Silent_Buddha
Legend
The grunts in general are great. One of the best parts of Halo and I'm glad 343i realized that. There was a time when 343i made some noise about wanting to make the grunts more "serious", but it's a necessary and IMO brilliant facet of Halo that gives a light hearted contrast to other more serious aspects of the franchise. It's a backdrop that allows the serious moments to feel more serious and impactful.
Hell, I would play a Halo offshoot that had you playing as a grunt.
Regards,
SB
cheapchips
Veteran
The grunts in general are great. One of the best parts of Halo and I'm glad 343i realized that. There was a time when 343i made some noise about wanting to make the grunts more "serious", but it's a necessary and IMO brilliant facet of Halo that gives a light hearted contrast to other more serious aspects of the franchise. It's a backdrop that allows the serious moments to feel more serious and impactful.
Hell, I would play a Halo offshoot that had you playing as a grunt.
I can't help but think the increased presence of the Grunts in due to Staten returning as director. "First thing that needs fixing, more of my voicework!"
The overall tone of the game is great. I'm pleased as well that they've reversed the trend towards more seriousness.
The marines are great as well. Apparently that's one the things they made more of a focus over the extra year.
I just want to be able to spare them...
They gets scared, they ran away. But then they shot me again. Why? I was letting you go...
Btw the pathfinding is really good. You can lure enemy across rooms, and they'll keep chasing you as long as you keeps kiting them (because they have heavy programming weight to walk back to designated zone, so they needs constant kiting).
Way better than destiny 1 and 2 where the enemy have hard locked zones.
They gets scared, they ran away. But then they shot me again. Why? I was letting you go...
Btw the pathfinding is really good. You can lure enemy across rooms, and they'll keep chasing you as long as you keeps kiting them (because they have heavy programming weight to walk back to designated zone, so they needs constant kiting).
Way better than destiny 1 and 2 where the enemy have hard locked zones.
If you're playing on PC and use gsync, be carefull about enabling vsync in game. It's common to enable vsync while in the gsync range to eliminate screen tearing entirely. In this game if you enable vsync in game, it will disable gsync entirely for some reason. If you want to cap your fps below your refresh rate and then enable vsync, make sure to use vsync from the control panel. Not sure how AMD freesync is affected, but I would guess the same way.
the amounts of ridiculous/useless/fun things tucked away are awesome. they eveh have this near the 1st base ROFL
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Finally finished it. Yup. Halo is officially back in my book.
I like that this is basically 343i saying to Halo fans, "Hey, sorry we fucked up on the last two games. We made a mistake and we were arrogant. We've learned from the experience and we'll strive to make Halo the experience that you, the gamers and Halo fans expect. We'll do this together." As I said previously as part of a spoiler. Cortana's final monologue is not only directed at Master Chief but is also directed at us, the players.
It's not perfect. But it IS a Halo game, IMO, unlike 4 and 5. I wished Master Chief didn't talk as much as he does, but at least they didn't go overboard with it and most of his dialog is about what you would expect from him.
I'm not sure yet where I will rank this among the Halo games. It's better than 4 and 5 obviously. And it ranks right up there with the Bungie made Halo games. I don't think it's better than the best Bungie Halo games just because the main campaign missions make for a relatively short experience. Without the open world stuff, the game would be entirely too short. So in that respect, it's better than Halo: ODST which was a good game, but too short due to it originally being DLC story content.
However, what was there was very fun to play. The grappleshot was a great addition. I wish you could just bind the 4 abilities to separate keys, but I guess this is a limitation of the game being made for console controllers where you don't have the plethora of keys that you have with KBM. You have to press a key to change to an ability anyway, so in the future I'd love to have the option for you to be able to activate the ability when you choose the ability. I'd rather just 1 button press to activate a different ability rather than having to do 2 button presses in the heat of combat to activate a different ability than the one equipped. Because of that I rarely used anything other than the grappleshot.
One other niggle. Is it just me that is bothered by not being able to see Master Chief's feet when you look down?
One hope for the future. Hopefully their tools are in a good shape now and the engine has been modified to the point where adding content won't be as difficult as it appears to have been for the development of Halo: Infinite. Hopefully either the next campaign DLC is longer or the time between campaign DLCs will be short.
