Alright, so here are my thoughts on the game so far. Played on the Xbox One.
Halo Infinite’s multiplayer is very good, and shows promise. Movement speed has slightly increased compared to previous Halo games, meaning that it’s more fast paced. Sprinting is still a thing however, which may sound odd. However, the reason for its inclusion is probably because of the slide mechanic. Thankfully in custom matches there’s the option to turn sprinting off, so you can have that classic Halo experience. Speaking of custom matches, the best feature to come out of this game is bot support. You heard that right, there’s finally AI bots in a Halo game! Thank you 343 for listening to us users who wanted bots in Halo. Match customization is still feature full. You can change the movement speed, turn off sprinting as I mentioned, set the bots as I also mentioned, change health and armor values, etc. A lot of options are here like in previous Halo games. The game has a tutorial mode, a weapon practice mode that’s also a challenge mode, and training with bots. Armor customization is here, but since this is a beta there isn’t an insane amount of options yet. The Spartan customization is a step up from Halo 5, which from what i’ve seen of that game was limited. You can now change your Spartan’s voice for the first time in the series, and you also get an AI like Master Chief. Makes me wonder if 343 will add Cortana as an option. Like Halo 5, you can change your weapon’s skin. At the moment changing colors for things such as your armor and weapons is done with presets rather than setting the color yourself, which is odd. Maybe they’ll change that in the future. There’s not a huge amount of maps at the moment, but the ones available are good. I like the streets map a lot. The weapons are neat, although the mighty magnum was replaced by a standard pistol. 343 promised the return of split screen multiplayer, which is said that it’ll come soon. With what’s on offer, split screen multiplayer will be a ton of fun when it gets released. Hopefully Forge comes in too. The music is very good. Now i’ll get to the problems. In the local multiplayer side of things, even if you have set the amount of bots to 8, only 2 show up in gameplay for some reason. Match settings reset randomly. Even if you chose local, someone online will somehow connect. Hopefully these issues will get taken care of. As for online, I haven’t seen a lot of issues yet. Another problem with the game is how getting armor is handled. I know this is free to play, but why not get rid of the battle pass and have things be unlocked by earning them like in Halo Reach? You don’t have to take away the main micro-transactions (as much as I hate to say that), but the battle pass is unnecessary. A fov slider for vehicles could be added. Also the option to turn off things like the game showing you where power weapons are and such. Could health packs be added as options too?
Maps and modes from previous Halo games will probably be brought back in updates or when the full game gets released (I hope Dominion and Grifball return). Halo Infinite shows a lot of promise. At first I was worried, but I must say that the game is very good. Once all the content gets added in, Infinite will probably be the best Halo game in recent memory. Possibly the best Halo game of all-time along with Reach if it happens! We’ll have to wait and see. Keep up the good work, 343. 