My Feedback on the Multiplayer Beta.
First and foremost… I love it.
I think its the best halo multiplayer experience I’ve played in a long time and it feels new whilst staying in touch with the series’ legacy. The gameplay loop is super fun and at the moment is enough to keep me coming back to over and over again.
The Art is awesome. I’m in love with the style this game presents with, being fresh and new whilst at the same time capturing a very classic halo look. Maps look and feel great to play in. My favourites are Deadlock, Recharge and Behemoth but behemoth is my stand out favourite. I’m a real sucker for desert maps (desert themed forge world please). The shaders I also feel are really on display here. The clear blue sky and dull sand blown up against the high spec sheen of forerunner metal is just too damn good and the skybox with the halo ring arcing in the background is just as awe inspiring as its ever been, I just can’t take my eyes off it. Fragmentation is also a beautiful map. All the rocks and wild flowers, along with sentinels spread about and the UNSC radio outpost on the cliff. The forerunner structures really capture the heavy, derelict, brutalist aesthetic of old and feel as mysterious as they did 20 years ago. Also having lots of little creatures running around the levels really helps to bring them to life and not feel like empty arenas made purely for carnage. There’s so much detail and bits of storytelling around about and It just enhances the whole experience.
I really love all the maps, my only complaint is that all the big team battle maps at current have very similar biomes, that being the alpine forested look. I also would love to see a more open and flatter map structure like behemoth in btb. I understand those types of maps wouldn’t cater well to the newly added equipment abilities but even deadlock and highpower can feel claustrophobic at times, you don’t really get that opportunity to stand out in the open and breathe in the entire level from one point or perspective, ala the central hilltop in valhalla, sniper cliff in coagulation or anywhere along the spine of the temples on sandtrap. There’s not as much diversity as there is in 4v4 maps, but that is something that I imagine will change as more maps get released in future.
The Spartans look like walking tanks, heavy and chunky as they should! They’re carrying that functional military hardware look that the rest of the UNSC embodies. A look that makes them feel more durable and believable.
All the banished stuff looks pretty cool, although I feel the games colour palette is missing the more colourful and diverse range the original covenant had. The organic and beetle like forms of the covvies really stood out with a unique design language that heavily contrasted the other factions. The red and dark grey colour scheme paired with the angular blocky designs don’t stand out very much from the slate grey forerunner structures or utilitarian colour schemes of the UNSC. It also feels like there isn’t much roughness variation between red elements and the grey elements on the vehicles. Having a gander at some of the halo wars 2 assets, and there seems to be dirt and rust layered over a steely metal. Aside from some edge wear the vehicle materials appear quite dull. Overall though I think the banished are a cool faction and will reserve proper judgement til campaign where they will be presented in full force.
The Sound is fantastic. I don’t really have too much to say on this one. I enjoy the post rocky sounds of the menu though it would be nice to perhaps have more halo anthems reverberating in my headphones. I imagine that’s something that will update and change with time. Weapons sound powerful and I can tell what is being fired just from the noise I’m hearing. It’s so cool that you can tell what weapon is being fired just by listening really gives the armaments more character. Vehicles sound great, The ghost and banshee remind of the old CE variants which I love. Its also great to be running around and have the usual background ambience disrupted by the various skybox events that occur when I team is doing particularly well. My favourite is the Mac canon charging on high power, that thing is boss. Would be cool if the covenant carrier could return fire though but awesome all the same. How about in a map later down the line there could be a battle in the background between ships and whichever team wins determines which ship will be destroyed at the end of the match? The victory screen shot of the squad with a burning ship going down in the background would be epic! I’m very much looking forward to hearing more from the music and sound design when running around on zeta halo but on the multiplayer side of things, good job sound team!
The Gameplayis quite simply amazing. Consistently engaging with the mechanics of the game creates such a satisfying loop. I come back over and over again for the crazy moments that happen when messing with the sandbox of weapons and abilities. Getting ‘return to sender’ medals is just the best. I never felt we got the 4th pillar of gameplay sussed… but I feel like 343 have here. The equipment takes all the other tried and tested concepts and combines them into a package of mechanics that transform the way you play from moment to moment. Its not as situational as H3’s equipment, but not as integral as H5’s abilities. It feels balanced whilst at the same time offering the player a temporary sense of empowerment. Vehicles feel great to drive and pilot for the most part and are powerful assets on the field that can transform a teams misfortune to victory. I love the addition of the razorback though other players don’t seem as excited to jump into it as I am. The wasp being the unsc answer to the banshee feels very different and unique to fly but I gotta say the warthog with its innate power to lure players to cooperating as gunner and driver, just takes the cake every time. Would love to see the sky variant of this badboy (the falcon) return or some sort of successor…Perhaps later down the line. This game plays like a dream and I haven’t encountered many serious networking issues, I expect the worst to get ironed out over time. I think this is probably, looking at its core mechanics, the greatest halo multiplayer game ever created. Its simply fantastic.
There are some things that I think could be tuned a little better; the drop wall whilst perhaps not as underpowered as I first suspected still deploys too slow for in the middle of a firefight and if deployed in preparation for battle will just evaporate (along with the player) against the barrage of grenades that will inevitably come its way. I feel like the best way to play is to try to keep an intact tile between you and your enemy while returning fire but its not immediately intuitive nor consistent enough for it to be picked over something like the grapple shot or repulsor. On that note, it feels like grenades might need a tweak or change? When I think I’m outside the blast radius I’m still getting my shields chipped away by blind tosses from the enemy at my position and other times it feels like people still have shields when my grenade was right next to them. I think grenades should lean towards rewarding more accurate and skilled throws so perhaps increase the distance at which grenades strip shields but reduce the general blast radius? Not sure, that’s just my position at current, I’ve seen plenty other feedback saying other things. Also its seems like floor materials don’t have different physics so they bounce the same on all surfaces. It was quite cool to have them not bounce in sand or have reduced bounce in dirt.
