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Halo: Infinite |OT| Campaign. Evolved.

Max_Po

Banned
I started last night and I dunno what David Jaffe was talking about.
On one hand I loved the inner part but after completing it I realized you are only turning on a few things ... and quiet frankly I got through by tossing those energy barrels around ...blue and yellow... forgot what they are called...

.. then came outside..its beautiful but it like Farcry ...taking bases.

I may give up ..unless there is story that unfolds.

I think it might be good if you have a few friends and are just together having fun together in coop.
 
A few hours in. Personally I think the open/semi open world set up in gaming in general is getting a bit stale and this is just another reminder of it. Feels very copy and paste at times in mission structure like others in that genre.

I hope as the generation continues we see a big new games or two show some inventiveness in set up, mission structure and take some risks. I know the bigger the budget the less risk these days so I won’t be anticipating change any time soon.

Visually I think it’s alright, nothing great (I’m on Series X) and some of the cutscene facial animations are a bit off too. Admittedly I have never liked Halos visuals much, I always thought they were a bit bland, something off about them.

More positively I love the music, gunplay and that sniper rifle is so satisfying particularly the noise. The multiplayer is a great laugh at times too so I certainly won’t be deleting it once the campaign is finished.
 
I feel like my biggest problem with the Halo franchise is that you need to read wiki articles to figure out what happens between games, or the books / comics. Because they keep getting cold feet with concepts and ideas ever since 343 took over. Can't remember if the jump from Halo 2 to 3 was this jarring as well. I also liked the ending of Halo 5 where Humanity was about to face an AI rebellion.
Here they just sweep everything under the rug. It feels ? Low budget in a weird way, or to me it feels like a de-evolution in terms of scope for a scifi franchise, but maybe it's because I'm burnt out of the typical: clear bases to continue, and to unlock things. Maybe this would work better if this was 10-12 hours of linear campaign dealing with Cortana's AI rebellion and then the rest is this part. It's a shame the game was mismanaged for 6 years and now we kinda get once again half-baked ideas that might get thrown out in a sequel game again.

It's a stark contrast to how the Gears of War franchise is being handled, yeah 4 was a bit wonky in parts, but at least 5 didn't reboot the shit out of everything.
 

eNT1TY

Member
Legendary is brutal, game is pretty fun and traversal is better than i anticipated. I'd rather grapple around than use vehicles. There is a Tribes 2 vibe with building momentum when chain grappling and landing just right to surf down a rock ledge or even a gradual downward slope with maintained speed. Disappointed with outdoor visuals however it looks great indoors, indoors looks Halo as fuck.
 

Kev Kev

Member
Just because I noted some small criticism? and it wasn't subjective either, it was objective stuff you can point at and show.

I like the game.
giphy.gif
 

Wvrs

Member
I feel like my biggest problem with the Halo franchise is that you need to read wiki articles to figure out what happens between games, or the books / comics. Because they keep getting cold feet with concepts and ideas ever since 343 took over. Can't remember if the jump from Halo 2 to 3 was this jarring as well. I also liked the ending of Halo 5 where Humanity was about to face an AI rebellion.
Here they just sweep everything under the rug. It feels ? Low budget in a weird way, or to me it feels like a de-evolution in terms of scope for a scifi franchise, but maybe it's because I'm burnt out of the typical: clear bases to continue, and to unlock things. Maybe this would work better if this was 10-12 hours of linear campaign dealing with Cortana's AI rebellion and then the rest is this part. It's a shame the game was mismanaged for 6 years and now we kinda get once again half-baked ideas that might get thrown out in a sequel game again.

It's a stark contrast to how the Gears of War franchise is being handled, yeah 4 was a bit wonky in parts, but at least 5 didn't reboot the shit out of everything.
This trilogy should have been all about humanity and the Forerunners. The Didact should have been the overarching villain and the fact they abandoned that story in favour of not-Covenant is tragic.
 

