Having played around the time of Halo3 and every game after, i never truly experienced halo 1 & 2 besides the master chief collection, so my review of this game will be solely on the mutiplayer aspect, not the entire game as a whole.
TLDR: The game looked good at first, but constant issues with the game settings itself as well as the game/gunplay, it has severely diminished my Will to continue to play this game until the problems are fixed and the game is complete
Coming from the backburner of halo 5, I had some decent expectations of the multiplayer, watching abilities be used and the maps/graphic/everything looked all nice and well made and a true joy to behold.
My playing experience however, didn’t not follow suit in the videos I watched. Though the graphics and such held up like they showed, the overall experience of playing multiplayer made me never want to pick it up again, even after all the updates to help progression and gameplay.
- My first issue came with the gunplay itself. no matter what, unless its a massive map without vehicles, no one honestly goes for the other weapons besides what you spawn with, and even then its a short time as your either dead or its out of ammo faster then you can say fubar. Back in the day, i felt like the weapons on the map were slight upgrades to what you spawned with and made you feel good to have in your hands till it respawned to refill your amm, or someone got the better of you with precision over power. I cant tell you the number of times I dove into the walkways underneath the map for that sweet sweet gravity hammer while everyone fought above. It just felt nice and now its all assault rifles till the shields drop then a punch to face or if its a farther engagement, a pistol shot to finish someone off. Or if that doesn’t work, throw 20 grenades, you spawn with 2 every time so you might as well use them, there’s plenty more around the map to refill with ease.
- The gameplay itself also lacks the esthetic feel of previous halos, both bungie and 343, from radar issues to suddenly dying as I was getting shot in the back with an assault rifle as the screen shows no true indication of “oh hey, your dying, get to cover!” until your shields break, then your dead anyways . Abilities as well are useless on most maps besides those that have vehicles as its either A: gets you across the map (grappler) or B: active camo or overshield to help you kill 1-2 people before a pistol takes you out. I don’t often see people going for the walls or reflect items unless vehicles are in play so they have something to use RB on.
- The game itself is also unoptimized as I have yet to be able to see my entire screen unless i play in some tiny box, as I either lose the top part of the screen or the bottom every time i play. Full screen/borderless doesn’t help at all as the bottom of the screen is still cut out. No other game has done this besides infinite and any attempt to fix it, condems me to play lose something i need to see.
I feel overall, that Halo Infinite desperately needs a Refit to keep itself aloft. From what i heard of the campaign its a joy to behold, but if it wishes to make money on the FTP multiplayer. They need to sit down and go over the code and remember what the days were back then and how to advance the joy of those beautiful MLG days of old. Adjust the spawning weapons to feel like “Hey i could kill you with these weapons, but this BR might kill you faster” and reduce grenades to 1 per spawn or none and you have to get them off the ground.
Radar needs an overhaul as at the current moment, it feels like no matter what I’m watching it, it doesn’t catch an enemy’s position correctly enough to make it useful to find your foe before they get the drop on you.
The settings need a MASSIVE overhaul so you can actually set screen safe zones so you keep everything neat, but still see everything you want to besides being an unlucky person with the wrong screen size for optimal gameplay.
And I believe that abilities shouldn’t have a usage bar, but instead a cooldown unless its considered a “Power” ability (over shield, cloak, grappler), the halo reach days had the right idea on that part at least, beside sprint being an ability.
and that’s it
Rating 2.5/5, it looks good, just doesn’t feel good