So, the new Halo campaign dropped this week. The multiplayer has been out for a while now, and has received a lot of negative press. But I really don’t give a crap about multiplayer, and have been waiting for the campaign.
Anyone else playing it?
I’ve played about 4 hours now, on and off the last two days. After getting used to the new game mechanics, I’m cautiously optimistic for the whole game. The open-world concept seems to work for me. Just being able to wander around a Halo construct and get into fights kind of works, but you can still just go for the missions if you want.
There are some control issues I don’t like, but I’ll probably get used to them in time.
Even with the major differences, it feels more like the original Halo:CE than anything else in the series, which I approve of. I’ve always been of the opinion that the first Halo is one of the best games of all time.
I’ve just started playing it on Xbox. First impressions in the order they happened:
- Yep this looks and sounds like a Halo game, cool!
- The human who picks up the Chief floating in space at the beginning looks pretty bad for a big budget game. Worse than many games on the last generation of consoles.
- Halo is one of the few games that gets you to set your vertical look preference at the very beginning instead of making you look for the options menu yourself at the risk of accidentally skipping early cut scenes. Thanks Halo.
- Feels like a Halo game. Cool!
- I like that they’ve changed the default button layout to a standard modern shooter setup. The old Halo layout was fine, but it feels good to just be able to instinctively push buttons and get what you want.
So far so good, but I’ve literally played about 15 minutes of it.
I dont have a problem with the multiplayer other than the fact that there are only 3 modes ATM and it’s random on which mode you play … but I hope the campaign plays as fast as the multiplayer does
I haven’t tried the multiplayer. My problem with multiplayer in general is that I’m a bit shit at it and don’t have the time to git gud.
I’m on Xbox as well. With regards to controls, I like that they let you re-map the controls individually. I had a bad habit of throwing a grenade instead of using the grappling hook device.
One control scheme I don’t like is the new way of cycling through grenade types, and special equipment types. One D-pad Press to tell it I want to switch, and then another, different (usually) D-pad press to select what I want. In the middle of a big fight, I can’t remember which direction I need for what I want, so I have to actually look at the diagram, which is a pain. It would be better if your could just rapidly cycle the options with just one D-Pad press per option. Like, D-pad left cycles grenades, D-pad right cycles equipment, and so on.
Pretty excited for it, but I merely added it to my wish list. Played the original a lot back in the day, but never any others. I do have the Master Chief collection, and now with the shiny new monitor I got last week, my scrappy 1050 ti is running Halo 2 at 144 fps using the original graphics. I’m way into it. Around 3/4 through and having a blast.
But then I have four more complete game campaigns to go through before needing to worry about having Infinite. Fingers crossed for a sale in the meantime.
I will likely play them all in release order unless there’s a compelling reason not to.
As you might expect, there’s a lot of Fan Disagreement on the value of the later games. I thought 4 was a big departure from what the original trilogy was about, and relied too much on the stories developed in the Halo books. If you hadn’t read any of them, a lot of the big “Oh Wow!” reveal moments kind of fell flat. I didn’t even finish 5 the first time I tried to play it, the feel of the game was just too different.
I finally got through 5 when the MCC came out.
Infinite, as I said before, feels more like the original game. The upgrades make it better, without completely altering the feeling of the game.
You probably should play all the earlier games first though, if you care about the story lines at all. There’s been quite a few major political changes since Halo:CE.
I don’t think I even finished number 2. I definitely didn’t finish 3. After the first one I found them to be a bit “samey” and they didn’t hold my interest interest enough to finish. This one might be different, or it might not be. I have all of them with GamePass so I could go through and play them.
I like the way the terrain is literally made out of hexes.
So, I discovered you can blow up the Propaganda Towers, and get Valor points for it, but now I don’t want to do that because I’d rather hear what the Propaganda Grunt has to say. He’s pretty funny. Real “Baghdad Bob” vibes.
The grunts in general are quite funny. In one section I’m fighting a couple of those invisible guys with swords. I kill them, come around a corner and run into a couple of grunts. As one of them turns to look at me he’s saying “so, have you killed him yet?”, then I turn him into plasma goo.
There’s also a lot of fun in just cruising around with a Warthog* full of Marines, just gunning down every random bad guy you see.
*Puma