I just purchased the Limited Edition a few days ago. Which I feel ripped off about because it didn’t come with a physical copy of the game or a manual. So I don’t know what the point of a tin case is. As a background I’ve been playing Halo since 2001. I wasn’t a big fan of Halo 4. The multiplayer obviously had a lot of issues and it died almost instantly. It felt like a copy of Call of Duty and other generic shooters in the Halo universe. I didn’t enjoy the campaign much either. I never thought that there was a romance between Master Chief and Cortana so in Halo 4 it felt very fake, forced, and sappy to me. The campaign was also very linear and I didn’t enjoy fighting the Promethans. Overall I felt the game was just mediocre.
Fast forward to Halo 5 and I think 343 has definitely made some big strides. I’m one of the players who doesn’t play much multiplayer. I mainly play for the campaign and story. I don’t have much time to invest in multiplayer to get good. However, the multiplayer is definitely improved over Halo 4 and I think it’s the strongest aspect of this game. It feels like an evolution of Halo 2. Given time, I think it could be the best Halo multiplayer since Halo 2. Currently though, there’s not enough variety in the maps or game modes. At launch it was also completely missing Big Team Battle, Forge, and social playlists. I’m not happy about the REQ microtransactions either. They seem to be implemented in an okay way, but I am fundamentally opposed to microtransactions in a full priced game. I think that’s just being greedy. It’s just not consumer friendly in my opinion. I really think a Forge desktop application should be developed. It would be a lot easier to make mods with a keyboard and mouse than with a controller.
Now onto the campaign which is what I care about most and where this game sadly fails. I guess I’ll start at the beginning. I did not like the opening cinematic. The combat ability and acrobatics depicted were just ridiculous in my opinion. It felt like a Marvel movie not like Halo. It was not grounded in reality enough. The first mission felt very abrupt to me and I thought it was just a bad mission.
This game suffers from a big problem that Halo 4 suffered from also. Unless you are familiar with the extended universe lore you would have no idea what is going on or care about any of the extra characters at all. This game’s story does not stand on its own. Playing as Team Osiris for the majority of the game is not acceptable. We’re talking an 80/20 split here. I don’t care about Team Osiris or Locke at all. Locke is probably the least interesting character in the entire game. The only character in Team Osiris that I find somewhat interesting is Buck. Both Blue Team and Team Osiris have almost no character development. Which is a huge shame because I am familiar with the legendary Blue Team and know how awesome they are.
When I first heard that Halo 5 was going to have a squad and that the Republic Commando creative director was working on the game I was very excited. Republic Commando was a great game if a bit too short. I thought we were going to get a much better version of Republic Commando. However, we actually got a worse version. Not only are the squadmate’s AI plain bad, but they just feel tacked on. I assumed that the campaign gameplay was going to be changed to accommodate playing as a 4 man squad of Spartans that are unique personalities with unique specialties and abilities. In reality, it just feels like a regular Halo campaign with 3 AI that follow you around. They constantly run into each other. They routinely stand and fight out in the open instead of using the terrain. If you call for a revival they will just suicide run to you one at a time. They have trouble navigating the environment and will just run straight into objects. They don’t feel different from each other at all.
Your ability to command your squad is also extremely limited. The commands are really pathetic compared to Republic Commando. You can’t give orders to specific squadmates. You can’t recall your squad to your position. You can’t cancel an order. You can’t swap weapons with your squadmates. And that’s just the basics that are missing. I would have liked that if I crouched then the squad would have too. However, that doesn’t happen and stealth actually seems to be completely absent from the game.
That’s not to say that I disliked everything about the campaign. I did enjoy playing it. I really liked the way some of the environments looked and the core gunplay was fun. I like that the Grunts speak English again because they’re funny. Halo 4 was very linear. I still think Halo 5 is linear, but less so. The environments are a little more open at times, but still nowhere near like the original. The environments in Halo 5 are highly vertical. Probably because of the new movement system, however, I’m not a big fan of gameplay that vertical. I would prefer a wider environment more than a highly vertical one. I think it’s more natural to look across the horizon than it is to constantly be looking up and down. The environments are also too cluttered up in general I think. It feels like a maze sometimes and not a real place.
As I said, a lot of the environments looked great to me. The game has great graphics as well with a few caveats. I think 343 has a tendency to favor curves over angles in general. They seem to use a lot of curves in their art. Personally, I prefer the more angular style of art. I don’t like the way the Elite and Grunt armor looks in Halo 5. Angles are strong and intimidating. I used to be able to easily distinguish the various types of Elites and Grunts based on their colors and armor. Now, however they all look very similar to me and kind of just blend in together. On the other hand I think the Hunters look great and haven’t been this interesting since the original. Great work on them.
The graphics in this game are great for the most part. However, there are some definite issues and they are noticeable especially at first. The half framerate enemies that are not close to you are very noticeable when you first start playing. It was very distracting and reminded me of Claymation. There is also a fair amount of texture pop in. There are also some textures that look very bad if they are at oblique angles to your view. These issues really disappointed me when I first started playing, but eventually I stopped noticing them. The water looked really amazing so great job on that. I definitely noticed how much more realistic many things looked because of the physically based rendering. However, some things still looked more cartoonish than real. I would prefer an even more realistic looking Halo in the future.
The story itself was a disappointment for me. No offense to whoever wrote Halo 4 and Halo 5, but they need to go. There is definitely a writing deficiency going on here. Why doesn’t 343 just hire the guys who wrote the best Halo novels? The big problem is Cortana. First of all, she is supposed to be dead. She sacrificed herself to save Master Chief in the last game and she was near death anyway because of rampancy. So, Halo 5 undoes the sacrifice and story of the last game. It’s effectively a retcon like they regretted killing her off. Then, they basically don’t explain how she survived or was resurrected and why she is now the big bad antagonist other than a few lines…