And one last thing. For me personally, I'm not sure the content available warrants a 60 USD price tag. I feel this is more of a 40-50 USD game for the content available. But since it's on Game Pass, it doesn't matter either way to me what it was priced at.
So, my conclusion. This is a great Halo game. No, wait, not quite right. This is a great game, period.
Oh, and if you want to finish the open world stuff before you finish the game, there is a point where the game will lock you into the final main campaign missions.
Regards,
SB
I like that this is basically 343i saying to Halo fans, "Hey, sorry we fucked up on the last two games. We made a mistake and we were arrogant. We've learned from the experience and we'll strive to make Halo the experience that you, the gamers and Halo fans expect. We'll do this together." As I said previously as part of a spoiler. Cortana's final monologue is not only directed at Master Chief but is also directed at us, the players.
It's not perfect. But it IS a Halo game, IMO, unlike 4 and 5. I wished Master Chief didn't talk as much as he does, but at least they didn't go overboard with it and most of his dialog is about what you would expect from him.
I'm not sure yet where I will rank this among the Halo games. It's better than 4 and 5 obviously. And it ranks right up there with the Bungie made Halo games. I don't think it's better than the best Bungie Halo games just because the main campaign missions make for a relatively short experience. Without the open world stuff, the game would be entirely too short. So in that respect, it's better than Halo: ODST which was a good game, but too short due to it originally being DLC story content.
However, what was there was very fun to play. The grappleshot was a great addition. I wish you could just bind the 4 abilities to separate keys, but I guess this is a limitation of the game being made for console controllers where you don't have the plethora of keys that you have with KBM. You have to press a key to change to an ability anyway, so in the future I'd love to have the option for you to be able to activate the ability when you choose the ability. I'd rather just 1 button press to activate a different ability rather than having to do 2 button presses in the heat of combat to activate a different ability than the one equipped. Because of that I rarely used anything other than the grappleshot.
One other niggle. Is it just me that is bothered by not being able to see Master Chief's feet when you look down?
One hope for the future. Hopefully their tools are in a good shape now and the engine has been modified to the point where adding content won't be as difficult as it appears to have been for the development of Halo: Infinite. Hopefully either the next campaign DLC is longer or the time between campaign DLCs will be short.
And one last thing. For me personally, I'm not sure the content available warrants a 60 USD price tag. I feel this is more of a 40-50 USD game for the content available. But since it's on Game Pass, it doesn't matter either way to me what it was priced at.
So, my conclusion. This is a great Halo game. No, wait, not quite right. This is a great game, period.
Oh, and if you want to finish the open world stuff before you finish the game, there is a point where the game will lock you into the final main campaign missions.
You get to a point where you'll have to activate 4 beacons before you can enter the Command Spire. Once you enter the Command Spire, you'll be locked out of the open world content until you finish the game. So, don't enter that mission until you are ready.
You'll be dropped back into the open world once you've finished the main campaign, so you'll still be able to get collectibles even if you get locked into the final main campaign missions.
You'll be dropped back into the open world once you've finished the main campaign, so you'll still be able to get collectibles even if you get locked into the final main campaign missions.
Regards,
SB
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
Ugh, that's really unfortunate. That looks like almost as much aim assist as you have in Destiny 2 on PC with KBM (incredibly annoying and you can't turn it off).
I do wonder if it's as bad as Destiny 2 KBM aim assist though. In Destiny 2 if a certain amount of an enemy's body is behind cover, then it becomes impossible to hit them even if you are aiming at say their arm or leg, the aim assist will pull the shot into the cover trying to hit other parts of the body that the aim assist algorithm think are more important than the ones that I'm aiming at.
Considering that I didn't really notice it while playing (I was still able to hit what I was aiming at even when most of the enemy was behind cover), I'll guess that at least the aim assist in Halo: Infinite isn't nearly as bad as what is in Destiny 2. Or it's a new addition that wasn't in the game when I was still playing it.
Still pretty disappointing to see that.
Regards,
SB
Yah, I was playing tactical slayer and started getting suspicious of some of the shots I was hitting. Took a look in the weapon drills and found that it's definitely assisting a lot. Not a fan at all. Kind of ruins the game somewhat to be honest, but I guess I understand why they did it. Hopefully it's somewhat toned down in multiplayer, but I need to get into a custom to test it accurately.
