Obviously I know this is a beta… but it’s clear this game is NOT Halo… This game is Call of Duty with Halo skins… Bunny hopping, quick slide, super low TTK… You don’t feel like you’re in a powered armor suit with a SHIELD at all (except for how high you can bunny hop). The plasma weapons felt super underpowered, except instead of buffing them, I wish all the OTHER weapons were nerfed and balanced around the plasma weapons instead. The plasma weapons felt slower paced, they require some skill to lead your target, and they essentially felt like the Halo I remember and was hoping for.
I cannot stress enough how disappointing it is to see every shooter (Battlefield, Halo, etc) feel like they need to copy COD’s quick, fast paced, meat-grinder gunplay and make the time to kill so quick. For starters, take frackin ‘slide’ out of the game. This feels frackin dumb in Halo. What’s next, wall-running? While you’re at it, take out quick weapon swap as well (well, it can stay, just increase the pistol’s swap time). Currently this game is about side-stepping left and right as fast as possible while emptying your Assault Rifle magazine into bunny hopping fools and attempting to dodge obscene levels of grenade spam, then instantaneously swapping to pistol to continue shooting without skipping a beat. This game is as twitch as it gets. Older Halo games were much slower paced and felt much better for it. You know, like you’re actually wearing a super advanced armored suit with a shield that actually helps you. If the shield regenerated faster or had more HP then it might balance out and feel OK; but how it is now you step out of cover and just a few bullets hit you and your shield is at 1/4 or broken and you have to sit and hide for 10 seconds until you’re fully recharged. NOT FUN.
I’m definitely an old school Halo player. Played the hell out of Halo 1-3 and Halo Reach. I stopped playing Halo after that so I can’t tell how Infinite compares to the newer Halo releases; but if they have this level of twitch gunplay then I definitely didn’t miss anything.
Seeing most people here praising the gunplay, I already know my opinion will not be popular. Am I the only one here who feels like this wasn’t Halo? Making a super fast-paced twitch FPS and slapping Halo skins on the front doesn’t make it a Halo game. Halo had a slower, deliberate feel to the gunplay that was refreshing from the twitch reflex 360 no-scope gunplay of COD and that’s completely gone now. The only thing I liked here was being able to sprint.
Graphically, it looks nice. It performs terrible but this is the one thing I’m sure they’ll optimize for release. It currently needs MAJOR work on optimization. Playing this game on max Ultra quality at 4k on a 3080 gets me ~50fps. So I turned graphics down to 1080p with ultra settings… I go up to 50-55 fps. What? A 5 FPS increase for running at 1/4 the resolution? I then turned EVERYTHING to lowest settings possible, and I was just barely able to get 55-59 fps and it was still NOT smooth at all. Again though, out of the entire test of the game, this is what I’m least concerned about; I’m sure they’ll improve the performance. It’s the rest of the ‘feel’ of the game that is most concerning. This game feels nothing like Halo. Maybe playing it on console would feel more like old-school Halo? But damn on PC this feels like a twitch fest. Thank god I have Microsoft Game Pass because I would never buy this game.
TLDR; The plasma rifle and pistol aren’t underpowered, the other weapons are just incredibly overpowered. The TTK and pacing of the plasma weapons feel like how Halo was meant to be played. Make the rest of the game match those weapons and it’ll be in a good spot.