I’ve been a Halo fan for a long time. My first game was Halo: CE on the PC, and later Halo CE and Halo 2 on the original Xbox. Since going to college this year, I haven’t been able to keep up with Halo as much as I wanted to. Hell, I didn’t get Halo 5 until a month ago due to my strained resources of both time and money. Therefore, I’m a very casual player. I don’t even have the DMR unlocked for Warzone.
What I don’t understand is how there is so much toxicity towards the game. Yeah, the campaign was lacking and there’s no splitscreen, but that’s my only real complaint. I enjoy the game immensely. Recently, you could find me on the weekends playing Warzone for hours without end. I love it. I mean, I wish my dorm buddies could play Halo 5 with me, but I understand the reasons why there isn’t splitscreen.
“343i is screwing over the casual players”. Sure, I don’t have every weapon skin, armor combination, or assassination animation to use in the game, but I’m still having fun. I love hopping up on a hard-earned Gauss Warthog and wrecking havoc against the enemy until we get blown up. I love storming the Garage on Escape from ARC with my BR and SMG with four other guys, then get massacred by that one guy with a shotgun. I have a lot of fun, despite my “casual” status.
Sure, I may wish for the Halo 3 and Reach days of hopping into a massive party of people and playing ridiculous modes of Infection. But the Forge in Halo 5 is absolutely incredible. We’ve already seen that the pancake flipping game is ingenious, so it won’t be too much longer before we’re playing other crazy gametypes.
Maybe I don’t have the money to be considered a “true Halo fan”, someone who can read every book as they’re released (I’ve read about 70-80 percent of them), or someone that can grind away at multiplayer for a month to unlock everything. Maybe I’m not a “true Halo fan” because I’m having fun with Halo 5 and getting my money out of it.