Dude I'm not good at them either. This is the first Halo multiplayer I've ever played. Even beyond Halo I've only ever played Black Ops: Cold War and Valorant a handful of times. I've been watching some YouTube tutorials to better learn how to efficiently use each weapon, and of course practicing every night. But it's worth noting, I'm utter shit in ranked. If I play ranked, I will have a sub 1 KD every round.
Halo Infinite’s campaign is pretty good so far. Finished 3 main objectives. Just been clearing out bits of the overworld. Story has been lacking overall but I’m still early in. They still do the well a bunch of random junk happened between games and we aren’t really going to explain why. But as of right now it’s 343’s best game and one that can sit next to the Bungie games.
Spoiler: Thoughts after watching a walkthrough First off uuuuuggggggggggggggh they continued with THAT plot unnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn . Right, now that that's out of my system I kind of miss the day where you could play a game and NOT have to look up extra material so the story makes complete sense. Mainly speaking about all that Zeta backstory and whatnot. That's kind of important but is never really explained fully in game. Pros -Nice expansive landscape that isn't just here's a fucking flat ass semi hill over and over again -New weapons, kinda wonky but some do look like they could be fun to use. -The Weapon, definitely feels like if Cortana had a younger twin sister. She's a bit green but she has some of those quirks Cortana had. Quite enjoyed the exchanges she had with Chief. -Dat intro cut scene am I right -Grapplehook brings a lot of new options for gameplay. Wanna be Tarzan go right ahead! Cons -Capturing the outposts don't really seem to have any effect on the the campaign. It's just something to do. You capture it and YAY it's yours forever. Kind of wish there was some sort of tug of war kind of mechanic where the Banished actually tried to retake certain outposts. Make capturing outposts a bit more strategic because you have to weigh risks of recapture. -While I do appreciate a return to the silly dialogue of yore, um I have noticed enemy ai can be waaay too chatty at times. It gets to the point where you have to kill them to shut them up. -UNSC kind of seems to be an after thought. They don't do much other then act as bullet sponges until they die. It's just HEY save us okay we're here, they don't play any role in the campaign in any meaningful way otherwise. -Echo216, overall I did enjoy him being in the campaign, bit of a different take compared to your standard OO RA marine type. He's mainly a con only because I feel like 343 didn't quite know what to do with him at certain times. The verbal exchanges just felt weird almost as if he wasn't really meant to take part in the conversation but they wanted to throw him in there being the new character. -Where the hell is the Infinity, Lasky, all those damn Spartan 4, BLUE TEAM!?!? -Escharum, they hyped him up to be THE ONE that taught Atriox but in the campaign he was just an old dude that huffed and puffed and really didn't come off as that intimidating figure as he should have. -"Bosses" just felt really like normal baddies with a bigger health bar. Basically just keep pumping them full of ammo and they ded. Also WTF was up with those health bars.......really!? That just felt like an unnecessary addition just to point out that they were bosses. It might just be me but these guys are supposed to be pretty dangerous but they come off more like "HA I'm the bad guy HOOOOO fear me Master Chief!!" They do all this build up with the backstory of the torture elite but by the time you get to him he doesn't quite live up to the description. It's all very generic. Halo Infinite might have it's flaws but it's still better than 4 and 5. Going to wait a bit and try to find a 100% completion run from an actual good player before I make concrete judgements about the game. I don't know where 343 is going but there's just a lot of pieces to the puzzle that just haven't been answered yet. It's the pilot...um Echo1something. I've also seen an Arby and a grunt in that same style, maybe taking a cue from Doom using that cutesy style for easter eggs of various characters.
