Looking forward to final optimizations and fixes for the stuttering. Infinite looks good, and I’m much happier with the art (and armor design) direction this time around. 4 and 5 got too weird.
My biggest concern has to be with the gun/aiming mechanics with controllers for pretty much every weapon other than the AR, which itself felt great. Something just felt off with the Commando, Sidekick and many of the other weapons. It felt like aim assist and any bullet magnetism, if there was any, was lacking. I know aim assist was there for all these weapons, you can see it in the gun drills, but the zone in which it activates was tiny and I dealt with way more aim over-correction than I do in any of the Halo MCC games. Straffing and aiming for headshots really suffered and using these other weapons didn’t feel all that great at default controller settings, although I found it a little better if I reduced the inside dead zone, but even so, aim control didn’t feel responsive and felt like I was playing Left for Dead or some other generic shooter.
As should be expected, it is FAR easier to land shots and adjust aim on keyboard and mouse. I’m not saying that to be labeled as Captain Obvious either. In MCC, the controls are so tight and refined that tracking a mid range target with the BR, DMR, etc, straffing to follow their movement, and making micro adjustments is snappy, responsive, and is as satisfying as it comes and I consider MCC to be second only to Call of Duty in terms of controller use on PC. MCC has the controller settings, AA, and bullet magnetism down and I don’t mind playing in mixed input servers because it feels fair. In the flight, keyboard and mouse felt like they had a huge advantage here with everything except the AR. Looking past the “Keyboard and mouse is better” argument, it’s been HUGE to the MCC player base on PC to have cross platform AND open input based matchmaking to server health. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were many feeling the same way and would start toggling the input method to controllers only, or XBOX players limiting their network to exclude PC, leading to server population problems. The bots were fine, but playing against people is more satisfying.
Based on about 4 hours of play time on Infinite, I would likely limit servers by input due to the dramatic control and aim disparity. It’s not balanced for players in the average skill range that, by definition, populate the servers. So I would say those underlying aim assist mechanics on controller needs to be brought more in line with what’s implemented in MCC, if possible.
At 3440x1440p I was getting framerates in the 30s all the way into the teens the whole weekend. All of my drivers were updated, I used default settings, I changed everything to “low”, nothing seemed to address it.
I own a Vega64 and there was only a couple frames difference between 2k and 4k resolution scale, which doesn’t make sense really. My gpu utilization seemed all over the place as well, never actually hitting the 90% range and instead hovering in the 60% to 80% range mostly. Also I’m not sure if this is unique to my Vega64 but when I changed the settings from low to ultra the armory lights in the background would start flashing repeatedly like a edm festival. Any graphical glitches or failure to load in the ui were instantly fixed by restarts every time to be clear, but of course we shouldn’t need to do that.
Still for some reason, just like in MCC, you can’t bind weapons to different keys (ex: ‘1’ for Weapon 1, ‘2’ for Weapon 2). Putting BOTH weapons on a SINGLE key is uncomfortable.
Also, MCC’s Zoom settings needs to make a return. Infinite has only one Zoom setting, MCC has 3.
Also, not sure if it’s already in the main game, but if it’s not, custom reticles need to be a thing. You guys say this is built with PC in mind but it doesn’t feel like it.
Processor: Intel(R) Core™ i7-9700K CPU @ 3.60GHz (8 CPUs), ~3.6GHz
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER
RAM: 16 GB 2666 Single Stick
PSU: 750 Watt Gold Rated
Motherboard: ROG Strix G15CX_G15CX
Monitor: ASUS VG248QE 24" Full HD 1920x1080 144Hz
Throughout my experience playing the flight for Halo Infinite, I noticed that the framerate I was getting when setting the graphics quality to high averaged between 60-90 fps while experiencing a bit of stuttering when excessively panning my POV in-game. One notable thing I noticed that was happening very frequently was how both my CPU and GPU were being used at 100% capacity, making other programs load at slower times and having delay input when typing or clicking. This worried me as this normally does not happen when running other games, however, the game could have been bottlenecking due to my specs not being used to the flight’s engine. I can only hope as the months go by before both the multiplayer and campaign release that the performance is improved in comparison to my experience with the first flight.
Besides the performance issues, everything else was a blast and I am looking forward to experiencing a new title in the Halo franchise.
