With the announcement of another game in the Halo series, fans everywhere leapt to their feet and it was almost as if you could hear the series chorus wherever you were. As a much beloved franchise that has stood the test of time for more than two decades now, there have been numerous attempts to refresh the formula and make the series feel different than a level-based FPS game. Halo Infinite does just that, taking the focus from campaign levels to a wide open world a-la Ubisoft titles. With improvements on traversal, gunplay, and an overall feeling of vastness that wasn’t as present in older titles, Infinite is an insane deal to get on a service like Xbox Games Pass.
Even as someone who has been a very passive Halo fan, I was excited for the launch of Infinite and what changes could possibly come. Tracking development news, hearing it was open world was a bit worrying actually, as transitioning to an open world might create a sense of repetition that creates a dissatisfying playstyle or feels empty to play though. This isn’t the case in Halo Infinite, where the open world segment honestly begins with a bang. After the intro segment featuring space fights, ship explosions, and a boss fight; falling out of the dropship straight into enemy territory to reclaim it as your own felt really action packed. This was a really smooth transition too, as the fighting you had to do felt meager since they were mostly remnant forces that the Chief was mowing through. Going from that section to fighting an entire fort might seem like a huge escalation, but for the Master Chief it’s just in another day’s work. The gunplay is very smooth as well, with seamless ADS and different interfaces depending on the weapon you’re using. A lot of the guns actually have differences for ammo count and alternate fire rates as well, which is a nice touch to avoid monotony when it comes to weapon picking. A major thing I found as well was ammo conservation and weapon switching, which was much more common than I thought. A huge portion of combat is being able to switch weapons on the fly because of limitations like ammo count or enemy defenses. This makes not only for interesting and involved gunplay due to the constant switching, but interactive combat because you need to be aware of your surroundings to swap weapons or find ammo if necessary.
Probably my favorite part of Halo Infinite is the grappling hook, which by itself changes a lot of the gameplay. The grappling hook latches onto nearby surfaces and pulls you towards them, which can be utilized in a number of ways. What I’ve mostly done with it is use it to speed up traversal, as you can utilize it on the floor as a form of faster sprint, or use it to avoid projectiles. This makes combat feel incredibly immersive as well, you’re able to zip around the battlefield like Spider-man while shooting and punching enemies that come at you. This makes the open world crucial in traversal, as there’s a lot of verticality with sprawling mountain ranges and immense structures and forts that allow the player to get decent vantage points without much effort. While this is cool and all, fighting is only necessary at some key points. Killing enemies is not linked to progression or upgrades for the most part, and you can actively ignore a lot of enemies unless they’re guarding a point to interact with. This leaves enemies feeling kind of useless in a lot of scenarios, as there’s little incentive to kill anything outside of objective points or recapturing forts and towers. While it can feel a bit wasted, the required combat portions feel incredibly fun to play through, utilizing every tool the game has given you to truthfully feel like a super soldier with the capability to take on an army solo.
Halo Infinite feels like a culmination of a lot of learning through observation on the part of the development team. A lot of features that are loved in games were put to use, such as open world features and alternative methods of traversal. Gunplay feels really smooth and the dopamine rush of filling up the map with various capture points and collectibles is ever present as you progress through the story. It’s surprising to see this game on Xbox Games Pass with the amount of content packed in on top of the multiplayer. With the amount of game-time you’re able to log into Halo Infinite, this is certainly a game to pick up if you like shooters.
Score: 8 out of 10
Reviewed on Windows PC