Melee hasn’t really felt all that consistent either, every other game or so me and/or my opponent completely lose sight of one another due to phasing through each other or lunging straight past one another and dying alone when it feel like I should be trading (phantom melee). Also vehicles are prey once more to the official anti-infantry/unofficial anti-tank sniper rifle. The sniper rifle was really strong in reach as well if I recall but it is quite frustrating to have dedicated anti vehicular weaponry like the rocket launcher and skewer be eclipsed by the faster firing and more reliable hit scan sniper. Don’t get me wrong the sniper should be a power weapon worthy of that name and due to the 8 bullet count on spawn(thank god) its down to the player to decide whether to use 4 of those on a vehicle or not but if they do then that vehicle is as good as gone.
The Playlists, progression, content, and customisation issues have already been pointed out many times across multiple different sites in different ways and I don’t really wish to re-tread all that.
So for this I’ll list out my own current and primary issues. My biggest gripe at the moment is in the customisation system. Armor sets in concept are a really cool idea in that they offer they player the chance to obtain premium Armor packages that the player can equip wholesale to make themselves stand out from the crowd. The benefit to this concept is that the armor set itself could be designed around the lack of interchangeability. This opens up the oppurtunity for 343 to make armor sets that could not be made into modular pieces and only as single bespoke products that work only when viewed as a whole. To try to do otherwise would result in ugly clipping and intersections.
This is not what the current implementation of armor sets does right now. Armor sets feel like worse versions of what we could potentially be getting. Take any of the Noble Team armor sets that one can obtain from the battlepass. Pretty much all the armor pieces can be obtained through completing the battlepass except only a couple which are relegated to the set. This is a shame no matter which way you look at it; either those pieces remain locked to the set and NEVER make it to players’ hands so they cannot make new combinations and their own spins on those characters or those pieces DO make it to players hands, either through the store or battlepass or free player progression and the set is made OBSOLETE. Why make an exact clone of Emile when you can make a clone and your own variation of spartan based on Emile. It could also mean that people who own the armor set have what feels like a second rate product. Why have the locked set when you could have an unlocked set. Whats even more frustrating is that it wasn’t clear atleast to me, that there was a choice. I did purchase the battlepass before I understood that armor sets were even a thing but now looking back and forwards I think I would have been more careful about my purchase if I knew whether or not certain items were going to appear in the battlepass or store or at all. Also if these items do appear in the store then, it kinda goes against what we were told about items in the battle pass not being obtainable elsewhere (sure technically they wouldn’t be exactly the same item but I think that’s being a little dishonest). I don’t want to own something that I feel bad about using because there’s something better out there, I also don’t want to own something that I would never use because I there’s no point in having it. These assume that these pieces are coming in any shape or form at all which if the bot customisation shows anything, is that its possible and why not? I probably would have preferred to have those pieces ‘exist’ and be in the store than have something in the battlepass that tastes kinda sour. At most I would love to have these sets removed and the customizable pieces replace them, at least I would like the option to perhaps upgrade my ‘locked’ set to an ‘unlocked’ set. You wanna earn some brownie points with the Battlepass players, maybe give 'em a discount on that upgrade. I don’t exactly feel good making that suggestion as I don’t actually like that these particular armor sets exist but I thought I’d give an option that atleast has some sort of monetisation in mind. I would be totally up for spending in the shop, but right now I feel like I’ve payed for something and gotten a knock off.
I don’t mean to sound rude, ungrateful or bloody minded in the face of a company trying to monetize their product (I mean come on you didn’t expect everything to be free did you?). But the way this and few other things are structured, to me , points towards a present lack of content and perhaps a last minute rush to get things out the door. Understand I’m not blaming anyone here. Halo had 6 years in development, lost 2 directors, had a delay following a bad trailer reception and ‘last minute’ hire. It kinda stinks of development hell. Once again I’m not bashing the devs or even microsoft. Sometimes shtuff just goes wrong. I can’t imagine how hard the staff must have been working to try to pull things together. I don’t know and can’t say that they definitely crunched but I can say that crunching to get stuff looking cool and putting in extra hours cuz you want to polish your own work is one thing (and your own choice, studio culture permitting) but doing it just to get things working is something else entirely and is never fun. Its crushing to work knowing that if you don’t get stuff done it will only impact the game more negatively, it sucks so hard. And while I want desperately for this game to be loved and do well, it’s quite clear that this launch is far from what anyone would have intended, dev or player. Perhaps if this had been any other publisher and not halo we would have never gotten a game atall. I really do think 343 has tried hard to give players something special and something worthy of universal praise, and I truly feel they have achieved that. It’s a shame that things didn’t quite measure up to everyone’s expectations in one way or another, (perhaps your only quibble is that you cant pet the mole rats and everything else is perfect!) but this is the bitter reality of things. It may not have been possible for things to turn out better than it has and whilst that is not necessarily a blameless situation its a far from simple one and one which we currently have no insight or information on. For what its worth, I think 343 have done a good job.
I think a lot systematic issues will be ironed with time namely the playlists, content and progression, custom games and forge. I’m not gagging for anything really so I can wait for that, there are other games and general life to keep me preoccupied across the time period though I expect to revisit many times of course.
Good luck 343 and Merry Christmas to everyone.
Cheers.
