The biggest things that made Halo “Halo” for me over the years are:
- Campaign with friends (or over matchmaking)
- PvE game modes like Warzone in Halo 5
- Custom Games
- Social Modes like Infection or Rocket Race
It took a year for Co-op to become available and it’s buggy. I’ve enjoyed it anyway since it launched finally but it needs some tweaking and it needs expansion of the gameplay to better fit and scale to 2-4 players.
We have not even heard whispers of any sort of PvE mode which is wild to me considering it’s huge success in Halo 5 and the pretty incredible opportunities they have with Infinite to make an even better experience. This is probably what I’m eager for the most and will get the most amount of my time in game.
Custom games have been and still are a joke in the present build. Forge has only just entered beta and has a LONG way to go before it’s ready for players to start making content worthy of an in-game Custom Games Browser (which better be on the horizon).
The only social mode we’ve seen so far is Fiesta which is fun sometimes but lacks the casual appeal that abstract modes such as Infection can offer. Not to mention, Infection is pretty foundational in the Custom Games and Forge experience. Always has been since Forge first started.
I’m kind of surprised we’ve gotten this far into the life of the game and some pretty baseline features are only just releasing (with lots of bugs and polishing still needed) while other baseline features/modes haven’t even been discussed. We’re a year in and the game hasn’t even finished release yet. How does that happen after so many years of development? I can only hope that the game will eventually include the listed items.
The “infinite” part of Halo remains to be seen….a year later.