Kev Kev

Member
This trilogy should have been all about humanity and the Forerunners. The Didact should have been the overarching villain and the fact they abandoned that story in favour of not-Covenant is tragic.
i couldnt agree wit this more. he was always supposed to be the big bad. and after reading and loving greg baers trilogy of forerunner novels, the fact they abandoned that story line broke my heart (well, they didnt abandon it, but it should have been what this trilogy was about, instead they killed him off in some shitty comic or whatever.... total waste of potential. terrible call on 343's part).
 
This trilogy should have been all about humanity and the Forerunners. The Didact should have been the overarching villain and the fact they abandoned that story in favour of not-Covenant is tragic.
I like the gunplay, the grappling hook is fun. But this type of story course correction is just so blatant and jarring that I wish they would go: Yeah so here's the prequel to Halo Infinite ... Halo 6, or a weird semi prequel thing.

I thought I would like Infinite, but then a semi open world appeared and then the usual minimalistic RPG elements of collecting stuff to upgrade and I just went and Sighed. Doom and Doom Eternal has collectibles but they werent massive open worlds. Complete boomer rant I know, but making a Spin/off enemy faction a main villain is just dumb, wasting six years on an open world game, then scrapping 2/3rds of it (Ironic that this game suffered pretty much the same fate as the Destiny franchise in terms of reboots). Just ... make a goddamn linear game. There's no shame in that, a lot of people are fed up with empty open spaces, and linear games still sell. Remember when next-gen was about pushing location and AI density. Now it's 4K, and ...pretty but open empty vistas.
 
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i’m enjoying this game well enough but it’s funny reading so much praise for stuff that other games such as Mass Effect Andromeda got shit on for years ago. This is a very run-of-the-mill open world game, outposts, beacons, fobs, missions which make you clear or destroy 3 of these bases before you can advance. The gunplay and Grapplehook is fantastic, story is decent, so much else is dated, music is weak compared to Marty, man this is just such an average open world game and I don’t see why it’s getting so much love. This isn’t much different than any Ubisoft game. It just has a Halo skin.

The original trilogy absolutely shits on this game, according to the achievement tracker I’m 70% complete the main campaign, first mission was great everything else after that was just average. We’ll see how it ends but as it stands this is a 6/10 at best.
 
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Bragr

Banned
This trilogy should have been all about humanity and the Forerunners. The Didact should have been the overarching villain and the fact they abandoned that story in favour of not-Covenant is tragic.
Halo's story has always been dumb.

What Halo is exceptional at, is the art, music, the setting, the Halo rings are an awesome idea, but the narrative is a clusterfuck. It's great at posing Master Chief as the lone hero, but all the aliens act and reason like humans which makes no sense. Halo hits upon virtually every trope within sci-fi. Even the fucking banished uses computer terminals lol.

Halo works best when there is a mystery, like the earlier games. 90% of the people playing the game have no fucking idea or remember what a fuck happened in Halo 4 and 5.
 
And it isn't useless at all doing the optional objectives since it leads to a much stronger UNSC presence in the surrounding areas. Nearly every firefight I might get into in an area where we've taken it back from the banished I've got backup supporting me.

With where I'm at now, well over 10 hours into the game, with still plenty more to do, have only killed the second boss in the game thus far, and still only have 2 pieces of equipment, and confident this is the best Halo game ever made. That second outpost takeover just felt so damn good. The game is just loaded with tons of great content. And the various locations across Zeta Halo are so well designed and constructed structurally and artistically that at no point am I finding an issue with wanting more biomes or more than just the PNW theme. That's the central theme, but they're giving us all kinds of very different looks and presentations, and I'm a really big fan of it. The environments here feel so complex and dense that you really do feel like you're getting way more mileage out of the environmental design compared to what I got in any prior Halo game, but I'll extend that statement beyond Halo games and say that what I'm getting here is in many ways beyond what I see from non Halo games. The world designed in Halo Infinite is one fit for a legit open world RPG, and it looks like every inch received artist attention. They really did a great job.
 
