge of who they are and what they must do. In the halo games, we always have some idea of who our hero is. we at least have an association with who we play as, Halo 1, 2, 3, and 4, its chief, simple, he goes from needing to discover the halo mysteries, defending earth, stopping the installation 5 activation, stopping the flood, stopping the didact, etc. 2 and along for 3, we have arbiter and we at least understood his backstory right in the game for seeing the great journey was a lie. ODST, we got many perspectives and saw how this story put the events from 2 to 3 into motion. Reach and Spartan Ops (kinda campaign 4.5) we had our own spartan to play as, under the alias Noble 6 and Crimson respectively. In this case, its your own character, they are how you imagine it.
But in 5, its just bad, really really bad. Back in 2001, when the novel the fall of reach launched, people at least had a whole book to get to know MC. But what do we get with Locke? A terrible live action event that has little complexity or even notion on how any of this becomes important upon locke himself. MC learned from events like soldiers spent vs wasted, what did locke learn? Not to be such a stuck up jerk and try helping rather than just say “hands up come with me?”
See the problem here with the fireteam Osiris?
We have blue team, the crew longtime fans want and have wanted to see in the games for years upon years, we finally get it, and the appearance of fred, kelly, and linda is fully shafted with only 3 mere missions.
We have FTOsirs and we have only one guy we have some appeal with (buck) and 3 others who gives a crap?
See, its a problem to your story when you care more about the one side guy in your group (buck) or another rarely seen group (blue team) when the player is forced to just be this tightwad that has practically no appeal.
I mean this is a halo story, its not supposed to be overly watered down or constrained with characters that just say Yes and do stuff. The entire series has had some at least fairly dynamic characters, but this isn’t a series that needs to be as in depth either like final fantasy or overly complex and full of twists like metal gear solid. Its just halo, some alien event, some crisis, easy to understand but still with a fair amount of you get more out of it if you search, thats all.
But we dont get that here. The cliffhanger at least makes me hope, well let us damn play as blue team next time. But for this, Locke is just not a fun character, Vale and Tanaka dont help either. Buck at least took part in a game and novel (new blood)
Locke is just a fetch dog, because ONI demands it or because Halsey said please.
But it makes me sad, the other spartans of blue team, they have years upon years of past material and so much investment in the canon, just to be sidelined in their first game?
the truth is not what it seems, but by that point, it seems better said like this “What was the god -Yoink!- point of it?”
Hunt the truth had an interseting story, but when that is just not in line with what was sold and we got a different story?
It just feels like a big part of wasted time by that aspect.
HTT campaign is just why bother now? But now we have this interesting cliffhanger after the boring characters, ironic huh?
I can say though, least the maps for multiplayer is fine and we get maps for free.