This will be my opinion and evaluation of Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer beta. More specifically my opinion in regards to the new gameplay mechanics. Let’s get to it now!
Player Movement:
Something that 343 seems highly invested in when it comes to the new Halo is the movement mechanics. Halo 4 introduced sprint as a standard ability available to everybody regardless of loadout. Inside Halo 5 they equip every spartan with boosters and parkour, or as the developers like to call it “clambering”. The boosters are rather self-explanatory. They give the player a small boost whenever they need to do something such as strafe out of enemy gunfire or when they need that little bit of extra speed to get from place to place. The clambering is also very straightforward. Just jump into something higher up with a flat top and your character will grab on and pull themselves up. Clambering is a nice addition as it makes grenade jumping unnecessary, so you don’t need to worry about holding on to one nade to make sure you can get up to your favorite sniping locale. Boosting on the other hand feels… underdeveloped. Think about it this way. Boosting gives you a speedy getaway as long as the getaway only requires you to be five feet from where you are currently standing. Facing the direction you need to go and sprinting is just as effective, if not more. The fact of the matter is, as long as sprint is present in the game there will never be a situation in which it will be a less effective strategy than boosting. Which mechanic do I feel is more interesting? Boosting most definitely. Which mechanic do I feel is more HALO? Boosting most definitely. I honestly believe that if 343 were to remove sprinting from the game it would feel just like playing the classic Halos, only with more mechanics to master and a higher skill gap. By removing sprint the pace of the game would just about match previous Halos, the boosting would be more meaningful and a hell of a lot more tactical, and it wouldn’t really hinder any other system in the game besides the melee charge and the fact that shields won’t regenerate while sprinting (which I found to be a bad idea in the first place). The maps we have seen so far are significantly smaller than Halo 4s and don’t take long to get around as it is. I’m sure many of you who played the beta feel the same way.
ADS (Aiming Down Sights):
Halo 5: Guardians features the same classic hipfire that the Halo games are known for, but replaces the existing ADS system (which would more appropriately be referred to as a zoom function) for a more modern take on aiming down sights. And by modern I mean they now do it the same way every other shooter these days does it. When I first saw this inside the beta ads, it worried me. I was very skeptical about how much the new ADS could change the way Halo plays, but now that I’ve taken it for a test run I can honestly say it doesn’t make a difference. It operates the exact same way the old ADS did, only it takes up more of the screen. I would go on further, but there really isn’t much to say about this besides how little difference it makes.
Spartan Abilities:
The new spartan abilities as 343 calls them consist of ground pounding, ramming people, falling slower when aiming down sights, and boosting (which I already covered inside movement). A player can ground pound by jumping off of an elevated platform and holding the crouch button (it could have been the melee button, to be honest I forgot). The actual action would take a couple seconds to perform, effectively making it useless since a player could easily be 20 yards away in a couple seconds. However in the event you do hit something it is absolutely devastating. The high power of it is kept in check by how long it takes to perform so in the end it is a pretty balanced and thought out ability, even if it can’t be used often. Ramming people is exactly how it sounds. You sprint into somebody and hit the melee button to make your spartan charge another player with his shoulder, knocking said player into the nearest wall and removing their shields. Unless there isn’t a wall, like the case when I rammed one poor fellow straight off of the map Empire. Shoulder charging is fun if you’re just messing around, but the standard melee is more effective as the enemy doesn’t go flying away so you can’t hit them again. Now inside Halo 5 if you are aiming down sights as you are falling to the ground your spartan’s thrusters will activate slowing down your descent. The point of this mechanic is obvious. It is meant to give you a better shot at people while falling. What actually happens because of it is quite different. Instead of getting a better shot at them, they just get a better shot at you. You’re just sitting there like a lemming waiting to hit the bottom of a cliff while the entire enemy team unloads into you. This mechanic is mostly just there for NOVELTY, which could be said about the rest of the spartan abilities as well. They don’t actually add much to gameplay as they only are useful in specific situations. Situations which you are not likely to run into often.
There are more new additions than just these mechanics, but if I tried to go in depth into any of it I would breach the character limit imposed on posts. My verdict: on the outside it may seem intimidating considering how many new features there are inside Halo 5: Guardians, but most of the new features don’t actually affect the experience whatsoever. They are all under-developed and seem to be just there for novelty, with the exception of clambering and boosting. However the boosting in particular has loads of untouched potential that will never need to be touched as long as sprint remains a part of the game, so it might as well be considered a novelty feature. Really disappointing. 343 insists on updating the franchise to make its competitive multiplayer more appealing to people, yet it is just as lackluster as Halo 4.