Starting this bad boi up after finishing up my replay of 5 tonight. Appreciate the story a bit more after reading a wiki. Had no idea wtf was going on back in 2015 lol.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
There's as much pre fight as you make it. You can scout a base, find the doors that have power sources, deactivate them if you want so your troops can come in with you.

What's great about this is that the banished will drop off reinforcements in large waves which can really ramp the tension I'd you aren't on your game. Or the brute will drop pod in. It's great, you can sneak around the perimeter taking out the scouts and attack at your leisure or go balls in from the start.

I've played probably close to 200 hours of Breakpoint and pre scouting is a joke, especially with the drone. Even without it, the challenge of Breakpoint is that the brown camo guy is in the brown cover and you maybe didn't have your thermals on. Or they'll send ridiculous waves, they don't use tactics at all in BP.

How far into Infinite are you?

I just don't feel that the game rewards the player pre fight (strategy, scouting etc) as much as Ghost Recon. It requires so much effort to really look at a base from different angles, whereas in Ghost Recon Ubisoft really wanted you using that drone. Additionally, once the fight starts in Halo everything is FUBAR so you just naturally go guns blazing. I've taken out entire bases in GR without being spotted.

They're different games. I just wish 343 invested a bit more into the strategizing aspect a bit more (though I say that about most games now). I always want to pull up that map, and win from that screen in a sense. We'll see, I'm still only 2-3 hours into it. Hopefully I get that Wasp soon.
 
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amc

Member
Game's fucking rad. Looks incredible all maxxed out at 4K60 on 77" C1.

Grappling an energy cannister then smashing it into a crowd of grunts then grappling on over to mop up the leftovers whilst they run around shouting hilarious one liners is some serious fun times.

Halo is back.
 

Haggard

Banned
8 hours in....
I really, really, dig the combat. Pretty much everything about that is great. Grappling into an enemy with a charged up melee hit never gets old but the rest of the game, damn.....

The open world is absolutely barebones. I haven't seen such a dry copy and paste job in a decade. Absolutely terrible, and it doesn't even look good graphically....No variety, no creativity and not even any kind of staging to make it at least a bit interesting. That everything looks the same and you've seen every graphical asset there is the moment you step into the open world doesn't help either.
The story is also once again pretty much crap, 343 just can't hire good writers it seems.
This game feels like anthem, great core gameplay and everything else looks like it was hastily clobbered together during crunch. Compared to something like titanfall 2s campaign this is a disgrace.

This game may be a subjective 8-9 for people that just care about the core gameplay but in objective reviews which should compare all the aspects with the competition this game should never have gotten anything beyond a 6. Seriously how can a game where 2/3rds of the design are bad-generic get 8+/10¿
 
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I just don't feel that the game rewards the player pre fight (strategy, scouting etc) as much as Ghost Recon. It requires so much effort to really look at a base from different angles, whereas in Ghost Recon Ubisoft really wanted you using that drone. Additionally, once the fight starts in Halo everything is FUBAR so you just naturally go guns blazing. I've taken out entire bases in GR without being spotted.

They're different games. I just wish 343 invested a bit more into the strategizing aspect a bit more (though I say that about most games now). I always want to pull up that map, and win from that screen in a sense. We'll see, I'm still only 2-3 hours into it. Hopefully I get that Wasp soon.
You're not wrong, but I think you are kinda comparing apples to oranges and I love me some Ghost Recon. That said, I do think strategy will come into play in a much bigger way on Legendary difficulty in co-op. I think that's gonna be the real best way to play this. We'll see.
 
8 hours in....
I really, really, dig the combat. Pretty much everything about that is great. Grappling into an enemy with a charged up melee hit never gets old but the rest of the game, damn.....

The open world is absolutely barebones. I haven't seen such a dry copy and paste job in a decade. Absolutely terrible, and it doesn't even look good graphically....No variety, no creativity and not even any kind of staging to make it at least a bit interesting. That everything looks the same and you've seen every graphical asset there is the moment you step into the open world doesn't help either.
The story is also once again pretty much crap, 343 just can't hire good writers it seems.
This game feels like anthem, great core gameplay and everything else looks like it was hastily clobbered together during crunch. Compared to something like titanfall 2s campaign this is a disgrace.


