Hello everybody! I know there are those threads up top where you can put feedback for individual topics surrounding the tech test but I wanted to put all my thoughts about Halo Infinite into one tidy post here. I’m going to go over different areas of the tech test and my thoughts on each of them. For some background I played the tech test on an Xbox Series X. I’ve been playing Halo pretty much all my life and have played every single game so I am a little biased towards loving Halo but I’ll try to be as objective as possible here. Still there will be some subjectivity so here goes. I’ll break up my feedback and thoughts into multiple sections so it’s a little easier to read. I may also miss some stuff but hopefully I’ll hit the major points. Here goes!
Menus and UI
This seems like a good place to start. I thought the overall menu design looked great and was easy to read. The settings menu was well laid out and it was pretty easy to find the setting I was looking for. The only minor complaint that I had was that the UI and Accessibility tabs were like 80% the same so they could probably be merged into one tab. The battle pass menu and challenge menu were also easy to read and well laid out, but we’ll go over the battle pass and progression stuff in the next section. The armor customization menus and the like were easy to read although I can see it becoming an issue later down the road when we have hundreds and hundreds of customization items unlocked. The horizontal scrolling of the menus could get rather long and confusing once there are a ton of cosmetic items that we could choose from. On the plus side you can favorite items and there is a filter/sort option so that should alleviate some of these concerns. The in-game UI and HUD were easy to read and I thought the ammo display and radar were legible and easy to pick out. My only issue with the HUD was that the grenade and equipment displays were a little small and the small tabs underneath the grenade icon showing if you had multiple types of grenades was a little small and difficult to see at times, although that could be due to my less than stellar eyesight.
Battle Pass and Progression
Like I said before, I though the battle pass menu itself was nicely laid out and it was easy to see what each item was from the little preview box. It was a little buggy in terms of sometimes the preview box wouldn’t load in the image of the cosmetic but once you actually selected it the preview would show itself. The challenge menu was also great and I felt it was legible and easy to read. I do hope that in the final game you are able to progress the battle pass by simply playing games and earning experience rather than solely through completing challenges. The way MCC works where you can progress your experience rank by earning medals and xp in game to slowly rank up and then challenges give you a spike in experience is something I think will work really well in Infinite. My battle pass and challenges in the tech test were bugged to where the game wouldn’t give me new challenges to complete, and I did see on twitter somewhere that I should have been earning battle pass progress from xp earned during games so this might be a non-issue.
Audio
Let me start by saying the soundtrack that is playing during the main menu is excellent. You really nailed the feeling of Halo music and I cannot wait to hear more. The subtle music that plays during the match itself is also a nice touch that I didn’t really know I wanted before but now that I have it I can’t imagine it not being there. Gun audio is also excellent. Every gun that I played with sounded punchy and great to fire. I especially love the sound of the BR and how it reverberates through the environment. The soundscape as a whole is also much easier to listen to and isn’t as cacophonous as Halo 5 was. I felt like it was much easier to pick out where sounds were coming from and whether an enemy was firing toward me or not. Explosions also sounded crisp and ‘explodey’.
Graphics
I really love the art style of the game. I thought that everything looks colorful and clean in a way that makes it easy for me to understand what is happening in game at any time while also having some great visual effects going on. I could not really tell much of a graphical difference between the ‘performance’ and ‘quality’ settings on Series X, although I think the frame rate in performance mode was a bit more stable than quality mode, which makes sense. Textures and lighting were also great and overall I loved the look of each map. They were distinct and showcased nice visuals throughout while maintaining that feeling of being in the Halo universe. Were the graphics perfect? There were some issues where there would be some texture pop in and sometimes weird purple pink clouds of graphical corruption or whatever it was would roll through the arena, especially on the Recharge map. Rarely I would see some shadows render in a bit late but nothing anywhere as egregious as Halo 5 where shadows would be rendering and re-rendering themselves in 5 feet in front of you.
Map Design
I think they really nailed the map design of the three maps we got to play. They were all visually distinct from one another, which is a huge step up from most of Halo 5’s maps which felt kind of samey. The maps also displayed a great sense of verticality and multiple ways to move around. I also never felt like I was confused as to where I was on the map at any time. It always felt like I had multiple ways to engage in a fight and multiple ways to try to escape a fight if I needed to, but also it never felt like there were so many areas of a map where I was overwhelmed as to who or what was shooting at me. All the maps felt like the perfect size for the 4v4 game type we were playing and each felt like a perfect complement to the movement, which I’ll get into more.
Movement
I think the movement speed and feel are excellent as well. I like that the base movement speed is fast and it doesn’t feel like I need to sprint all the time to go anywhere on an arena map. In fact I rarely felt the need to sprint at all except for when I wanted to initiate a slide or perhaps to get a slightly longer horizontal jump. This is exactly what I feel like sprint should be in a Halo game; not there just for the sake of moving faster, but there as a tool to allow us to access more advanced movement techniques.
Guns, Equipment and Power Ups
I’m running out letters to type with so I’m gonna have to make this quick :). I think all of the guns in the tech test feel great and that they each have their own role to play and they play it well. I especially love how the BR feels, not just because I’m a BR stan but it just feels crisp and fun to shoot. I also like how it plays with the AR and sidekick, notably that the BR does not dominate those other two guns and the AR and sidekick can stand their own at close range but at medium to long ranges the BR will win more often than not. The AR may need a slight range nerf though. Equipment is fun to use and is balanced well. Power ups surprised me in how short of a duration some of them are. Overshield for example I though would last a bit longer and be more shield but after playing with it I think it works well.
I’ve run out of letters now but overall I think the game is really fun! The game isn’t perfect by any means but I had fun and I can’t wait to play more.