When did bungie added aim assist to mouse?
Last. Time I tried (uhm.. Forsaken?) it only have bullet magnetism / homing, and bloom (horrendous on handgun).
Edit:
IIRC perks and gun type affect those. For example the bolt action scout rifle didn't have bullet magnetism
The campaign is great fun, definitely one of my favourite games this year. I've been playing on the XSX and the game looks beautiful on my TV, the HDR implementation is very good.
It also feels amazing to play, idk how to describe it but the gameplay feel is just perfect for me, responsive and fun :smile:
It also feels amazing to play, idk how to describe it but the gameplay feel is just perfect for me, responsive and fun :smile:
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iceberg187
Regular
I'm happy that Halo has had such a big resurgence in mindshare among gamers. I agree 100% with you. The game just feels right. It's almost ethereal in feel. Couple that with an awesome pull to explore the world,it creates a feeling only few games can evoke.
Hmm, surprised I may actually be a little more negative on the campaign than some here. My big review. (spoilers if people still care? Not sure about spoiler tagging) . Having just finished, did pretty much everything in the open world except stopped getting Spartan cores after I maxed my stuff and also didn't search skulls because I have never cared about them. The idea of searching for, not rewards but punishments in the form of harder difficulty modifiers just seems wrong besides. So basically I did all "dungeons", story missions of course, all mjolner armory stops, most of the cores, rescued all troops, Killed all targets, and a good portion of artifacts/logs/propaganda towers just as I came across them.
The game is definitely fun. The best is the feel of the gunplay, which now for the first time sometimes rivals it's cousin Destiny, which is unheard of.
I felt it kind of dragged a bit by the end. The end linear portions were quite unimaginative visually. How many identical dark blue corridors can one game have? This sort of thing is what I mean by that 343 just lacks visual artistry. The overworld is nice enough, but again we never got any real change in scenery throughout which is a bummer.
The physics sandbox is fantastic of course. The fact this is running on prior gen Jaguar CPU's, imagine how much more they can do with the next iteration hopefully leaving past gen behind. And with full advantage of SSD's etc.
Also the story gets well overdone as well, Taking itself way too seriously on and on. Is this Sennua: Halo's sacrifice? I think maybe. The one line from an video game development article that will forever ring in my head as a tip to developers is "noone cares about your shitty story". While this may not be entirely true, I feel like less can be more with many, many, MANY video game stories.
As usual I'm unsure if I like Halo's weapon system in nearly 2022. I try to stick to the UNSC guns, I like them most, but it's hard because of ammo constraints. I get it being Halo's thing, but I also kinda hate it. Also some other quibbles. The Halo sword model is just dumb and ugly. I get it's "iconic", I dont care, if I was halo franchise dictator I'd ditch it. Ditto with several covenant weapons, I'd just remove them and put in something else. Not EVERY thing in the game has to go all the way back to Halo 1 damn. Remove and replace some things, ghosts, banshees, all ugly. And the enemies that hide behind the shields (dont even remember these names, already had to google Escharum lol), annoying. I'd remove them or change how they work. The shotgun while cool could use to be a touch stronger. IMO it should wipe out those shield guys' shields no matter what. Just disintegrate them. Now I'm remembering all the fun parts of the game as I literally type this and turning more positive again LOL.
The brute bosses altogether are good. So physically menacing. You can tell they are essentially the inspiration for Destiny's cabal (I know bungie used to do Halo). But at least their bosses are a lot cooler than Cabal.
The FOB's are also annoying, scrolling through all the weapons to get what you want, but then they often dont even fill your ammo so you have to go through it all again. They should just have a endless kinetic ammo station at the FOB or something. Then it kinda doesnt matter because you'll usually run out of ammo as soon as the first reserves are gone (although I personally would try to hang on to my UNSC weapons and nurse them to the bitter end). Most of the vehicles I found a bit annoying too, there are no roads to most places, many places of interest are on or over cliffs that cant be driven up, so most ground vehicles are annoying, and also kind of a pain to drive. Sadly you are typically better off on foot. I was so excited to unlock the WASP and it was nice, but has issues too. The banshees always bothering you are annoying, and it travels quite slowly. I'm being pretty negative though, the overall vehicle sandbox is pretty neat. Halo reminds me of nothing more than my GI Joe collection as a kid. There seem to be a few bugs too. Vehicles and weapons you left just disappeared when you return to them for example occasionally.
