It’s very hard to summarize my opinion on Halo Infinite, because while I’m extremely grateful that it’s not Halo 4 or 5, and consequently that it’s the best Halo game 343i has produced, I can’t really say it’s great.
My relationship with the multiplayer is complicated. It is the first time in a decade I’ve had a good time playing a new Halo multiplayer. But that may have to do more with the fact that the game coming to Steam allowed me to play with some old friends. I’ve noticed I still have barely any desire to play the game by myself.
I’m not entirely happy with the gameplay direction. I’ve said repeatedly that 343i made the most indecisive and boring compromise between Halo 5 and classic Halo regarding what base abilities they left in. Sprint still has no place in Halo. It serves no meaningful purpose. Clamber still comes in the way of integration of movement to combat. These abilities don’t serve the core of Halo. They’re just there as checklist features. With the further nerfing of sprint, the gameplay feels more inoffensive, but it doesn’t feel interesting. It feels like it cares more about not offending anyone too much than having an identity. There was a way forward with fully classic Halo, there was a way forward for doubling down on Halo 5, and there was even a way forward with integrating advanced movement ideas with the core principles of classic Halo that would’ve been more decisive. I might not have liked all of these, but they would’ve been more interesting
On a more positive note, as a fan of classic Halo, I approve of the reintroduction of equipment. I think it’s a much more flexible system of integrating new gameplay mechanics, because even if something turns out not to work out so well, it can be phased out in a non-disruptive manner. I’m overall fine with the equipment, but I have some issues, like there being no clear indication that a player has a piece of offensive equipment like the Repulsor.
When it comes to campaign, I was skeptical about the open world gameplay from the beginning, and things turned out exactly as I predicted. I’ve already written a much better post on the topic than I could write here, so I’ll just quote myself:
Open world games are very hard to make. They easily start to feel repetitive, because it’s difficult to design unique encounters into a game with so much freedom. The large open world easily becomes empty and meaningless when there is nothing surprising or interesting waiting after you manage to get into a place that’s off the beaten path.
Halo Infinite is a very average open world game, and so suffers from all the above issues. I flew around the world trying to look for surprises, but somehow when the cool secret cave I find has the exact same treasure as the random box right next to the road, it feels very anticlimactic. Or when I climb to the highest peak in the area just to find… nothing of interest.
It doesn’t help the game that the world of Zeta Halo is just aesthetically uninteresting. Aesthetics are really important for the joy of exploration. Lack of a concrete treasure might be saved by a beautiful vista, or sight of the next interesting place to go, and the travels between places always feel more pleasant if the scenery is beautiful. Halo Infinite is really hurt by only having a single biome, but I can’t help but feel like that biome could feel more magical with a more striking art direction.
I also take issue with the fact that the game is actively trying to discourage me from exploring and having fun with the sandbox. Having explored movement physics in prior Halo games, one would think that the verticality offered by Infinite would be a dream come true. There is this trick in older Halo games where if you jump from a high place into a slope, your vertical momentum is translated to horizontal, and you go flying through the level at great speed. For some reason 343i decided that it’s not appropriate for players to be having this much fun in their campaign, so the game has a friction on horizontal speed that quickly slows down any jump that spends too much time in the air.
The war on fun doesn’t stop there. Around the borders of the game’s floating islands, there are barriers that discourage movement between them. If you gain enough horizontal speed to make the large gap, your speed is reduced at accelerated pace so that you can’t make it to the other side. Your grapple hook refuses to grab the walls that are almost within reach, and you fall to your death. (Most infuriatingly, this can happen arbitrarily if you’re just playing Spider Man around the perimeter of just a single island.) And then, if you happen to manage to trick yourself over the gap, the game slaps you in the face with a 10 second “you can’t come here yet” countdown. I know blocking areas you’re not supposed to reach yet is not uncommon in open world games. I used to consider it normal. Then I played Breath of the Wild, which apart from the initial Great Plateau sequence has no barriers, and now I view it as completely idiotic game design which is antithetical to the principles of open world games. If you can’t design an open world game that let’s the player anywhere after the training sequence, maybe you shouldn’t be making an open world game.
I have the most to say about the movement mostly because the rest was completely expected. As I said: open world games are hard to make, most open world games are bland and formulaic, and I wasn’t expecting Halo Infinite to be an exception. But the fact that 343i went out of their way to nerf the movement physics, and actively discourage exploration, so that I could have less fun in the campaign was extremely disappointing.
Outside of the open world experience, the difficulty of the campaign was just strange. I played on Legendary. In the open world, there was of course so much freedom to move that nothing felt like a challenge. During the linear missions, the difficulty level of the normal enemies actually felt pretty appropriate. But every time there was a boss fight, it was just this absurd ramp-up in difficulty. I didn’t enjoy any of the boss fights, because they all had the same issue: perform a repetitive series of actions against a bullet sponge until it dies. In that respect, my opinion remains the same: Halo is bad at boss fights. Bungie failed to make them work, and 343i has failed to make them work twice now.
The story of the game I don’t have much to comment on, because frankly I did not finish the campaign. This easily happens to me with open world games, if they’re not fun enough. I got tired and stop playing. But from what I played, I liked the characters of the pilot and the Weapon, and the interactions of those characters. On the other hand, the Banished as an enemy I felt nothing about. They felt almost caricature with how much the game was trying to convince me that they’re really bad guys. I never could make sense of their motivations, so I just felt kind of detached from the story the whole time.
Finally, the art and music of the game was… fine. I think the art style is heading in the right direction, but it was still too clean, clinical, and lacking in character. The interiors were reasonably well done, but the exterior, the nature just felt kind of flat. Halo Infinite definitely doesn’t look bad, but it also doesn’t look beautiful. The music, likewise, sounds fine, but I don’t have much to say about it. 343i brought back some classic tracks, that’s cool, but the soundtrack felt a bit too safe. I don’t feel any strong emotions about it one way or another.
And that, that kind of feels like my theme for Halo Infinite: it’s okay, it’s mediocre, it’s playable, it sometimes infuriates me, but never too much. 343i has managed to go from making games I actively dislike to making a game I have very lukewarm feelings towards. I don’t know how to feel about that.
