Halo Infimite - ∞ -

[naff]

I've played up to the 3 beacons part so far. Game feels great. Story is mostly meh but it does have its moments. Environmental variety is definitely lacking though. In the past we've had snowy stuff, swaps, deserts, but its all been the same up to where i am.

doesnt change. at all. apparently they cut 2/3's of the planned content and it shows.

[Nintex]

Fixed the crashes

[Rufus]

Everyone playing should pay attention to the grunt dialogue. They have an insane number of lines and a lot of them are quite funny. They're demented little fuckers. 

[The Sceneman]

Game plays very well. Just feels good.

Dumb question: did the last game end on a cliffhanger? Or are we just thrown into a wild situation and the game slowly gives us more info as a narrative device? Because I have no idea what is going on lol. Some ugly ogre man is going on about some nonsense in the video sequences. Master Chief has said a bunch of cool shit, the sidekick dude is pretty annoying

[Sho Nuff]

Everyone playing should pay attention to the grunt dialogue. They have an insane number of lines and a lot of them are quite funny. They're demented little fuckers. 

I turned on the subtitles and realized I was missing like 66% of the shit they were saying.

[Don Rumata]

I've yet to start the game, but from what i gathered, the shooting is a lot of Halo fun, but they essentially dropped the "vision" they showed in the initial tease?



That of a living world within an open Halo ring? All the footage i've seen seems to be the same type of cliff areas with artificial structures.

[Mr Gilhaney]

Everything is the old indoors shit, or the same cliff areas yeah. Sucks ass. But it's still rather fun in short bursts, for me it's all about the multiplayer though.

[Nintex]

Game plays very well. Just feels good.

Dumb question: did the last game end on a cliffhanger? Or are we just thrown into a wild situation and the game slowly gives us more info as a narrative device? Because I have no idea what is going on lol. Some ugly ogre man is going on about some nonsense in the video sequences. Master Chief has said a bunch of cool shit, the sidekick dude is pretty annoying

Yep you piece it together as you play.

I did read it takes place after HALO WARS 2 and those events are connected

[Rufus]

Game plays very well. Just feels good.

Dumb question: did the last game end on a cliffhanger? Or are we just thrown into a wild situation and the game slowly gives us more info as a narrative device? Because I have no idea what is going on lol. Some ugly ogre man is going on about some nonsense in the video sequences. Master Chief has said a bunch of cool shit, the sidekick dude is pretty annoying

There is a game's worth of stuff that happens before the start that you slowly piece together. Felt strange to me, too.

[who is ted danson?]

OK finished it. Feels like an 8/10.

[Sho Nuff]

Just wrapped it. Pretty good, 8/10 agreed, needed more biomes. Not enough stuff in the world TBH, I expect them to populate it with more over time. Gonna mop up the HVT's and move on to Alien Fireteam.

[Ghoul]

legendary is fucking hell, open world with snipers that one shot, erghh, LASO is gonna be done co-op no way I'm doing this shit alone.

[HardcoreRetro]

Doesn't the Legendary description even joke about the snipers. Another fine job by 343 fixing that issue though.

Then again, why even play the mode if it's obviously broken.

[Ghoul]

Doesn't the Legendary description even joke about the snipers. Another fine job by 343 fixing that issue though.

Then again, why even play the mode if it's obviously broken.

Because I'm here to suffer, and I always play Halo first time round on Legendary, I think the boss fights are easily the worst part though on it. "hammer guy" fucking nightmare.

[Sho Nuff]

The bosses in this game were complete fucking trash, I can't imagine what they would be like on legendary difficulty. I wound up finding a hot cheese strategy for the final boss, that may be want to put my controller through the floor initially

Maybe I just suck but I noticed that it's really fucking hard to take down hunters now.  I would use the grapple hook to get behind them but they always will snap to face you no matter how fast you're going. Wound up just picking them off by shooting them in the knee over 5 minutes or some bullshit.

Also there's a certain type of sniper that can instantly disable any vehicle you are driving?

Last thing, driving the tank fucking sucks, it collides with absolutely everything in the game making it incredibly hard to get from point A to point b

[Rufus]

Maybe I just suck but I noticed that it's really fucking hard to take down hunters now.  I would use the grapple hook to get behind them but they always will snap to face you no matter how fast you're going. Wound up just picking them off by shooting them in the knee over 5 minutes or some bullshit.

Skewer rips through them, but I hear you. Sometimes I could get behind them, but I didn't know how to do it reliably.

[naff]

Last thing, driving the tank fucking sucks, it collides with absolutely everything in the game making it incredibly hard to get from point A to point b

controls for the tank are fuckin weird.

also, yes, hunters suck. i am not up to the final boss yet. i got up to the final ish parts of the campaign but the multi is just more fun :p

[Tycoon Padre]

Driving pretty much anything but a Ghost sucks, you get stuck on geometry and flip every 10 feet. The world doesn't seem designed for it at all.