I read on twitter that people were complaining the Hunters were too hard, so I was kind of dreading them before my first encounter. I found them almost a perfect challenge, not too hard or too easy. Of course that only on normal difficulty.
The very best part though that actually was something different was that Escherum was portrayed in the end as honorable and respected by Chief as a soldier like himself, just doing what he hoped was right,. just as Chief does. That was friggen great and I absolutely loved this. Like I said, something different.
I also want to call, out those halo "moments", where you're at the edge of a big open battlefield with tons of hard enemy problems, and pinned down with little to no ammo or resources. You have to arduously bootstrap yourself up to a position of more safety and eventually even advantage, scavenging whatever you can along the way, like a big chess board. That's always felt so good and Halo still has it.
The grunt/UNSC dialogue is kinda like the weapons system to me. Not sure how I feel. Did provide some laughs though.
Halo 3 IMO was quite graphically unimpressive where Halo 4 was on of the best gfx of 360 gen, so I sincerely hope 343 comes through with similar improvement in the next Halo, in 6 yrs probably. While I think the game looks nice and good it's past gen roots are undeniable.
The game is definitely fun. The best is the feel of the gunplay, which now for the first time sometimes rivals it's cousin Destiny, which is unheard of.
I felt it kind of dragged a bit by the end. The end linear portions were quite unimaginative visually. How many identical dark blue corridors can one game have? This sort of thing is what I mean by that 343 just lacks visual artistry. The overworld is nice enough, but again we never got any real change in scenery throughout which is a bummer.
The physics sandbox is fantastic of course. The fact this is running on prior gen Jaguar CPU's, imagine how much more they can do with the next iteration hopefully leaving past gen behind. And with full advantage of SSD's etc.
Also the story gets well overdone as well, Taking itself way too seriously on and on. Is this Sennua: Halo's sacrifice? I think maybe. The one line from an video game development article that will forever ring in my head as a tip to developers is "noone cares about your shitty story". While this may not be entirely true, I feel like less can be more with many, many, MANY video game stories.
As usual I'm unsure if I like Halo's weapon system in nearly 2022. I try to stick to the UNSC guns, I like them most, but it's hard because of ammo constraints. I get it being Halo's thing, but I also kinda hate it. Also some other quibbles. The Halo sword model is just dumb and ugly. I get it's "iconic", I dont care, if I was halo franchise dictator I'd ditch it. Ditto with several covenant weapons, I'd just remove them and put in something else. Not EVERY thing in the game has to go all the way back to Halo 1 damn. Remove and replace some things, ghosts, banshees, all ugly. And the enemies that hide behind the shields (dont even remember these names, already had to google Escharum lol), annoying. I'd remove them or change how they work. The shotgun while cool could use to be a touch stronger. IMO it should wipe out those shield guys' shields no matter what. Just disintegrate them. Now I'm remembering all the fun parts of the game as I literally type this and turning more positive again LOL.
The brute bosses altogether are good. So physically menacing. You can tell they are essentially the inspiration for Destiny's cabal (I know bungie used to do Halo). But at least their bosses are a lot cooler than Cabal.
The FOB's are also annoying, scrolling through all the weapons to get what you want, but then they often dont even fill your ammo so you have to go through it all again. They should just have a endless kinetic ammo station at the FOB or something. Then it kinda doesnt matter because you'll usually run out of ammo as soon as the first reserves are gone (although I personally would try to hang on to my UNSC weapons and nurse them to the bitter end). Most of the vehicles I found a bit annoying too, there are no roads to most places, many places of interest are on or over cliffs that cant be driven up, so most ground vehicles are annoying, and also kind of a pain to drive. Sadly you are typically better off on foot. I was so excited to unlock the WASP and it was nice, but has issues too. The banshees always bothering you are annoying, and it travels quite slowly. I'm being pretty negative though, the overall vehicle sandbox is pretty neat. Halo reminds me of nothing more than my GI Joe collection as a kid. There seem to be a few bugs too. Vehicles and weapons you left just disappeared when you return to them for example occasionally.
