Been playing Halo my entire life, cant wait for Infinite to come out, I feel like everything I play currently is just to hold me over for when Infinite gets here. I was not a part of the last test, here are my thoughts after playing many hours over this weekend’s test:
Pros
- Love the look and design, feels fresh and still grounded in Halo, the team did great with the aesthetics.
- The sound effect design, guns sound awesome, movement sounds great and so do explosions.
- Guns are great looking and feeling (exception listed below)
- Clambering feel good and I am glad its back
- Sprint speed is good and feels well done
- Equipment is fun, love the repulser and grapple, never really saw the threat detector and the drop shield is decent.
- A small thing, that I think is really awesome, is at the beginning match intro sequence when the camera moves into your Spartans helmet when the match starts, its really cool and kudos to the designers for making the effect look and feel really good.
- The game, in general, does feel like halo, the items listed below are things I think could be fixed/tweaked/altered to make the game the best.
Radar
This is my current biggest issue with the game, I do not like how the radar works. Its my impression that when considering player movement, only sprinting puts you on the radar and it feels so non-halo to me. My dislike for the radar in its current state isn’t an attempt to keep the game the “same” as other Halos, but it changes the pacing for the worse in my opinion. I’ve played many CODs through the years, they are fun for awhile but ultimately I would fall back to Halo because I dislike the inherent mechanic in COD that you sprint around, and who sees who first generally wins the fight. With the radar changes, I am finding my self feeling the same way. Just roam around and with no intel, it many times seems to boil down to who sees who first. I love the cat and mouse of halo games in the past, of knowing on radar that someone was coming and knowing they see you too, then someone disappears, so they are crouched or waiting. The changes are something I think is a huge mistake and makes the game feel less halo and more like the other FPSs that I would rather not be playing.
Sliding
Sliding is clunky and just doesn’t feel good. Normally in FPS games, that currently seem to all generally have a slide, I map it to my mouse and find value in it. With this tech preview I mapped it like normal but the time to execute the slide is so great that I was finding it basically useless. I even unmapped it in favor of melee on my mouse. I really don’t see any sliding from anyone and I don’t use it all anymore. I don’t want COD / Apex type sliding, chaining them together, sliding all the time, but the slide in Infinite in the current state seems worthless and I believe even if it were to be removed, would not change the game at all.
S7 Sniper
Historically my favorite weapon in Halo across all of the games. I had heard during the previous test flight that the sniper was “harder” and “more difficult” to use. I am ok with more difficult but I imaged it would be from more accurate or tighter hit boxes as I have always felt that sniping in halo was fun because, well, it was also pretty easy. After getting my hands on it this weekend I can say that it does feel different but not in a better way. It was clear to me even after a short time using it in bot matches and in weapon drills, that I think the difference (and added difficulty) is that there is a delay between hitting the fire button and the gun actually taking the shot. It feels like there is a predictive nature now needed to use the gun. Look where you want to shoot, shoot just before your target is in your crosshairs but not because the gun isnt hitscan, but because of the delay. If this isnt accurate to a way the sniper been tweaked, then I would just say my summary is: it doesnt feel great. The trigger delay, that I think I am feeling, feels like a weak way of making a gun harder to use, it just makes it feel unresponsive.
Grenade Indicator
I found myself getting killed by grenades way more than in previous titles. I couldnt pin point the issue but I believe it boils down to either having no grenade threat indicator on the hud, or if it does exist its not easily identifiable and not knowing which way to run or evade to get away results in deaths that I feel in previous titles were more easily mitigated.
Identifying Pickups
Small thing, but I found the pads or wall mounts where guns and equipment spawn to not be easily visible. Even after learning the maps (enough to know locations of things), I found myself running past the weapon drop I wanted because it just blends in.
Halfway Score Sound
I found this offputting and feels very out of place. Even after learning that the sound meant that the halfway point for winning score was reached, I still find myself being like “what’s that?” when it plays. The previous games having the announcer say “[enemy is] Half-way to victory” does a better job, maybe in this game its your AI that says it (maybe they already do) but the sound is odd to me.
Death Sound
There is a “clunk” type sound that plays when you die (i think armor hitting the ground) and to me it sounds somewhat like dying to a grenade. Not only was I unable to locate grenades (as mentioned above) but for awhile I thought I was constantly dying to them beyond the increased amount that I really was because the sound has an effect similar (to my ears) to that of being killed my a nade. I also play on a super-ultrawide monitor, so until I brought my HUD inwards towards the center of the screen, I generally wasnt looking the kill feed and so I just constantly thought I died to nades.