Halo Infinite Review

"A Tad Finite"

Campaign

December 6, 2021 at 1:01am
By Jason Stettner

The inclusion of “Infinite” within the titling of the latest Halo experience is a bold one. It sets the expectation for what should be one of the most expansive offerings the series has ever had. It’s definitely ambitious in what it aims to achieve, but ultimately falls flat coming across as mostly finite.

This review of course is combining both the single player and multiplayer portions, I’m not splitting up a Halo review as that would be silly. So keep that in mind as we dive into the world that is the Zeta Halo Ring. The story opens with the Master Chief getting beat, just thrown around like a ragdoll by this mysterious brute named Atriox (you might have heard of him if you’ve read supplementary material or played the spin-off Halo Wars 2).

This brute is head of the Banished, a force that is essentially the covenant but with a rebrand of using a red coloring scheme. These are your primary foes throughout the experience, as the Master Chief aims to take down the threat of Escharum. Another brute, one that again I don’t really know anything about but he sure knows a whole lot about you.

They’re joined by this being known as The Harbinger, again another character I know nothing about despite finishing the whole game at this point. That seems to be a thing in modern Halo titles, and I’m honestly not sure if I have to read or watch something else to get more information about them.

I suppose that’s not too important, as they’re enemies that you just need to deal with over the course of this narrative. Anyways, time passes and the Master Chief is awoken from a space slumber by this person known to you only as “The Pilot”. There’s a focus on making him a fold to the Master Chief, but I’m not sure they were totally effective in doing that within the story.

A neat character, but they don’t use him enough to make me really get behind the protection of this individual. The pilot in general just makes horrible decisions, and feels kind of like an inconvenience to the Chief. This is largely a contained story that acts as a reset for the overall universe.

It’s somewhat abrupt in its narrative, focusing on more to come as I imagine further stories will be launched from this experience. That leads me back to the core focus of this largely being an intimate dive into the connection between the Master Chief and Cortana, or well “The Weapon” which is a far more sassy and naïve version of our traditional AI pal.

Don’t expect to see The Arbiter; Blue Team, Lasky, Locke or any other characters outside of this core group unless you’re grabbing audio logs to hear about other stuff in the universe. This is very much focused on this core group. The campaign is definitely ambitious in terms of scale, and length. There’s a central open world area you explore, with the missions being offshoots of that.

I haven’t found a way to replay missions personally, so keep that in mind. Outside of starting it over from the beginning. The missions are traditional in their linear style, but creative in allowing you many ways to tackle scenarios that arise. Occasionally there will be a boss to fight. Nothing too specifically engaging there as they’re just spongier troops with a name, but they do grant you freedom in how to tackle them and I appreciated that.


Typical difficulties appear, Normal being my benchmark so I imagine most will enjoy about six to ten hours of campaign time there depending on how fast you go about things. It does slow you down here or there as you need to fetch batteries or clear enemies to progress fairly often. The cinematics are stunning, as are the moments of in-game narrative delivery.

I think the story at a core was great, but perhaps with that it could have been focused on even more. I was mostly satisfied with the length, the pacing could have been more story central but it’s neat what they’ve setup here. This narrative of course comes with an open world type portion that you’re free to explore. This place is expansive, I flew around it on a Banshee/Wasp combo with that taking about a half hour. It is a bit lifeless though, being rather static.

Sure, there’s the odd animal of Banished to kill but I didn’t really have a drive to explore it further. There’s a singular biome, and the environment has minimal movement to it. This could be due to it being an artificial installation, but there are animals roaming so it should be filled with some life. The extra objectives are a tad bland, blow up this area or free these marines or take out this target. You might get an unlock, some sort of collectible and that’s about all.

No real story meat to it, outside of just being something extra to do. You see these cool battle setups that have happened, but there’s no real exciting story to dig into. They sort of just exist, and I didn’t care much about doing them. I did try a number of these spots out, just to see and it wasn’t really worth my time quite honestly. Some might find them neat, but I equate them to a bit of the bloating that Far Cry has had as of recent.

As you’re likely to know, the campaign is a single player experience. They’ve removed the coop campaign element and are hopefully introducing it several months after launch. Since it’s a feature that’s supposed to be part of the game, I have considered its removal to be a negative on this experience. To go further, launching a Halo game without coop in any form for the campaign is not something I accept.

Multiplayer

This is a free to play, basically standalone offering that makes up a chunk of Halo Infinite. The multiplayer has some of the best feeling gameplay we’ve perhaps seen from the franchise in the modern era. The whole game in general feels really good movement and traversal wise. That being said, this multiplayer is incredibly limited in comparison to the long development time.

There are several arena maps, which while good feel far too limited and I’m bored of them already. Then there are three big team battle maps that are of the same biome and honestly rather atrocious. I feel, that personally Ranked is the only mode I enjoy for the BR starts. It’s weird to play competitive to get the right feeling, but that’s where I’m at.

Even if you might disagree for this element, which is of course opinion you can look at the limited maps and playlists to see that this game is severely lacking in the online element. Even custom games feel stripped back, and Forge is once again absent. Another noted feature coming later, and a negative against the game since it will take a year to arrive.

I do also feel the melee needs some adjustments, since the succession hit time makes players go into a fisticuffs only scenario every time. Mix that with randomly spawning vehicles in big team battle that are made of paper mache among other smaller issues and the problems add up. That’s in combination with elements that I’ll mention briefly as I’m building towards the profit aspect of the multiplayer since it is free to play. Anyways, the core gameplay here is good.

