Following the announcement of Halo 5 all the way back in 2014 I became very intrigued yet at the same time very cautious of the new and upcoming title within the franchise. Intrigued because after all it was Halo…and cautious, well, because of Halo 4. Every week I spent time locating all the news I could get off the internet regarding Halo 5 wondering if this would be the next big thing, but sadly 343 kept a tight lip and little to no news came out regarding Halo 5 over the months, and thus the long wait for E3 began…
E3 kicked off and Halo 5 started off the show a bang. Yet, skepticism still ran in the back of my mind after the Campaign Demo was shown, I honestly wasnt sure whether or not I would even get Halo 5 until they revealed it…Warzone. “A giant leap for Halo multiplayer”, or so they claimed. PvP meets PVE, constant fighting, constant action, non stop fun. Everything a gamer could ask for all found within one gametype?! Let’s just say I was out the door and camping outside my local Gamestop before they even finished their presentation. I continued watching gameplay on Youtube and kept thinking to myself “why cant this game come out sooner?”. Mayhem was taking place, everyone seemed like they were having a blast, there were battles in the skies with phaeton v banshee, on the land with tank v wraith, across the map with snipe v snipe. I wanted it. I was aware that items were unlocked by a paywall yet I didnt understand how much that would impact the game and oh boy what a mistake that was…
October 27th, 2015, Halo 5 finally arrived at my doorstep. I was elated, and eagerly waiting the Xbox to download and install the game, minutes passed by like hours, everything seemed to go very slow, yet finally my thirst was quenched and the game started running. First thing I did was load up the game and play some Warzone, I remember it clearly. Warzone Assault, Summit. Game loads up and…disappointment. A glitch that would soon become a familiar part of the warzone experience revealed itself for the first time, “retrieving reqs” thats all I would see. In fact, everyone in the match had loadout weapons, and yet we painfully finished the match, and I would only be brought into this situation just moments after, in fact the next game I would wound up with the same problem. Luckily the issues were quickly fixed over the days, but I later learned it wouldn’t be the last time the issue would occur.
My first experiences with Warzone (once the bug was “fixed”) was amazing! Everything advertised seemed to be coming true. I mean sure some reqs were impossible to ever see or get and sure there were some kinks and dings with the game, but everything else at the moment seemed perfect. Battles were always intense to the very end, bosses were always hard fought, bases were continually being contested, mayhem was occurring on every which way of the map. Sadly however… this wouldnt last for very long.
Playing endlessly the whole month and wasting every day on Warzone some minor issues began to arise. Firstly the map rotation was getting kinda stale, wasn’t a major issue as the gametype was still fun to play but an issue none the less. Secondly the appeal to Warzone seemed to be dying down, bosses would remain on the field for far to long, players would rather rack up their stats rather than play the objective, and the mayhem was getting a bit to crazy. No biggy though these issues would rarely ever occur and didnt really affect the Warzone experience greatly. But, unknowingly to me these issues would have a lasting affect in the long run.Several months passed by and there I was still playing the hell out of Halo 5…however my experience was not anywhere near the same.
Three months into the games life span and only one map had been added into Warzone, leaving us players with only 4 maps to play (I guess 7 if you count cutting off portions of a map as an entirely new map). Weapon gaps grew, the stronger grew stronger and the weaker became weaker, I was in the middle of all of this. My weaponry was growing a fair amount but not at the insane rates as the people who had the bigger wallet or the people who had all day to play, but also not at the pathetic rate of the people who sparsely played due to the lack of time or whatever the reason may be. I was in the middle and I was content with what I had, however it was clear that their was a huge gap in weaponry which in turn meant a huge gap in the amount of fun one could have with the Warzone experience. During that time span something else had also occurred, the birth and introduction of what we call Spartan Companies were created. And with that a downward spiral began to form.
Spartan Companies while great at the time soon began to cause some major issues to Warzone and its over all entertainment factor. Some games would be blowouts due to Companies having communication but those games were to far and to few in between for anyone to really complain until it was announced, the dreaded and tainted Achilles armor. Achilles was one of the many reasons Warzone began to crumble. The more and more one played, the more and more games someone wold find themselves being endlessly killed and annoyed all for the sake of having a piece of virtual accessories. Great! And to make matters even worse, as stated previously, the stronger got stronger, insanely strong in fact. Matches began to be decided by who had more vehicles, who had more artillery, who had more time or money, and no longer became about, who killed the bosses first, who captured the most bases. It wasnt about having fun anymore it was about who could pull out the bigger weapon. You see this wasnt an issue early in the games life span because everyone was more or less on the same playing field, everyone had a somewhat fair chance of doing what they wanted to do and nothing was out of limits. They just became to strong though…
The reqs while controversial, I believed were a decent idea. I didnt mind the microtransactions at first, but then the spnker ex came out along with all of its variants, and then the blood of suban came out, and the the hammer as well as its respective variants, every new dlc that came out more and more op weapons came out, add that to all the weapons that were currently in the game and it didn’t become hard to find yourself fighting off an overwhelming amount of overpowered weapons in one match.
Late into this games short life span things got even worse with the introduction of Mythic bosses and map rotations. At this point everyone who played the game since the beginning had more or less all the OP weapons they wanted which resulted in even more frustrating chaos, to the point where players no longer could roam the maps freely and kill times were almost instant. And the boss rotation, while great at its reveal even added to the already frustrating experience. Players no longer cared about bosses, they were just there endlessly roaming what very little they could, and match times greatly increased due to this.
The current iteration of Warzone is very much the same. Boring, monotonous and frustrating. Bosses have become a chore to hunt down, games are long and overdrawn, kill times are insanely quick , spawn trapping is still very prevalent, map rotation is still barebones, and Warzone is still a huge let down…
TLDR: Warzone blows