This game may be a subjective 8-9 for people that just care about the core gameplay but in objective reviews which should compare all the aspects with the competition this game should never have gotten anything beyond a 6. Seriously how can a game where 2/3rds of the design are bad-generic get 8+/10¿


We are definitely not playing the same fucking game lol. I disagree entirely with EVERYTHING said, but that's your opinion I suppose, as wrong as it may be.

I need to get further in, but it's far from what I'd label copy and paste. Many parts of this game are very nicely artist arranged. Lots of unique views and sights throughout the environments.
 
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Mr.ODST

Member
I feel like my biggest problem with the Halo franchise is that you need to read wiki articles to figure out what happens between games, or the books / comics. Because they keep getting cold feet with concepts and ideas ever since 343 took over. Can't remember if the jump from Halo 2 to 3 was this jarring as well. I also liked the ending of Halo 5 where Humanity was about to face an AI rebellion.
Here they just sweep everything under the rug. It feels ? Low budget in a weird way, or to me it feels like a de-evolution in terms of scope for a scifi franchise, but maybe it's because I'm burnt out of the typical: clear bases to continue, and to unlock things. Maybe this would work better if this was 10-12 hours of linear campaign dealing with Cortana's AI rebellion and then the rest is this part. It's a shame the game was mismanaged for 6 years and now we kinda get once again half-baked ideas that might get thrown out in a sequel game again.

It's a stark contrast to how the Gears of War franchise is being handled, yeah 4 was a bit wonky in parts, but at least 5 didn't reboot the shit out of everything.
To be fair I agree about the story not being explained for newcomers.

Im a huge halo fan but because this game is a comtinuation from halo wars 2 its hard for people to understand who Atriox is and what happened to the Infinity.

Id like to mention that this is the best open world game ive experienced though,
 
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Kev Kev

Member
The open world is absolutely barebones. I haven't seen such a dry copy and paste job in a decade. Absolutely terrible, and it doesn't even look good graphically....No variety, no creativity and not even any kind of staging to make it at least a bit interesting. That everything looks the same and you've seen every graphical asset there is the moment you step into the open world doesn't help either.
The story is also once again pretty much crap, 343 just can't hire good writers it seems.
This game feels like anthem, great core gameplay and everything else looks like it was hastily clobbered together during crunch. Compared to something like titanfall 2s campaign this is a disgrace.

This game may be a subjective 8-9 for people that just care about the core gameplay but in objective reviews which should compare all the aspects with the competition this game should never have gotten anything beyond a 6. Seriously how can a game where 2/3rds of the design are bad-generic get 8+/10¿
stupid-people.gif
 
As someone who hasn’t loved a Halo game since Reach this game feels amazing. The controls are so tight.

Also really glad I went with Heroic as aside from the odd encounter it’s really not particularly difficult. Well, so far anyway as I’ve only done the first 2 FOB bases...
 

clarky

Gold Member
2nd session, done for the night. 9 hours in and 25% done on heroic, think I'm around half way main mission wise. Easily surpassed expectations and unless it absolutely craps the bed in the second half this will be my personal GOTY, if not the last few years.

Massive compared to pervious campaigns, deffo up there with he best of bungies efforts. Just missing a few large set pieces but it makes up for it in other areas.
 
I’m noticing a bunch of achievements didn’t activate like getting the weapon and using her as your AI for the first time or getting my first banished audio log.

This is disappointing.
 

Connxtion

Member
I’m noticing a bunch of achievements didn’t activate like getting the weapon and using her as your AI for the first time or getting my first banished audio log.

This is disappointing.
They will unlock at some point. I was getting them randomly 😂 or they were delayed by a few minutes 🤷‍♂️
 

Assaulty

Member
I'm going to risk sounding like a chille here, but I am actually really pleasantly suprised by Infinite's visual quality in the campaign. I've cleared the first FOB and the moment you head into the open world for the first time was really well done. The game looks really sharp and clean. I still hate the trees but the rest of the game looks pretty stellar. I think the texture quality is of a very high level actually.