Slayer playlist coming this Tuesday the 14th. FFA, SWAT, and Fiesta are included. Halo Infinite Finally Getting A Slayer Playlist Next Week Finished the campaign today. I was taking my time, doing all the side stuff, but after the 5th story mission, I said screw this side stuff and did the rest of the story missions. I went back to get some Mjolnir armory cases that had nameplates for multiplayer. I have no real desire to do anything else campaign wise. I don't care about 100%. If the map were smaller, and if some of the enemies were less bullet-spongey, I probably would go for it. At one point in the campaign I got sick of fighting enemies, and just ran past all of them, only stopping when there was a room that required clearing them all out. The highlight of this game for me is the enemy dialogue. The grunts are awesome. For me, everything else in this game is average. Let's see if the slayer update keeps me engaged. The other multiplayer modes didn't.
If they get excited about that wait til they hear about cows. Oh grunts why must you make me kill you when you bring me such joy.
Alright, just finished the campaign. And I have to say, very nicely done 343. Bravo. This was easily their best Halo campaign to date. Perfectly blends both old and new Halo. I loved the dynamic between Chief, the Weapon, and Echo-216(or should I say Fernando). This had to be the most emotional performance from Steve Downes to date. Easily his best. Escharum, easily one of the best Halo villains to date, Master Chiefs equal in almost every way. The Harbinger… meh. Not a lot of substance there. Both old soldiers, just trying to do what they think is right. I was honestly never bored in this, even with the somewhat redundant nature of the some of the side stuff. The combat made it fun to do. Also, getting access to the Wasp made things SO much more easier. Fortunately I got all the UNSC and Banished audio logs, so I have a good idea of what’s going with everyone else. Spoiler I can get why they sidelined Atriox in this, obviously they didn’t want to defeat him right away. That would be anticlimactic with how they‘ve built them up. Though as that post credit scene showed, we haven’t seen the last of him. So we‘ve got our new Covenant(the Banished) and our new Flood in a way(the Endless). It sounds like classic Halo setup to me. Though obviously we need to learn more about the latter. Then there’s the elephant in the room, Cortana, the Created, and the Guardians. Cortana herself, she was wrapped nicely enough, all things considered. Quite a poignant end for her. This time for good hopefully. The Created are a different story, aside from the Weapon, we don’t see a single other AI here. This leaves the glaring question mark of what has become of them, not to mention the Guardians… powerful things like those, can’t just sweep those under the rug… I do hope we see some characters that only got mentioned here again eventually. Lasky, Halsey, even Palmer and Locke. I feel like I’m the odd duck that doesn’t hate those last two… I’m really hoping that 343 intends to add expansions to this game going forward, with each one taking us to a new portion of the ring. And advancing the plot setup here more. Otherwise I don’t know where 343 intends to go from here… All in all, I feel that despite it’s… shortcomings in places this is easily 343’s best Halo IMO. And I hope they can build from this into something truly great.
Finished the campaign last night on Heroic. Final two boss fights pissed me right the fuck off. Spoiler: Spoiler After defeating the Elite sword guy, I stole his sword to fight Escharum. At one point I was holding the sword and something else, and switched to whatever my second weapon was to pick up a shock rifle. Shortly after that I died. Turns out I hit a checkpoint when I picked up the shock rifle so that's where it respawned me. Except, I no longer had the sword. I had the shock rifle and whatever gun the shock rifle was supposed to replace. My plan was to shock rifle his shields off then grappleshot with the sword. But the game just glitched away the sword. It was not on the ground near the weapon rack, it was just gone. Finally after many minutes and many attempts, the sword just magically appeared on the ground again, luckily when Escharum's health was low and all the shields were gone. Then, moving on to the Harbinger. I absolutely could not keep enough distance between myself and the Brute Chieftain from the second wave to do any damage. Tried spike grenades and disruptors to break his armor, they mostly travelled right through him. Finally after about 20 or so tries I got him. Then I had to deal with the bitch Harbinger herself again and she would no stop teleporting enough for me to attack. Seriously, she would teleport so far each time, there was actually a couple of attempts where she was never on my screen, then I was dead. I only beat her because I got lucky and stuck her with a grappleshot as soon as the game loaded in and then I literally just beat her to death with my elbow. I didn't 100% it, there are still a few collectibles I never found. I think there might be like two Spartan cores and one or two armor lockers left, plus a handful of Forerunner artifacts and audiologs. I found all collectibles that show up on the map so I'm not going to bother with what's left.