I read on twitter that people were complaining the Hunters were too hard, so I was kind of dreading them before my first encounter. I found them almost a perfect challenge, not too hard or too easy. Of course that only on normal difficulty.
The very best part though that actually was something different was that Escherum was portrayed in the end as honorable and respected by Chief as a soldier like himself, just doing what he hoped was right,. just as Chief does. That was friggen great and I absolutely loved this. Like I said, something different.
I also want to call, out those halo "moments", where you're at the edge of a big open battlefield with tons of hard enemy problems, and pinned down with little to no ammo or resources. You have to arduously bootstrap yourself up to a position of more safety and eventually even advantage, scavenging whatever you can along the way, like a big chess board. That's always felt so good and Halo still has it.
The grunt/UNSC dialogue is kinda like the weapons system to me. Not sure how I feel. Did provide some laughs though.
Halo 3 IMO was quite graphically unimpressive where Halo 4 was on of the best gfx of 360 gen, so I sincerely hope 343 comes through with similar improvement in the next Halo, in 6 yrs probably. While I think the game looks nice and good it's past gen roots are undeniable.
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cheapchips
Veteran
I'm curious as to where they go with technology. Their engine seemed to cause them real production issues, based on the 2018 reports. Have they actually sorted that to a degree that allows them to build a genuine next gen Halo on it?
cheapchips
Veteran
I've just killed the double brute boss, where one has a chopper. I was have some trouble managing them both. While I'm sure I could have used cover better and sorted it that way, I back tracked across the map, found a ghost and cheesed them to death instead. This is the way.
I was a tad disappointed that the last AA gun didn't spawn a boss after the doors locked. I'd ridden a ghost up the lift especially.
RancidLunchmeat
Veteran
I'm confused as to where the open world bit comes in. I just destroyed the first spire, and it sends you after the AA gun. This is the first time since I took the first mission that I could actually seem to go some place else if I wanted to fast travel to another part of the map instead of following the beacon.
I guess I was expecting to do a mission, get returned to the open world "hub" and then decide what to do next. Or, even better, be a more GTA-like thing where you finish the first mission and then are just "dumped" into the open world to do whatever until the next mission comes up.
It seems like if I just follow the waypoints, it'll lead me right through the story and I have to make an effort to stop doing that and explore the open world if I want more spartan cores or whatever the point of the open world is?
I guess I was expecting to do a mission, get returned to the open world "hub" and then decide what to do next. Or, even better, be a more GTA-like thing where you finish the first mission and then are just "dumped" into the open world to do whatever until the next mission comes up.
It seems like if I just follow the waypoints, it'll lead me right through the story and I have to make an effort to stop doing that and explore the open world if I want more spartan cores or whatever the point of the open world is?
Like most open-world games there are side missions & main story missions. If you keep doing the main story missions then you'll never do the side missions. The side missions are mainly to help get unique weapons or vehicles & open up fast travel spots across the map. Plus you'll come across the Spartan cores to upgrade your skill tree. You probably could get by not doing those, but the upgraded grapple-shot is worth it. Another part of the open world is for those that like to collect everything & who want to get little world-building story beats you don't get with the main campaign. I think it's a nice compromise for those that just want a simple straightforward Halo story but not an open-world. For those that want to explore & collect everything, there's a little bit of open-world to scratch that itch too. I'm in the latter group BTW. I'm systematically collecting everything in each region before I do the main missions.
Tommy McClain
Tommy McClain
Yeah the way the open world side Quests are optional is really nice.
Unlike destiny 2 that requires you to do busy work in the open world
Unlike destiny 2 that requires you to do busy work in the open world
RancidLunchmeat
Veteran
I don't agree with that at all. Seems to me that the first story mission I did led me directly down the rabbit hole of the main mission, with no opportunity to go back out into the open world. It spring boards you directly to the tower and then the AA guns and fast travel is locked down. The only open world missions can you do are the ones you do before you investigate the very first story mission. Now maybe after I destroy the three AA Guns it opens fast travel back up again, or maybe I can force my way back to the open world without using fast travel, but the game certainly isn't encouraging it.
Once I did the very first story mission I got on a slide with no discernable way off. This is very different to most open world games that continually try to point you back to the open world and is even the case in most games pretending to be open world when they aren't. Halo Infinite is very much doing the opposite of what most open world games do.
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