Hello all,
I partook in the flight recently. I had a pretty good time, but there were a few elements that I felt like made the game feel a little off.
- Halo 5 style pregame show off - I don’t like this. It makes Spartans feel like a bunch of ego-statistical jocks rather than professional soldiers. In the campaign, Chief’s typically cool demeanor helped make him feel cool. I feel like Spartan Locke wasn’t as well received because of his attitude. The arbiter wasn’t liked at fist either, but he grew on people. Locke didn’t. And I think it is that attitude that made that happen. And the attitude is coming through with the multiplayer Spartans when they try to act tough. We were promised a going back to the roots of Halo, but these little atmospheric things make it feel like we are playing Halo 5 pt 2. - Floating weapons take away from the feel - The floating weapons kinda stink. I love the wall weapons, but when there is a pair of giant floating grenades in your face, it takes away from it. A similar thing is the strange conveyor belt thing on Fragmentation. It just makes no sense. It launches the Spartans and vehicles like way faster than the belt is going. Like the belt is at 20 mph, and the Spartans are launched at like 70 mph. Just use a grav lift. It makes more sense in the Universe. These kind of things really take away from the atmosphere of the game. Halo has always been a little grounded in reality. This isn’t Unreal Tournament and it shouldn’t try to be Unreal Tournament. It might seem nit picky, but it just takes you out of it and makes the game less fun. And the vehicle spawns are way worse. But I love the Pelican thing. - UI needs changed - The outlining of Spartans to denote teams sucks. I keep shooting at my own teammates, or worse, hesitating to shoot at enemies. This isn’t Borderlands, I don’t want assets to have Borders. And please bring back the classic ammo counter thing. When I was first playing Halo: Combat Evolved, the ammo counter blew me away. It was so cool. And I hated how it went away when playing too many people split screen. Now it is like totally gone. The ammo counter is a minor gripe, but I do miss it. I want the UI to be cool. - The maps don’t have a good feel - I didn’t really care for the maps. With the exception of Fragmentation. That one’s atmosphere was just awesome. Whoever made that map deserves a raise. Absolutely stunning map. The rest don’t really pop. Especially Bazaar. It just makes so little sense. I feel like it belongs in Call of Duty 4. Not even a Modern Call of Duty. But like, the old school classic one. Not a terrible map… but so out of place. Recharge wasn’t great either.
Overall the gameplay was good. But it just felt like it was lacking something. After thinking about it a while, I feel like it was the loss of immersion. And I think my points above sum it up good.
There were many promises that the game would be more like Halo 3. I think the gameplay did a good job. But the aesthetics are way off. I believe that they called the art style “Brutalism”. I would like to see more architecture like that and more stuff that makes sense in the universe. I understand that this is Sci-Fi, but why would the UNSC make a miniature grav lift to hold weapons using stolen Covenant technology?