I just popped in to say I love the grunt dialogue in this game. Takes me back to the Halo 3 days. Heck even the marines get some good ones: “Ah go whine about it to TarTar Sauce or whatever the hell his name was!” They did them back in Halo 2 anniversary too. You could find plushies of various characters hidden in the levels.
I'm about halfway through the campaign. Gotta say, not a fan of: Spoiler The Kahm Makyr The Didact The Harbinger or the Brute bad guy who talks like he's from the Netflix WFC series. The pilot can also get annoying sometimes, especially with his *heavy breathing.* The Weapon also feels too "lol quirky" with some of her dialogue. I'm also rolling my eyes that they kept the evil Cortana plot. In fact overall the story of this game is just... nothing. Another big bad. Whoo. Marines are also more than useless in this game, and the doomsday mechanic to vehicles makes them feel so limited in effectiveness. The weapon sandbox also feels small and, while not as redundant as previous games, still a bit directionless. What I did really like though was: Chief is Chief again. Says as as much as he has to and nothing more. Open world is grand though perhaps lacking in variety. Capturing FOBs to unlock new weapons and vehicles to spawn in is satisfying and makes it feel like you can either progress normally with more limited options or grind your way to the good stuff sooner. It's dynamic. Grappling is also infinitely useful and fun. Nothing was more satisfying than seeing a bridge swarming with enemies only to grapple past it undetected and steal a Banshee to bomb them all to hell. There's not really a "wrong way" to clear these encounters which feels very Halo. All methods of attack are viable if you're smart, unlike 4 and 5 which almost forced you to shoot everything at range. (though range is still a problem in a different way. See below) I feel like there's a disconnect between the enemy's accuracy and range and the player's. Often times I find they are unreasonably precise at long distances, maybe to offset the open world concept, but I always feel like I'm well into their effective range long before they're in mine. Especially when they're firing Ravager shots from the opposite side of buildings and hitting me. I will say I'm really not compelled to finish it. It's not unfun at all, but nothing's really got me hooked in besides the gameplay loop, which is all well and good but I need a good plot and escalation to really get me invested. So far I'm just kind of going through the motions. I usually finish every Halo campaign in one or two days, but it's been almost a week and I'm still not even close to being finished. (I'm currently doing the sequence thing with the beacons)
My impressions so far: I dig The freedom. Spoiler Chief being beatable. Weapon being hilarious. The expansion of lore in what I consider cool/interesting ways. The meat hook, I mean hookshot, I mean grapple, is insanely fun. Especially getting into vehicles with it. Your ghost is mine, yoink! I like the characters in the game, even if I'm not a huge fan of the antagonists (so far.) I do like that Spoiler Escharum just kind of wants to have one last battle against a worthy opponent because he's aging and sick apparently. Feels kind of Klingon-like, which I can dig. Loading up a warthog with marines and raiding enemy bases is still fun, even if the vehicle handling isn't quite where I wish it was (see below.) I have a big problem with Spoiler Their brazen cop-out with Cortana. It's SOOOOO anticlimactic. And it not only makes 5 meaningless, which I'm sure some people are happy about, but also undermines the emotion of 4, which is a damn shame to me. And having her die before the game is nigh unforgivable IMHO. This is Cortana we're talking about. One of the two central figures in the entire series. The repetitive locations. They got old reaaaaally fast for me, and you can tell they wanted to do so much more with the world and didn't get to. It isn't just how repetitive it gets, though. It also just feels less like Halo to me, because I never get that moment of, "Ohhh what's this cool new place being introduced in a cut scene? I'm gonna play through that?" feeling. Everything feels the same everywhere I go. Weird difficulty pacing/spiking. Being free to go everywhere and do things at my own pace also means getting access to powerful vehicles and weapons really early if I'm thorough. Which makes some things feel trivial and boring to me at times. But then a boss fight in a super confined space happens and it's suddenly the most insanely precise technical challenge ever in a Halo game. Not annoying because it's too hard or