Gotta say before I begin that besides Thursdays challenges this has been one of the smoothest tests, betas, etc that I’ve ever played personally ( i know its not the same for everyone) So good on 343 for all their hardwork this weekend letting us test and enjoy the game.
Weapon Impressions
Assault Rifle - The Assault Rifle is damn near perfect the way it is an I will be very annoyed if its nerfed to irrelevance like it is in most of the past games. It does feel just a bit too strong at longer range but overall it finally feels like a weapon you want to keep rather than dump immediately. Its nice that the pistol is the weapon I want to swap out asap rather than my AR and I have found that I actually use it quite a bit at close range even with a BR to swap to.
Sidekick - The pistol is finally in the spot it should be. A backup weapon not what you switch too as soon as boots touch the ground. Leave it like it is.
BR75 - The Battle Rifle is awesome. Finally decently balanced precision weapon ( still dont like precision starts) It works great at medium to longer ranges and it actually feels like a disadvantage at close range, as it should. I switch to AR or pistol in close range and that feels much better than precision weapons just being dominate at all ranges, which has been my experience in Halo in recent years.
Bulldog - The Bulldog is bad. Its just not fun to use. It has no 1 shot kill range as far as I can tell and just feels weak and bad to use.
Skewer - Banished sniper eh? Not bad. Pretty satisfying when you land a hit, but with Infinites severely nerfed controller aim assist its really difficult to use
Sniper - Kind of the same boat as the Skewer but with more shots before reload. As satisfying as ever to land shots when you can
Needler - Feels a little weak. I guess its been classified as an SMG now so it feels pretty good at close range. Its lacking its iconic sounds though. Whether thats by design or a bug in the tech test I’d like to see this improved. It doesnt feel weighty or impactful when the needles are striking and it seems to take far too many to supercombine.
Ravager - I havent been able to use it as much but it was pretty fun to use when I did. It feels outclassed by other weapons at times though.
Heatwave - Honestly I dont like it. Its kind of cool but feels pretty weak overall, I could be using it improperly though.
Commando - Its weighty, feels good to shoot and kills fast if you can keep it on target. Its pretty difficult to keep steady on controller though
Plasma Pistol - I mean its the PP. Seems about as I expected.
Pulse Carbine - It feels pretty strong at times and underwhelming at others. I need to use it more to get a feel for it.
Gravity Hammer - Feels kinda clunky and slow but its a giant hammer so feels good? lol
Rocket - Its the SPNKR, what more is there to say
Grenades - Kinda strange. At times I feel like they go as far as ODSTs can throw, and other times I chuck em 10 miles.
I think that’s every weapon I used. Now for gameplay impressions
Controller - Gameplay with a pad by no means feels “Bad” but it feels pretty floaty and has raised the skill ceiling much higher than I feel it should especially for the large number of people just playing casually after work (myself included). It feels like AA and/or Magnetism were reduced far too much to appease to the PC crowd imo and I feel like it needs a slight nudge up to feel stickier like past Halo games. Not as crazy as Halo 5 where you can get a headshot without the reticle even a little bit on an enemy but it definitely feels far to tuned down than it should.
Movement - Feels great. Sprint is faster but not breakneck like Halo 5. Sliding feels good and mantling doesn’t seem to be the norm for the design of the maps. I can often make jumps perfectly fine without needing to mantle and interrupt my ability to fire while making leaps.
Sound - Sometimes the maps are just super quiet. Ambient sound seems nonexistent at times. Not sure if that’s a bug or not but something I noticed. Guns sound great ( except for the needler) and the spartan chatter isnt too annoying. I do find the mix of spartan chatter, announcer and AI to be distracting though and feel like the AI needs to be toggleable and/or toned down. For instance I like that they give you a heads up on when power weapons/items are about to or have spawned but I don’t really need the AI to also say “Skewer acquired!” when I pick it up. Like yeah I know I just picked it up. Sometimes it just gets to be a lot of voices talking.
Outlines - I am perfectly happy with my Spartan colors being visible now but the are overshadowed by the outlines most of the time. Outlines are great from an accessibility aspect for the color blind but it also takes me out of the world and makes it feel more arcadey and doesn’t match the art style around it. It feels like a decision born from the Free to play MTX aspect of the game rather than the accessibility one to me. I’d like the option to turn outlines off and/or the ability for the player to go back to a Red v Blue color scheme for matches (or colors the player chooses) I feel like this would also be great for accessibility while not looking out of place in the world.
Maps - Honestly this makes me the happiest I’ve been about Halo in awhile. I felt like a lot of Halo 5s maps were lifeless, textureless art style, forge maps, etc. They werent very memorable. Bazaar, Recharge and Live Fire are bursting with personality and functionality. I’ve had a blast playing on these maps and discovering their secrets.
Visuals and Performance - Game looks and feels amazing on my PC and my Xbox Series X. I know a lot of people complaining about PC performance but I’d guess this is indicative of a 2 month old build not final performance. Though seeing 45 fps at times on my 3900x and 3080 system was a little surprising lol.
Battle Pass - It seems a lot better than other f2p games but I hope the free tier reward isnt going to be mostly challenge swaps. I also think the Challenge swap thing is just filler, we should be able to just swap our challenges at will or at the very least the challenge swap should let us choose a specific challenge we want to complete. Obviously the full battle pass isn’t visible to us but not really a fan of consumable filler for Battle passes. Otherwise pretty happy with not having to worry about losing a seasons pass.
Bots - I forgot bots!! They are great. They get wrecked by players sure (even Spartan level) but they seem to play like real players. I’ve seen them use their motion sensor, close distance for melee, crouch strafe. I love them
Academy - Forgot this too - This is a great mode. I love being able to warm up here before multiplayer and to try out weapons and challenge myself!
I’m sure I left out some things but these are just the impressions of a 32 year old Dad thats had a few hours here and there this weekend to jump in and enjoy the latest chapter of my favorite video game series. Thanks for reading and thanks again to 343 for all the hard work they are putting into this game.