Perhaps one of my favorite gaming experiences over this past year was my introduction to the Halo franchise. Growing up as a PlayStation kid in my early childhood, I didn’t have an Xbox console until about 2010 when I got my first Arcade 360. By that time, we were already four titles into the franchise and it had seemed impossible to catch up while being surrounded by so many compelling stories at that time.

Over this past summer though, I decided to finally jump head-first into the franchise just in time to take part in the newest entry into the ongoing story. Getting to play the games in release order and learning more about the characters and seeing the series’ evolution was rewarding. But when it came to the series, I had the privilege of looking at it objectively.

I hadn’t grown up with the series so I was able to play all of its games without rose-colored glasses. And this is the same way I went into Halo Infinite. Though the game tries its best to please fans while offering a small handful of evolutionary sparks, Halo Infinite is a far cry from being the best title in the series.

Story

Halo Infinite is actually a pretty weak story for the majority of its duration. You play as Master Chief following the attack on his crew which left him floating in space…again. He awakens to find that the Halo ring below and his ship have been whipped out by a band of murders called The Banished. They’re set up as the usual band of space pirates that disparage and murder everyone in their path.

It’s actually a pretty good set of bad guys that the series has really been missing for a long time. The main villain Escharum is a ruthless killer whose delusions of grandeur really help paint a picture of the warrior lifestyle he’s come to live for. His will is to break MC and become a legend.

Our heroes on the other hand are about as basic as they come. Master Chief, while showing signs of growing at all as a character in Halo 5: Guardians has yet again fallen into that robot soldier state where it just feels like Captain America on auto-pilot. Sure, he shows some difference in voice pattern when talking about Cortana but besides that, he’s about as lifeless as a piece of space debris.

I personally was a huge fan of the direction that the series had gone in with Halo 5 so I was hoping to see a badass Master Chief who just stopped giving a dang when Cortana took off. On the flip side though, the fact that his entire crew and the life on the ring had been wiped out should have shaken him up even just a little bit. He’s always talking about finishing the mission and him being optimistic all the time can be a bit eye-roll-inducing at times.

I get that he’s supposed to be a super-soldier, but other Spartans have shown signs of other emotions aside from “heroic mode” all of the time. He’s just not a character that warrants any intrigue anymore. He’s been the same exact character since 2001 and it truly shows.

I do have to say though, the story does finally pick things up in the last act which shows one of the best endings in the series’ history. It even managed to get me choked up a bit too. I just wish that the story had any kind of weight from the beginning. There really never feels like there are any stakes. Even the side character, Echo, just feels tacked on.

And he isn’t the only one either. There are plenty of villains that show up only to be dispatched a scene later or that get forgotten about until the end of the game. It’s just all so… Spider-Man 3 about it all. There’s just too much of stuff that doesn’t even matter. They’re so worried about sequel-bating that the story in the majority of the game is invisible.

Gameplay

Thankfully, the open-world aspect of Halo Infinite mostly works in the context of this game alone. Though it really isn’t an open-world at all as some parts are closed off specifically for story engagements and others can be blocked with invisible walls so that you get corraled to where the game wants to put you. These aspects had me both aggravated and disappointed in the overall execution of it all.

This is only made worse by the fact that the on-the-ground vehicles are the worst to drive. They’re weightless, their controls are egregious, and the terrain hates them. Luckily, this game has flying vehicles and the awesome new grapple shot to lessen the blow but it still stinks that the devs couldn’t get it right. These vehicles have never been a joy to drive in any entry but here, they’re especially the worst.

Combat and maneuverability are at the top of their game though. Never has Halo felt so current and smooth. Though I was pretty bummed not to see the SMGs or dual-wielding weapons appear in this game. It was a joy to engage in gunfights with enemies and figure out how to use each level to your advantage as the grapple shot changes the game entirely. There are many new abilities that you can unlock and upgrade, but they all seem useless in comparison.

Being able to zip around a room like Spider-Man is insane as Master Chief and knocking out brutes while careening towards them is just epic. Luckily, there are tons of chances to use it though through the open world that includes not just story missions but enemy strongholds, FOB outposts, and high-priority targets. Things like this don’t get in the way at all and offer some more things to do as you explore the new Halo ring.

The collectibles strewn throughout the ring are pretty cool too as you can even find some armor variants to use in multiplayer. This is an aspect that I really hope other games like it start to implement in the future. Tying the single-player and multiplayer experiences together with elements like this really felt like an improvement that connect the two in a simple yet effective way.

I’d also like to mention that the campaign itself feels heavily dragged out. The first half’s missions are actually really good but as soon as you hit the halfway point, the game turns into a copy and paste monotonous mess. Literally, every mission from then on either has you doing the same thing over and over or has you running down corridors that are overused and underwhelming.

Audio and Visuals

Halo Infinite’s actors do a very good job at the role that they play. Cortana is always the star of the show with Master Chief and us in the audience. Of course, Halo is nothing without Master Chief himself, no matter how bland his personality, his actor does a great job at the role he’s playing.

Visuals-wise, I wouldn’t say that the game looks all too great. I wouldn’t say it’s a big jump from Halo 5 in terms of the overall look either. There are definitely some gorgeous moments but they’re definitely not true next-gen visuals. It’s heavily apparent with the lack of different environments within the new ring that the game is either being held back by the fact that it was made to run on old hardware or by the fact that it wasn’t entirely ready to go out yet.

You’re either always looking at the same wooden areas with a slightly modern design or you’re in some kind of metal corridor that you’ve been in a million times before. That’s probably one of my biggest complaints about the game; it really lacks any real character. It just looks so obviously lazy.

Replayability

The game really does offer a lot of replayability. There are other open-world activities to complete even past the campaign’s end as well as the secrets and collectibles to find around the world. There’s a secret ending you can unlock too in addition to the co-op option coming in 2022.

What It Could Have Done Better

Besides what I’ve already said, there are technical complaints. On the Series S, I noticed a game crash, loss of frame rates, loss of audio, loss of video, and even a game-breaking bug where it told me there were enemies nearby even though there weren’t which made it impossible for me to progress. It’s stuff like this that can just totally detract from an experience overall and leave you waiting for the next issue to screw up your game.

Verdict

Halo Infinite is a pretty tough game to score. I think that the devs were so bent on pleasing the old-school fans that hated the changes they made with 4 and 5 that they wind up falling on their own swords. This feels like a backtrack in terms of progression for Master Chief as a character while evolving the gameplay marginally to put it in a good place in modern gaming.

And while I absolutely love the opening and ending of Infinite as well as some real enjoyment of what it had to offer every so often, the game just doesn’t go far enough into the uncharted waters that it so needed to this time around. I’m excited to see what comes next for master Chief and co. but I’m also worried that the next entry could too fall back on its decades-old bad habits.