So i watched the full Halo 5 segment before going to pick up MCC. I will admit, I was pretty skeptical when they were going through the list, but it changed once I actually saw them in action. Here’s what I think:
Sprint- Personally, I never had a huge problem with it in Halo 4 or Reach. If you’re a good shot, someone running away was just a target that couldn’t fight back. Now, your shields don’t recharge while doing it, making running away a much less viable option (and I never saw how Sprint makes it so an unskilled player will beat a skilled player 100% of the time). Sprint will more than likely just be used to cover greater distances in less time, and hopefully, the maps account for that (the lack of Jetpack should fix alot of the map movement issues), so we’ll have to wait until the Beta for final judgements.
Slide- This is actually pretty cool. Its a small detail, and getting into viable cover is a bit easier. I doubt this will swing the game in either direction terribly much, but you feel cool doing it.
Shoulder Charge/Ground Pound- These two combined with Slide sort of makes all Spartans the Titan from Destiny (so there you go, its turning into a Bungie game rather than CoD, happy now?). Both have their ups and downs- they can immediately take out an enemy (or put a big dent in their health- I didn’t see anyone successfully use it in the exhibition match), but miss with either, and you’re pretty much done for. In Destiny, I have a pretty hard time using Shoulder Charge even outside PvP, given the charge time and innaccuracy. Ground Pound makes you a floating target until it goes in. I’m willing to bet that if anyone wants these two make any effect, it’ll take quite a bit of practice and skill.
Clamber- Speeds up moving around a bit more, and can extend jump lengths if you’re just short. We’ll have to see how the maps are built around this, I guess.
Thruster Pack- this was in Halo 4, but didn’t do much. We saw someone manage to evade a sword lunge and score a Bulltrue with it. Since theres no grenade indicators (that I saw, at least), it won’t ruin them, which is a good thing. I’m looking a bit more forward to this.
SmartScope- I was most skeptical about this, especially during the random clips, but once I saw the actual match, its pretty clear that its NOT ADS. The whole time, if anyone used the AR, it wasn’t zoomed at all, and still looked exactly as effective as its always been (which is to say, not at all). Only the BR, DMR, and Piston saw actual scope use, but they had it anyways. They even said during the interviews that they didn’t want it to be the only way to remain competitive, and I’m pretty sure that’ll hold true since de-scope is back in. In all honesty,based on what I saw, its just a reskin of zoom that was applied to all weapons in some capacity. As with everything, though, we’ll have to wait until the Beta to see how it plays out, and give honest, well-thought-out feedback.
(I’m sure theres one more, but I forgot)
Overall, I’m a but more confident in Spartan Abilities than Armor Abilities. Halo 4’s main falling point was that ti got rid of balanced starts. Now, everyone has these abilities, and all (save maybe Sprint) have minor impacts that subtly change how each encounter goes down. AAs had much more drastic impacts, and varied from person to person. I’ll withhold final judgement for the beta, and hopefully they’ll iron our any huge problems with them by release, but I’m liking the way these change the game.