I am by no means a game developer or reviewer, however I have played and adored halo games for about 15 years… for whatever that’s worth
PROS:
Gunplay feels amazing and satisfying - Precise hitboxes make kills feel fair and earned - Great fusion of classic and modern halo in general, but particularly movement - Great sandbox additions, loads of potential for interesting game types and custom games - Sound design is amazing. Crisp and modern while clearly influenced from classic halo sound design. [my one nit pick is the needler identity is lost a bit in the new sound design] - Bots are fun and fair to play against. [main area of improvement would be maintaining a firefight. i.e. when I would take cover for and extended period of time, the bots would seem to just lose interest and walk off]CONBugsS:
Performance issues [I realise this is the point of the tech demo but I’ll give feedback regardless], on my fairly decent pc at 1440p, frame rate was registered around 60fps but felt very ‘jittery’ making the game feel like it was running around 30-40fps. - Grenades that drop when killed glow and look like live thrown grenades - Friend or foe system makes it difficult to tell whether an enemy’s shields are broken - Melee lunge range and registration can feel inconsistent - XP boosts should not count down in the menusSANDBOX & BALANCING:
Heatwave design is A+ although I believe it is not powerful enough in the current sandbox - Skewer feels very powerful and is so satisfying to get that OHKO although it is tough to use and could possibly do with a slightly faster reload speed. - Commando is so sick! When I first saw this gun in the trailer I was not impressed in the slightest, but shooting it for myself instantly made it one of my favourites!BUGS & CRASHES:
Every 10th or so game the audio would all go very quiet except for spartan soldier chatter - Some settings don’t function correctly unless turned off and then back on again. [I experienced this with Muting voice chat] - When sliding, occasionally the player model will cover the screen momentarily - when changing setting game is prone to crashing - I had one major crash in the tech demo loading into an arenas game. The game crashed, brought up my screen magnification settings (???) and my displays where turning off and on for a minute or so… could be a personal issue with my GPU however I have never experienced anything like that before.
OVERALL THOUGHTS:
Finally playing Infinite was such a great experience. I was so relieved when I realised how fundamentally good the gameplay is, appealing to both classic halo fans and modern halo fans alike. I am beyond excited to play the final release. Thanks to anyone that actually reads this lol
I made a Google Document with all my feedback for the team (Halo Infinite First Flight Feedback - Google Docs). Just shy of four full pages, almost all of it sandbox-related. Really, really happy overall, appreciate all the work you guys have put in! It definitely feels like a celebration of Halo games past and present.
I was a beta tester for halo infinite and here are my specs
Windows 10 Pro
Processor Intel(R) Core™ i7-4820K CPU @ 3.70GHz 4.10 GHz
MotherBoard Gigabyte X79-UP4 (legacy bios)
Installed RAM 32.0 GB
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 (driver version 471.41)
Storage Crucial_CT1050MX300SSD1 1TB
1920 x 1080, 144Hz
I successfully installed the game on my SSD with steam and launched the game when I was met with a black loading screen with some dots. it would load for about 2-5 min before the main menu song would play for less than a second and then crash every time.
I tried everything I could find online that was reported as solutions with a google search to get the game to work but nothing would work. I read that it would launch successfully sometimes and decided to create a macro auto clicker that would relaunch the game every time it crashes and did that overnight. woke up and saw that it was still relaunching the game every crash which means that it’s a guarantee I was not even gonna be able to even touch the game and my beta was just this black loading screen and half a second of music.
My experience on PC was quite good, I have an rtx 3060, I played with the graphics settings on high and it always ran at 60fps without getting off, I could not test 4K or 120 fps because I do not have a monitor with these characteristics. I never dropped a game and the sound always worked correctly, the only thing that happened to me was that at a certain moment the configuration of my command was altered and it did not respond to the movement orders, but it was easily solved by resetting the configuration of the command
Alright, I don’t have the most impressive gaming computer in the world but, that aside I could run the game with Medium settings and it looked great!
Throughout the weekend my internet was down for about a day and a half due to some idiot running their car into a major fiber cable so that didn’t help.
On how things felt to me, I felt like keyboard and mouse playing were good but could be better, it didn’t feel as smoothe as the MCC does which could just be the state of the build, but it did make me want to buy a controller to play better. Throughout the weekend when I was going through personalizations for both my spartan and for controls, my new settings or options would reset and not take unless I closed the game and restarted it.
I felt like the games I played and gun trials were great! The user interface I felt was good, I thought the menu was very streamlined and clean. The Battle Pass layout was good as was the store.
I genuinely can’t wait to see the final build and get my hands on the full game!
Preview was fantastic, crashes sadly often plagued the game’s otherwise great gameplay and glitches were aplenty, but otherwise a great experience. To see a little more details on what I experienced I made a post on the forums detailing the issues.
Hi, My specs:
1650 super
Ryzen 5 2600
16 GB RAM
It has not convinced me since 100% of the power of the graphics card was not used, although if I thought that I could not run the game, I am grateful that if it reached 60 fps, on occasions it would drop which did not help in the experience, I don’t know if a better performance can be achieved using 100% of the card, but hopefully it is possible.
