The last entry in the Halo Master Chief collection is the first Halo game by 343 Industries. They were formed by Microsoft to continue the Halo game franchise after Bungie's contract ended. Before working on Halo 4, 343 remastered Halo CE. Eventually, 343 released the Master Chief collection, which included the remastered Halo CE, a remastered Halo 2, and all the other FPS Halo games, including their own Halo 4.
Back to Halo 4, 343 were in the difficult spot of reviving the Halo series by balancing out keeping the same kind of gameplay and quality the audience were expecting, all while pushing the series beyond the original story that ended in Halo 3.
The plot now revolves around the Promethean alien race and the gradual "rampancy" of Cortana. While the Covenant aliens return, with their weapons and vehicules, the Prometheans introduce their own weapons and environments that are strikingly different. The familiar Earth-like environments are now replaced with robot-like aliens and Neptune-like colors.
Playing Halo 3 ODST and Halo 4 back-to-back (as they are listed in the Master Chief Collection) is a bit of a shock. Halo 4's controls and movements are closer to its FPS contemporaries (of 2012), so I was scared that the Halo style of gameplay would also go away.
After a few levels, my worries vanished. The gameplay is similar enough to the previous Halo games, all while having so many more original weapon styles and enemies. The story is interesting, though maybe a bit too reliant on "lore". Though this may be due to a "remastering" done for the MCC, Halo 4 is also far better looking than Halo 3 and Reach. Overall, it is a game good enough to be a "Halo" game, a good start for 343.
A thing I didn't mention up to this point is that every Halo game (in fact, even the Marathon games) support co-op gameplay, typically up to 4 human players. But not only this is optional, but also the games' difficulty remained balanced for a single player, even when playing with other players. While there are computer-controlled allies that can help when playing alone, it is generally assumed that they are unreliable, so the game's difficulty balance takes that into account.
"Halo 5: Guardians" emphases on the co-op aspect to the point that, for the first time, those teams of 4 players are taken into account in the game's story. You alternate between two different teams of four players, and if you play alone the 3 other players are controlled by some AI.
The result is a frustrating mess. The AI is simply not good enough to act as a proper counterbalance to the vastly increased waves of enemies. If you play alone, you will spend most of your time "babysitting" the other AI players to avoid them stupidly falling. Sure, most of the time you can revive the fallen players (similar to co-op in the Borderlands games), but if you fail to do so quickly enough, they become unavailable for the rest of the level, making the difficulty even more unbalanced. There are also multiple levels with branching paths, where 2 players go to one path that is nearly inaccessible to the other 2 players, so if the AI-controlled players fall in the other path, it's not possible for you to revive them. This makes this Halo game the most difficult game up to this point, and unfairly so due to mostly how stupid the AI is.
The "forced co-op" also creates a mess with the story. The story now has 8 main characters, in addition to Cortana and a few others. The player is expected to be familiar with all of them, and while some are returning characters from previous games in the series, it still relies too much on being familiar with Halo's "hypermedia", from side short movies, comic books, lore on some web sites and so on.
The net effect of all this "Guardian" thing is, in my opinion, the worst game in the Halo series.
343's focus on the free multiplayer aspect of Halo Infinite and the delay of its "Campaign" mode worried me at first. Coming from my recent experience with Halo 5, my expectations were low.
The game brings a few innovations to the series. It has an "open world" outside map, not just a "hub level" like ODST, that connects to various story missions. This map, taking place on a new Halo ring, is not nearly as gigantic as what we expect from modern open-world games, though it does offer a sufficient number of side activities in between the story missions, for a game duration just a bit longer than previous Halo games.
It also introduces weapon ammunition recharge stations, with all weapons grouped in 4 color-coded categories. In previous games, the scarcity of ammunition forced the player to pick up new weapons along the level's progression, but in Infinite one can use the same weapons for a longer time with the greater availability of ammunition. The choice between weapon categories is strategic beyond a simple "rock, paper, scissors" of other RPG-oriented FPS games. In fact, the constant fine-tuning of weapon balancing for the constantly update multiplayer aspect of Infinite seems to bleed over the single-player campaign, making selecting weapons far more about player preference.
Finally, it introduces the grappling hook, adding vertical mobility, and removing nearly all invisible walls that made the Halo ring environment constrained to well-defined corridors. You can also grapple objects to pick them up, the ground in front of you to boost forward your character, and even enemies or vehicles. The grappling motion and speed add a much-needed momentum of motion that was nearly absent from the Halo series (even Marathon), where even the rocket boost or flying abilities couldn't make the game as frenetic as DOOM or Quake.
Going back to the open-world aspect, it feels like this was the original intent of the Halo games. Much of the "improvisation" aspect of Halo was limited by the nature of its linear sequence of areas. In Infinite, I would often travel to one location to pick up a weapon or vehicle that I would find useful in the other side of the map. The "open box" strategic aspect of Infinite made it the most enjoyable and thrilling Halo game I played since Reach.
This does come at the cost of less environmental variety and fewer vehicles. Even the story if far more focused, though coming from Halo 5 I did enjoy this approach a lot more. In many ways, while it is less ambitious than Halo 2, Infinite perfectly captured what makes a good Halo game. While its "Infinite" name could imply an end to the series (when compared against Marathon Infinity), I hope this is not the case. Even if the Halo series were to end there, it would do so on a really high note.
Oh, and Cortana's clone's name "Weapon" is silly. It makes sense as a "weapon against Cortana", but still it's not a good name. She should name herself "Joy", since alongside Roland's Durendal (referred to in Marathon and "Marathon 2: Durandal") and the British sword Curtana, it is said in legends that the 3rd sword forged from the same materials is Charlemagne's Joyeuse.
Published on July 28, 2024 at 13:45 EDT
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