Oh to be clear I do think you’re probably correct, it’s just too early to call it.
MS clearly has Warzone/Fortnite aspirations with Infinite. And why not? It’s a premiere gaming IP and they own it outright.
OK, I lied… yeah, I agree that this launch wasn’t the best. Nobody was saying multiplayer was a beta (that I saw) until a week after it was released and some things seemed to be not quite right. The progression system was apparently that way for months in testing and they didn’t bother to change it. Lack of co-op has been a thing for awhile now too.
It’s like they wanted to do a soft opening. You know, before the grand opening. It’s not like The Flamingo. One day it was closed. The next day it was open. End of story.
I think they had those aspirations (as they should).
After last year’s reveal it probably hit the higher ups that they weren’t getting that kind of game from 343 Studios. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like marketing has been rather limited for Halo Infinite. I watch a lot of live sports and usually the hot games are advertised there. I’m not seeing Halo, unless they’re waiting to do some ads post launch. Maybe they figure the TV show will sell the game? Wait to advertise harder for the game (when it will have had more time in the oven) until the TV thing is out there? That seems plausible.
You know whose fault this is? Everyone who plays early access games! We used to be able to bitch and moan about buggy incomplete releases, but now it’s a commercially acceptable facet of AAA tentpole games.
You guys have only yourselves to blame. If only you’d eschewed all early access games, Halo Infinite would be a Q4 2022 release with full co-op, carefully tested and vetted multiplayer progression, and uncompromising support for the latest-gen hardware. I would probably even like it!
-Tom
Well no, he pretty much says straight out that the reason he wrote reviews was to keep people from wasting money on bad games.
The games cost money, I hate to see people waste money on bad games, and me and the people I worked with on the reviews team were the people who held the line in an attempt to keep you from blowing money on bad games. Simple, right?
Sure, but he’s not saying that’s the only reason to write reviews, he’s just saying that’s the sort of review that he used to do, and indeed was the norm throughout the industry. And it’s a model that doesn’t make sense any more. Observe the past tense in your quote.
I like the sound of that, this “actual criticism” and “putting these games through their paces in search of some cultural context” sounds really cool! But if his plan is that these pieces will replace old school reviews, I wonder when he foresees this happening? Because if I go to their ‘Words’ section of the website, I mainly see pieces about how Giant Bomb Premium is on sale, or there’s new merch available, stuff like that.
I don’t think he’s saying it’s going to happen at GiantBomb. He’s saying that for GiantBomb, things like Quick Looks make more sense than “product reviews”. And other outlets (presumably like Waypoint, or indeed Qt3) can do more critical reviews.
Outside of the games database, “words” hasn’t been GiantBomb’s thing for a long time. It’s a video and podcast outlet,.
Yeah, I don’t think “words” have really been their thing for quite some time either. But I think that’s what @Rock8man and I found kind of amusing about Jeff’s Halo review-that-isn’t-quite-a-review - he’s stuck in this mindset that this is what a review is, and if I need to write a review then how the hell do I parse that into a value discussion when there are multiple ways to spend (and potentially waste) money on this thing? But yeah, they figured out a long time ago what they do well, and they play to their strengths. And I don’t think writing reviews is one of them.
Anyway, now that we’re all buddies again, who wants to play some Halo co-op? Set up a meeting invite for May thereabouts?
That does sound appealing. I’m wondering though if I should wait for a patch before handling the campaign solo?
Halo: CE - I played coop first, about 3 times on Legendary difficulty, then played it solo Heroic difficulty. Then on the urging of friends that I played coop with, I tried it on Legendary Solo, and it was like a whole different game. You approach each level differently, move forward cautiously, use stealth more, it’s amazing just how different the game is.
Halo 2 - I played it coop, once, Legendary difficulty, and just hated it. We were constantly dying, dying, dying. It was designed differently, with many snipers that instant-kill you all throughout the campaign, it was a miserable experience. Never played it solo, but I did try on Heroic, but the moment I got insta-killed by a sniper, I quit, vowing never to go through that shit again.
Halo 3 - I played it coop once. Legendary difficulty. Much easier than Halo 2, and a lot more fun. But we were constantly interrupted by visions of Cortana on our screens, shoving story in our faces that made no sense. It was the equivalent on that Gears of War dude putting a finger in his year and walking slowly, but at least in 3rd person you can see that he’s doing that. In first person when you’re just walking slowly and watching incoherent images and listening to incoherent story beats while talking to your friends over Xbox live, it’s a complete mess. I’m wondering if maybe Halo 3 was a good campaign solo? Because as a coop campaign, it had great gameplay, but it was so heavy on story, and none of us understood what the heck was going on.
Halo 3: ODST - Played it Coop on Legendary first. LOVED it. Then played it again solo on Legendary. Loved it again. Such a great game.
Halo Reach: I played some sections in Coop, but not many, our schedules were too difficult to align. I played the rest Solo. I really enjoyed it. Played on Heroic.
Halo 4 - I played it solo on Heroic and I LOVED it. Never played it coop.
Halo 5 - I played it solo on Heroic and it felt mediocre throughout. But really you can’t play Halo 5 solo, it’s just Halo 5 Coop, but with AI teammates. And so yeah, that felt weird throughout the game.
Anyway, if Halo Infinite is like Halo: CE (I hope), then playing it solo first, then in Coop doesn’t sound too bad, honestly. Each time, Halo in Coop is a very different gameplay experience compared to Halo played by yourself, and I mean that in a gameplay sense. The kinds of battles you’re having moment to moment are very different. Other times one person is driving a vehicle and another person is gunning. Other times one person is on the ground fighting against Elites, and the other person is in a Banshee fighting other Banshees. It’s just very different. So I don’t really mind spacing out the two experiences.
I do recommend playing the original at some point, when you have the bandwidth and time. And be sure to play it with the controller, it’s a bit awkward with keyboard movement. At least the original PC version was when Gearbox ported it. I haven’t played the new MCC version on PC. It just feels a lot smoother with the controller movement that’s analog.
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 -