I would never have made it through Halo 4 or 5 solo, it was only with friends that I could manage a push-me-pull-you through those levels, mainly because I hated dealing with the Prometheans so much. But apparently they aren’t in Infinite so here’s hoping I can wade through on my own. Or wait another 6 months I guess.
Then you can adjust the sensitivity on the aiming. We were the same way when Halo CE first came out, it was all PC gamers, and it was tough to adjust to the controller, but once you do, it’s wonderful. There’s a HUGE amount of auto-aim to help you out.
Edit: Just be sure not to wuss out and play on Normal, then you won’t force yourself to get better with the controller. Everything just dies. On Heroic, you’ll have to learn to aim and get headshots.
It’s literally like a top 5 game on Steam, despite being an Xbox-related title and thus not really having a global audience the same way Xbox itself doesn’t. And that ignores that most of the game’s player base is probably on console, and that anyone planning to play campaign via Game Pass on PC will be playing via the Xbox app.
Is it some Fortnite-level omega-hit? Of course not. But given the development problems of the game and the ongoing criticisms of the MP progression, I’d imagine Microsoft are over the moon with how the game has done so far.
Halo wasn’t some smash hit going from strength to strength here. It was a series seeing declining interest since Halo 3, that hadn’t had a new entry since 2015, and that spent a good portion of last year being an internet meme for how visually bad it looked. That they managed to land the plane to good reviews, a rejuvenated esports scene, and pretty revitalized interest in the series, was a big triumph for them.
I think the clock is ticking on the stuff they need to fix and add to multiplayer, but they’re off to a strong start.
I try to dive into the older Halos, but the control scheme is different on the earlier games and my muscle memory would need to be retrained. And with Infinite soon to eat up a lot of my time, it’s not worth it.
Halo Infinite is the culmination of 20 years of artistic craft, so we’re celebrating with an epic Master Piece. Painted by artist Iva Troj, in olls & acrylic on canvas, the 3m by 6m work is available for all to view at London’s Saatchi Gallery until December 15.
Note to self: Avoid the Saatchi Gallery.
Multiplayer review at Eurogamer.
Is there a better multiplayer shooter that you can play, right now, than Halo Infinite?
No. Not in terms of gunplay, at least - of gunfeel, of the constant cycling between empowerment and disempowerment and the much-harder-than-it-looks balance that so many shooters yearn for, between that immediate, crunchy, punch-feedback satisfaction and Halo’s famously slower, big-brain strategy. No there is not. I’ve spent weeks picking at this game, prodding it and poking it and peeling away at the edges to try and uncover some kind of flaw, and I can’t. As far as the moment-to-moment of multiplayer shooters goes, it’s immaculate. This, genuinely, is as good as it gets.
The only problem is the front end - the meta-game or the UX or whatever that kind of menu-based wrapping of a game is called these days. There are some quirks there, some weird choices that threaten to muddy the otherwise pure waters of Halo Infinite’s “golden triangle”. But thankfully in most cases you can - and probably should - ignore them.
Great summary of the multiplayer.
And we’ve already got a post-mortem from Jason Schreier -
Ooo, is this like gamer mouthfeel?
Waxing poetic about the Assault Rifle, and then noting that it’s basically the same as it always was, is surely a weird kind of flex on how good the game is.
It’s clear that Halo Infinite is Halo. It plays really well and there’s no game that offers Big Team Battle which is vehicles and infantry on a smallish map. That’s a big draw for me specifically. However, I think that the breathless praise in this review is over the top.
The full version went on sale Dec. 8 to positive initial reviews. “ Halo Infinite can’t just be another Halo . It needs to be the Halo that exists in your imagination,” wrote CNET reviewer Mark Serrels. “And incredibly, against all odds, it pretty much is.”
That does sound good.
In the end, 343 fixed the graphics problems, and Staten got his roaming Marines. But Halo Infinite isn’t yet a finished product. That’s OK in a way that wouldn’t have been true for past versions. Since the release of the last full version of the game, the industry has moved more toward regularly updated games than periodic releases of entirely new titles. The studio is planning to add some key features as updates, including co-op mode, which lets gamers play the campaign with a friend, and forge, which allows for the creation of multiplayer maps.
For now, Halo players are content to play the version 343 is releasing.
More’s the pity.
I feel like everything I talked about up above is validated in that article. 343 will see big changes after this is all over.
The article is phrased as a redemption story for Halo and 343. So if it’s a resounding universal success, as the article seems to imply, if they managed to pull victory out of the jaws of defeat due to the beneficence of MS giving them an extra year even with half their staff turning over every 18 months (for fuckssake!) why would changes be forthcoming?
Remember I’m on record as agreeing with you that Halo probably won’t be the next Warzone. Just playing along with the actual article text here.
I mean, they got a game out and it’s pretty good. The universal success is likely to be fleeting. There’s no discussion of multiplayer progression in that article, which removes a significant negative from the story.
It’s important to note that I think part of the problem with Halo is that it’s Halo. It has a specific appeal.
They could fix the progression with a patch tomorrow, couldn’t they?
You mean aside from the fact that he says progression is slow and boring and that it’s a grim practice?
We’re talking about the Bloomberg article. It’s confusing with the review also in this discussion.
They don’t seem inclined to do that. I have no idea why?
I assume because they want to keep people playing, and quickly hard-capping on progression removes that sense of, well, progressing. A better solution would be to make unlocking everything initially released very fast and then soft-cap it, so it slows way down, until you release more content. At that point players could play whatever they want, just to have fun, and not worry about RPG-lite crap.