easy, but because it feels like there are huge dips and spikes. Technical issues and odd visual design choices. Obviously pop-in is going to be a thing in any game with draw distance this long. But their LOD solution could have been a lot less jarring. This is an issue in more and more games today. Abrupt pop-in rather than fading in and out. And the vegetation animation. Seriously, what's the deal with it? Look down while walking through grass. Why is it jumping violently from position to position instead of animating smoothly? And there are strange lighting issues. I'll approach a Banished base and the lighting will look one way, and suddenly that will disappear and some other level of lighting with a completely different look and feel will fade in and replace it entirely, and it's incredibly jarring. Multiplayer EXP system is still not what I want it to be. Needs score EXP IMHO. And needs way less locked down customization. I like the characters in the game as I said, but the Banished feel very one dimensional to me as villains. (Of course, they're actually just gateway baddies for Spoiler The Endless, and there are hints the Flood will also be back, but we don't get to see much of that in this base campaign, so it's moot for the purposes of my impressions for the moment.) I don't care what anyone says. Vehicle handling does not feel like past Halo games. They were always floaty but this is next level janky IMHO. And the world design doesn't really facilitate their use as well as the linear levels designed for them in past games did either. Co-op and level replay not being here until sometime well into next year is just not okay with me. Overall I am enjoying the game, and I'm especially interested in Spoiler The Endless and where that's leading eventually, but I think the now well publicized development issues definitely impacted the experience compared to what it could have been. And I also feel they over-accounted for backlash to Halo 5 too far in the other direction IMHO. But that's just me. If they do expansions that add more variety and change the EXP system (hopefully for free but I doubt that) I think my impressions might improve. This is a fun Halo game. And it feels like Halo mechanically and shows an open world Halo can work, with some tweaks. But some of the story decisions will just bug me forever unfortunately, and this just doesn't feel like a finished game to me at this point. If it were flawed but felt complete, it would be one thing. But this feels like a game they wanted to make into so much more but didn't. I don't feel like I'm getting the full creative vision they wanted to deliver here, and it suffers for it. That said, I haven't stopped playing it since launch, so that says a lot too.
Halo Infinite is a much better game then Halo 5. However, I find the open world to be lackluster. There’s nothing to do in there except clear out Banished squads and finding collectibles. The game play is top notch as I expect it to be from a Halo title. I find the story to be much more character driven, and thus a vast improvement from what we got before. Master Chief is less stoic and approached more from a more nuanced perspective. I adore Weapon as a new character and I look forward to see how 343 develops her.
Fuck this game. Something is wrong with the checkpoints. They're absolutely maddeningly unpredictable and random. I got a checkpoint right as the final Elite boss was charging me, so I died, reloaded, and died instantly. This repeated about five times and then I managed to grapple away with a sliver of health and I only won because he killed himself on shock barrels... somehow. I honestly have no idea what happened, I think he swung at me and missed and hit them, but it was anti-climactic as hell. Then I beat the campaign, roll credits, sit through the credits... and it puts me back in the last phase of the final boss. It's supposed to put me in the open world, but nope, for some reason it's making me play that shit again. I got the achievement and everything, it just wants me to do it again. Done with this game. The multiplayer is an unsatisfying grind, the campaign was decent but buggy as hell, and the story was just nothing. I am so over the utter murder of Cortana's character by 343i. I may have actually hated her more in this than 5... okay that's not true, but her constant whispering was annoying and the constant data fragment "echoes" were a poor substitute for actual character development. I was so checked out of the story by the end. Not exactly the glorious return to form we all hoped it'd be. I honestly feel so little towards this game now, besides the bullshit glitches.