It just is lacking in terms of supporting content and is disappointing when you look at the aggressive microtransactions. From the insanely grindy battle pass to the expensive cosmetics which were once regular features you’d earn. I had anticipated something like this would happen with the shift to being a free to play multiplayer, I just didn’t expect it to be so harsh. It needs work, but I do feel over time this will come to be a multiplayer that is enjoyed by many. It’s so close, but again just lacking.

I get the weirdest desire to go back and play Halo: The Master Chief Collection while playing it and that in itself is somewhat funny. I should mention that theater mode returns, happy to see that and a drill mode for practicing which is good. Bots are present if you have troubles finding folks sometime down or the road or just want a different sort of combative experience, totally up to.

Gameplay

As I’ve mentioned, this feels like a really well set Halo game. The mix of sprinting, traversal and the inclusion of the grappling hook is all great. I particularly love that last gadget, initially I thought it would be stupid but I loved using it every time I got my hands on it. Whether that was in the campaign, or the multiplayer.

When it comes to the visuals we’re getting two options on the Xbox Series X. A quality mode which provides 4k 60fps and a performance mode which provides 4k 120fps. Both are dynamic resolution scaling and offer a FOV slider. There are numerous accessibility options, and other adjustments that can be made.

Using 4k 60fps during the campaign I noticed numerous frame rate drops across the experience with VRR kicking in hard while playing. The drops are more noticeable when looking at the footage I captured throughout. It’s not necessarily terrible, but it is definitely present and I worry for those without VRR enabled displays.

There’s also HDR support here, and the game in general does look lovely with a neat visual aesthetic to it. It’s not quite realistic, bit more of a cartoon like Play-Doh look. I don’t really feel that the game has that next gen shine to it, at any point but it still looks nice. Again, almost lovely as the sun sets with the day and night cycle as you see the world adjust accordingly.

With that, the open world does feel a tad lifeless. There’s no distinction biomes wise, there are few animals and the trees are incredibly repetitive. I noticed a fair bit of pop-in as I went about, and at times it can look a little ugly. It’s ambitious, but I can’t help feeling as though they should have reigned it in a bit with this being cross-gen. Looking at the Banished, again they’re basically the Covenant but red.

They do have a hilarious Grunt communications leader, just hilarious that character is. The enemies do feel varied, but traditional which is fine. I liked the setup of the different campaign battle scenarios with these groups, but it does feel somewhat repetitive after awhile too. The new creative ways to interact with foes is nice since it’s more open, at the same time the only new elements are grappling around and throwing canisters.

The world doesn’t really react at all to what damage you’re inflicting upon it. There are of course hidden secrets in the world to find if you care to look, just don’t expect a winding story to come from it as I’ve mentioned. You can also upgrade your Spartan by finding special items, maybe even unlock something for multiplayer if you’re lucky.

I should also mention the music, which is awesome and just a remix of the Halo 3 soundtrack it seems. I still definitely have to get myself a vinyl of it as the soundtrack is awesome. Seriously, top notch work and that sound design in general really carries the feel of the world. I should also briefly mention the voice performances which are very well done, sassy Cortana or well The Weapon is awesome.

The Conclusion

Halo Infinite is an ambitious next step for the franchise, where they aim to recreate the wonder and mystery that Combat Evolved did twenty years ago. I don’t feel that the game reaches the heights that have been set for it, with limited multiplayer content and a campaign that has numerous elements that don't quite hit the mark. It feels, finite instead of being Infinite as the titling of the game suggests. The campaign is the strongest portion of the game, but I do feel that it struggles at points.

Whether that’s with elements of the narrative as I’ve mentioned, the lifelessness of the open world exploration or the performance problems that exist. They went big and while I appreciate that, it isn’t necessarily the shining next gen Halo experience I had hoped for. There are many quality points to it, and I think this is a good restarting point for the series from a story perspective when going forward.

It’s disappointing not to explore and play with friends, coop campaign being absent at launch sucks plain and simple. You look at the multiplayer, which has only several arena maps and three rather disappointing big team battle maps to even put that lightly. It has aggressive microtransactions for the multiplayer and perhaps free to play wasn’t the best direction for it. I love the core gameplay they have going on here, and it’s a good launching point that might have provided us the best Halo to date.

They’re close, but as they go closer to it so many issues push things further away. I had issues with Halo 5: Guardians, but I did really enjoy Halo 4 and defend it more than others would. I look at Halo Infinite, and I see a game being pulled in multiple directions that needs a different focus. There are many things I liked, and many others I had problems with. I do think fans will enjoy the campaign, newcomers too. It’s just not the bold, exciting Halo that I grew up with. I’m not sure this series will ever hit that mark again, and it’s sorrowing.

I do look brightly towards what’s to come, as they’ve promised so much will arrive. Whether it will or not is another question however, as many parts of this game continued to get delayed. I want to believe, but optimism in delivering content somewhere down the road doesn’t score you rating metrics now. Hopefully coop is fun, far after we’re done playing the main story and I love custom games so hopefully Forge fuels that assuming players haven’t already moved onto something else in a year from now.

I just see that with every new entry in this series, it takes longer for them to develop the games and the features continue to vanish. You look at Reach, even look at Halo 4 which was about a decade ago now and those games had a pile of more content at their launches. This content trickle system isn’t working. At least we have The Weapon, she’s a sassy and fun version of Cortana that hits just the right marks.

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Halo Infinite Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by Microsoft

Rating Overall: 7.4