I have a Radeon RX 580 and no matter how high or low I set my graphics quality, the frame rate was always 50-55 on the map Recharge and in Academy, and 30-40 on both Bazaar and Live Fire. Maybe it’ll get fixed with polish but I’m not sure.
I could not find anything online for an issue I had which was the game freezing and crashing when I pressed the ALT key to switch grenades. It took me a while to realize the reason why my game kept crashing because there did not seem to be anyone else with the same issue from my primitive google searching. I had all my driver up to date as well.
really enjoyed the flight. AR seems a little over powered at long range but maybe thats what yall are going for just not used to it coming from previous halos.
i was running at about 75-80 fps @ 1440p max graphics i noticed though that my cpu utilization was only reach about 60%.
PC was mostly fine for me but my normal monitor seemed to have had an issue while playing as at the bottom of the screen flashed little waves of CYMK while I moved around. Since I am seeing mostly similar issues this may be the only thing I will report as per ussual with people jumping in before me. Either way for the monitor thing my monitior is a stock MSI G271, it may be a minor issue since changing monitors fixed it but I wanted to help still since this was something I noticed.
Many people were invited to test this preview and did not receive the code for it, a total pain, they justified that the minimum requirements for the preview were not enough, but there were people who met all the requirements without problems were not invited, which gives me to understand that the invitations were sent randomly, I hope that for the next flight if they send the invitations correctly to all PC insiders.
And finally I can only say that I was testing the game on an Xbox One S and the gameplay felt horrible, I hope it doesn’t stay that way with 30 FPS in multiplayer, because it would be a headache to play against other players (especially against PC and Xbox Series X/S).
The little I could see of performance tests on PC is that the game is very poorly optimized, but it’s understandable that it’s in that state for being a test, but come on… They could have optimized it to achieve that minimum 60 FPS.
I have to say 343, you guys did an excellent job with the movement and I see where you want to take this. Looking forward to seeing all the kinks ironed out. As a long time Halo fan I have to say this is how you reinvent the wheel for the future of the franchise. Keep up the great work!
I’d say that the medals are all super similar and the colors are a bit bland and don’t really stand out. Multi-Kill medals like Double Kill and Triple Kill look way too similar and same goes for basically all the other multi-kill medals, but just in different sort of tiers where they’re the same or near the same color then the next tier of multi-kills is a different color. I’d like to see each multi-kill stand out uniquely on its own as a completely different color where at first glance your like “oh yeah that’s a insert multi-kill here medal” not see it and have to do a double take to make sure in the post game carnage report when not hovering over it (Halo 2, Halo 3 and Halo: Reach did this multi-kill medal color concept perfectly).
Also, the medals for everything are way too small they need to be probably 45%-50% bigger and their placement on screen is odd. I feel putting them on the upper left side of the feed or bottom center is a better option. The medals also fade away way too fast, they should stay on the screen for 1 or 2 seconds longer and then fade away instead of what feels like half a second on the screen and it’s gone.
Another thing is using the sniper feels really delayed to shoot, it feels like I pull the trigger and almost a second goes by before the bullet actually leaves the chamber of the gun which is obviously bad I hope this gets resolved before launch.
Look sensitivity for horizontal and vertical feels too slow and same goes for aim acceleration. I was playing on 10 horizontal, 10 vertical and 5 aim acceleration with 0 deadzones and I still felt like I was turning way too slow. The 10 sensitivity for both horizontal and vertical needs to be faster and aim acceleration needs to be bumped up to 10 max instead of 5 max. On MCC I play 10 horizontal, 10 vertical and 10 aim acceleration with 1% deadzones (there’s some sort of artificial drift of whatever direction you last had the stick going in MCC when set to 0% deadzones) and I do this for every game in MCC. In MCC with those settings listed above it feels fast and responsive, but aiming in Halo Infinite feels super slow right now.
One other thing, the reticle for the Battle Rifle in this Halo Infinite build is just a smidge off from being perfect. Literally just open up those cross hairs a bit more in the final release and we’re golden. Take the Halo 5 version of the Halo 2 Battle Rifle reticle as an example, just do that exactly for the Halo Infinite Battle Rifle and it’s perfect.
Lastly, frame rates were decent, but could definitely be better. I was getting 125-135 FPS running Ultra everything which I should be getting a way better frame rate considering my hardware so hopefully that’s also resolved by launch.
My Hardware:
-GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12GB GDDR6X
-CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X
-RAM: 32GB 3600MHz DDR4