The game is an absolute homerun. I loved the first 2 levels and have heard it only gets better from here. First FOB was a blast to clear. I am playing on Legendary and it's a really fair challenge unlike the dumbass promethean knights etc. This game does a great job of making you feel like an absolute badass. 343 finally nailed the most important aspects of what makes Halo great and I'm here for it.

The Pilot character is a weird one for me tho. He seems like he doesn't know the achievements the Chief has accomplished. He is acting like Chief is some sort of Marine and can't get anything done. It's annoying
 

MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
I still hate the trees but the rest of the game looks pretty stellar.

I hate the trees for a completely different reason. Enemies can see you through them. You can't see the enemies. It's one of my biggest problems with this game. Yes, you can use threat sensor but this shouldn't be the case. Bad programming.
 

Jennings

Member
Great game. First Halo game I've truly enjoyed (I've tried Halo 1, 2, 5, ODST). Once I get further along and determine how replayable the campaign feels, I'm tempted to buy myself a copy of this once my Gamepass expires in 10 days.

The game is gorgeous, runs great, feels great to shoot, drive, and move around in, and has a lot more personality and humor than the other entries I've tried. The grapple is a must have and will hopefully remain an evergreen addition to the series, and the new Orc/Banished enemies are beefy as fuck.

I don't understand anything about the Banished backstory except that they are former slaves and for some reason need to be wiped out of existence due to their ongoing rebellion, and I can't really remember a lot of the Cortana stuff leading up to this, but coherent story always seemed secondary to gameplay in past Halo games, so I guess it's no surprise it's confusing here too. And that's fine by me, if it were up to me stories in shooters would be no more complicated or distracting than the campaign of DOOM 2016, basically allowing players to punch exposition boxes.

5/5 game for me so far.
 
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bender

What time is it?
Finished the first level. I don't have a lot of experience with 343i Halo games. All of the weapons feel...weird? I guess it's just different from what I'm used to. I really wish Bungie wouldn't have introduced Brutes into the lore. They are so much less interesting to fight than Elites. I'm curious to see the open world. The first level wasn't all that interesting and the escape sequence was far from tense.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
How does saving work please? Quick recap?

When it says 'saving checkpoint' that's not where I'll resume from if I leave the level I take it?

Only started the first level and saw a few 'saving checkpoints' flash up so thought I would see but continued my game and I'm back at the very beginning of the level?
 

Gloomnivore

Member
I’ve never even been that big a fan of Halo and faithfully sucked at Infinite’s MP but this campaign is hitting all the right notes. The guns and grappleshot make me feel like a badass and the world is a joy to traverse. I finally believe.
 

Assaulty

Member
I’ve never even been that big a fan of Halo and faithfully sucked at Infinite’s MP but this campaign is hitting all the right notes. The guns and grappleshot make me feel like a badass and the world is a joy to traverse. I finally believe.

RIght? The gameplay of this game is absolute KING in the shooter genre for me. Imagine this game with a fully fleshed out open world that isn't plagued by development hell. Imagine what they can do with a smooth sailing type of project and I believe Staten taking over can achieve exactly that. He knows exactly what makes Halo the premier FPS franchise it's deserving to be and I think bringing him on board is the best thing that's happened to Halo in 10 years. Future is looking bright as day for the Halo franchise. Can't wait to jump back in tonight.
 

Schmick

Member
It's the most expensive game ever made.
More than half a billion dollars.


Note: I'm not saying you're wrong. Just pointing out the budget.
I think that $500 million budget has been debunked.

Already posted somewhere in this thread but here it goes.
The rumour was originally made up by Xbox Dynasty
It was debunked by Frankie in ResetEra
And subsequently the relevant ResetEra thread was closed
[/SPOILER]

It is crazy when people stick to a rumour from a site with no credibility even when denied by the franchise director himself.
 
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