Yeah. The added maneuver boost gives it a touch of Unreal Tournament feel, the new melee moves and seemingly modified shields that start recharge sooner (and your team) allows you to get more in the thick of it and go wild rather than mostly being defensive in big battles, and that feeling was enhanced by the climbing ability so you could get into would-be dumb situations then bail out over a ledge to flank someone else, plus the guns all felt great so it was more worth it to switch out to random stuff dropped by the enemies.
There were also a lot less of the "forced path" designs that Halo 4 had with the stupid overlapping double back ovals where you had to run up a ramp while people shot at you from both above and across the way, so you were basically just dealing with constant position trolling. Instead, this game gave a lot of freedom in the level design for how you wanted to tackle things and go up or in or around levels with lots of tunnels and holes or high ground, finding more clusters of enemies everywhere but not too exposed to 100 at once unless you weren't paying attention or wanted to be as part of a devious strategy.
After playing Destiny I was a bit worried that this was going to be too much like older Halo games with fairly direct clashes or big open field battles and not have that wild scrappy "in the thick of it" feeling that Destiny has, but it does and does it even better because of the Halo weapon hot swapping rather than cheesy powers and RPG stuff. I never felt like I had to wait on anything or be overly defensive. I could always get in there and go crazy and have leeway to mix it up if an idea wasn't turning out too well. The ideas that did, however, made for some really fun kill combo moments and weapon synergies.
I wasn't a big fan of those dumb turrets that charge up and fire lasers tho because they were stupid easy to avoid and just took an annoying amount of fire to blow up. I usually just half-ignored dodged them easily while I killed everyone then blew them up at the end like a chore.
Overall it has the things most important to me in an action game:
-Enough mobility and variety at hand for creative, player-expressive play*
-Dynamic mechanics and engagements rather than prescribed tactics**
-Lets you be in the scrap, taking risks, riding the fine line of death.
*A non-shooter example would be DMC or Bayonetta, or a hybrid example would be RE6.
**Meaning, nothing like necessitated wall cover gameplay where you spend too much time waiting. No rote actions to defeat an enemy like in Dark Souls were you often bait a hard swing then stab them in the recovery window. You can always do things in a new way and can be always-active.
, spent 320k RP for 11 skins.
