Halo Infinite

So here we have it. The Halo infinite Tech preview has well and truly come and gone and the debate and excitement is now at fever pitch. A weekend preview of the most anticipated game for Xbox fans and a chance for 343i to show off some of what they’ve been working on. In this review Ill cover all the major features, discuss what I liked and what I didn’t (TLDR there really wasn’t much)

But first a little background on me to understand how I came to the Halo series as I am definitely a latecomer. I first discovered games on the ZX spectrum and Amiga 500 (Im ageing myself here). I moved to PC games with titles like Doom, Command and Conquer and X-wing and then with the invention of proper 3D cards, Unreal Tournament and Half Life multiplayer captured my imagination. When Halo was originally released I tried it and wrote it off as a load of hype! How could the combat work on a controller without a mouse and keyboard? Yes the vehicle sections were cool but overall didnt add enough to, what seemed to me at least, be a childish, inferior product….

So, times change, I finally bought an Xbox, spent 400 hours playing Star Wars Battlefront 2 and eventually found my way to the Halo series via the MCC. I’ve now played through every campaign (loved every minute of it except the Library from CE and Cortana from Halo 3) and suffered through being completely dominated in multiplayer.

Fortunately for me the gaming gods were smiling, and I got a spot on the technical preview. So here are my thoughts, impressions and musings for a beta of game which at this point is now long delayed…..

Lets Start

Starting with start menu. Not an obvious point to cover for a game review but the first thing you’ll see and it has some nice touches.

The scale of the background image gives a grand scale to the military hardware and gives a real sense of its size compared to the teeny tiny soldiers and grunts we are used to seeing in game. Another nice touch is the movement of the camera when you move the mouse or controller. Again its a small thing but certainly helped to bring me in to the experience and sign of the level of detailed contained within the rest of the tech preview.

In to the first screen and menus are clearly place holder but are well laid out and certainly easy to navigate. It was obvious where everything is and likely will be. This in stark contrast to my experience of the Master Chief Collection with its myriad of options screens, achievement logs and a multiplayer options. I appreciate this is perhaps unfair as the MCC is trying to cram in 5 games worth of options in to one interface so perhaps the better comparison is Halo 5. Either way the tech preview was easier to use than any of its predecessors and I hope this continues as more of the game and its features are added in future tests.

The Academy

The Academy contains a weapons test arena which I found to be a nice place to try out weapon features before jumping in to a live firefight with bots. The addition of 3 different scenarios for each weapon really added a utility to this arena and, again, showed the level of thought which has gone in to each aspect of the game. Hopefully this feature is maintained as I found myself coming back to it to practice running and aiming with several weapons. More advanced players might like to warm up in here before taking on live opponents in multiplayer so perhaps there is something for everyone here.

Customisation / Weapon Viewer

There are the usual customisation settings available with numerous colours and options available for armour and visors. There are also additions to the armour like the Cooling Unit in the screenshot below however these appear to be cosmetic changes only for the moment.

A nice touch I felt worth mentioning was the inclusion of prosthetics as options for player avatars. Is this a push to make the game more inclusive or just a Sci-Fi trope? Either way I felt it was a decent addition to the character customisations.

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Much like the customisation viewer the weapon and vehicle viewer gives 343i the opportunity to show off the level of detail in their models. I can’t see myself using this all that much but if new weapons are added then this gives a good view on what they look like outside the carnage of MP maps.

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Gameplay

Game play is an excellent mix of previous Halo games. Movement is crisp, firing your weapons feel like they have “weight” and the overall experience was challenging and enjoyable. “Boost” movement from Halo 5 has disappeared but perhaps this could be re-added with a mod or custom game mode in future for those that love a good ground pound!

Gun play was satisfying generally with shields offering a decent level of protection without feeling impenetrable. Movement is well handled generally and rewards good positioning as ever. My only complaint is that lack of booster dodge from Halo 5 which certainly hindered my ability to counter an attack from behind or the side. Once youre in an enemies sights that should be it! Although frankly I think that says more about my abilities as a gamer than anything inherently wrong with the game at this stage.

…….Sprint. Yes there is sprint, which has been shown to only increase player speed by 9%, but I like the feeling of increased speed, whilst at the same time not turning every map in to a race around each corner.

Real care appears to have been taken to ensure the game can be played at a pace which matches your style. If you prefer the purer experience of not sprinting the game appears, at least in my testing, to not be so balanced to give a major advantage to those sprint all the time. (why isnt sprint time limited? Why can I just endlessly sprint? Surely a decent compromise would be for sprint to get slower the more you use it with a small recharge time between sprints)

Wall climbing is still present (although didn’t feel as necessary as in Halo 5) which is great for those of us who can’t time a jump correctly and adds a balletic element that every shooter since Titanfall feels the need to implement.

I hope they keep a player vs bots mode in the full game for new players to become better without getting schooled in every multiplayer they set foot in. And for more experienced players who want to perfect new moves and tricks.

Some questions still remain of course. How many maps, vehicles, and game modes will be included in multiplayer? Have any game mechanics, such as vehicles been changed?

As a side note, and much to my horror, I completed a couple of matches with keyboard and mouse and its fair to say that whatever skills I had when playing Quake/Unreal Tournament/Half Life have long since left me. It appears I am now a console gamer 😦

Check out the screen shots and gameplay video below.

Visuals and Performance

Visuals

Much was made of how bad Halo Infinite looked when first announced leading to widespread concern about the state of the game and ultimately leading to the games delay. Hopefully you can see from the videos and screenshots here that these problems have been resolved and the game plays and displays as you would expect.

UberNick posted a video comparing the state of the visuals. Check it out and give him a follow.

Performance
I was able to test on both Xbox One S and PC.

My PC specs are as follows and game performance was fine. I believe graphics options were limited server side, although the controls were still in place in the menu. I certainly didn’t notice a huge improvement, if any, when I maxed out all the options. The only gripe I have with PC performance was with initial load times for the game which were longer than I’d like.

• Core i7 4th Gen
• Nvidia 1070 Ti
• 32GB RAM
• 1TB Samsung SSD
• 4k LG monitor
• Played with both controller and keyboard / mouse

Xbox One S on the other hand was quite a different experience. The game felt sluggish, load times were long and overall it didn’t feel like this game was meant to be played on older hardware. You can do it if you want to but it’s never going to be the experience the devs are hoping you have.

Conclusion

This feels like Halo. And I say this as someone who came to the franchise late and don’t feel the same sense of ownership as some in the community. Until you replay the first 3 games its hard to describe what it is about the original trilogy gameplay that fans love so much. But whatever it is I feel this game has it. Yes the gameplay and visuals have been upgraded but the core experience was undeniably Halo.

I had a great time playing through the technical preview and kept coming back for more. A sign of a great game if ever there was one!

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