The campaign kinda sucks in general? The open world is totally lifeless, really adds nothing, and the actual "missions" are about as bland as can be.

Also impressed by how absolutely insufferable they managed to make every single one of the new charcters in the game. Fake Cortana's cutesy "lol oops" shtick belongs in some shitty 15 year old Joss Whedon TV show, the Brute dude literally gives you Saturday morning cartoon villain speeches every 30 minutes, and holy fuck the pilot guy - WHY do they think we would ever care care about this dude? I'm a fraud! I'm not like you! You're not my Dad! Please stop. The Bungie games, especially 3 and Reach, had simple stories and chaarcters but such a great tone (particularly relative to games at the time). 4 and 5 weren't amazing but at least they did an okay job on that front.

[naff]

can't relate to the vehicle difficulty, though the scorpion controls are quite bad everything else is really, really good. i  love driving warthogs in this game especially. exceptional controls. pride myself in my driving in multi, love to ferry my dudes around in the razorback in campaign. 

 

[naff]

i will say most of the time i get in a warthog as gunner in multi the driver fucks it up exceptionally. i just want someone to run loops and stay alive for more than 30 seconds plz

[who is ted danson?]

I've mopped up most of the collectible shit, except for the audio logs and skulls which I think need another playthrough. Think I'm done with the campaign for now though. Not sure I want to e.g. do Legendary LASO 

[Nuitangg]

If you want to cheese legendary with the tank gun glitch. 

[The Sceneman]

So I finally got around to getting to the open world section (could not beat the first boss in my first attempts due to number of beers drunk). Man this game is sweet huh. Best Halo since CE? The multi totally rules. Feels great. Cortana is ridic hot

[Hamarr]

I’m really digging the open world.  It does drag dog some of the story missions a bit, but they are still pretty good.  They did a good job of making traversal fun with the grapple thing. 

I also love some of the lines from the grunts and the big looking dudes. 

Multiplayer is pretty fun, but the leveling system and limited game types was getting old.  Do any of you know if Warzone is going to be included eventually?  I loved it in 5.  Big battles likes that are more my thing than death match and capture the flag.

[Nintex]

HALO Infinite is really, really, really good and definitely worth playing. But in some ways also a step back from previous HALO's.

- Events were pretty mundane, no glassing of planets, space battles or big battles with the UNSC
- Environments were all the same, previous HALO's had cities, deserts, caves, alien ships etc. stuffed into a single game hopefully they add some more biomes with DLC's
- Marine AI took a bit hit, they can no longer drive vehicles themselves, you can't stuff your tank with dudes anymore and they follow for like 2 miles before giving up
- No longer able to replay story missions so if you miss collectibles (luckily there aren't many that can be missed saved for the skulls) you have to replay the game or reset the mission

I feel like because we were starving for some good HALO and expectations were low it is better than we all expected but I think it's a bit overrated compared to previous entries.

Finally Breath of the Wild seems to have had a big impact on the development game and probably many others going forward.
Not only was the main premise almost exactly the same (Hero wakes up after long slumber and lost battle and pieces the story together through flashbacks) so were many of the gameplay elements.

At the end of the game you can tell that they still ran out of time to wrap it all together. I think there were about 2 areas you couldn't reach without the chopper you unlock in the end.
I killed all the HVT's, saved all the squads and collected all the cores but in hindsight the only upgrades you need are the shield and the grapple hook.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Escheraum was surprisingly easy to beat but that final boss room was some bullshit 

[close]

[Kurt Russell]

Not only was the main premise almost exactly the same (Hero wakes up after long slumber and lost battle and pieces the story together through flashbacks) so were many of the gameplay elements.

Wasn't that basically the plot of Destiny?

[Rahxephon91]

I finished this at the tail end of 2021, all in one weekend. Made me feel like a kid again, haven't finished a game in a weekend in forever. And of course it's Halo, a title whose legacy only aging gamers like me remember!

I don't know, I've never been a huge Halo fan. Love Halo 2 multi, but sure not into those books. I really have not cared for 343's Halo which for sure seemed to double down on the lore and taking the story into really lets just say nerdy places. On top of seemingly not really having an idea on how to keep this series going. On top of that I can't say I was sold on Infininite. The story premise sure sounded like 343 trying to sweep 5 under the rug all while chasing current trends with the open world.

And I was'nt wrong.

It's just the game is so fun to play. I just played going from mission to mission. Now at first, I thought I would do the lame base storming missions. I did my fair share, but at some point halfway through the game it's like it just kind of railroads you through the story.

I mean everyone's criticisms are true. One Biome and the other areas just being space temples that start to blur together. A story that feels more like an apology than anything else, but an uneventful one with some lame characters that fail at any pathos they attempt. An open world that feels kind of obnoxious to travel thanks to how geometry and vehicles clash. Meaning I honestly just pretty much walked everywhere. Which sucks because they put that grapple on a "level this up" cooldown. Few real set-pieces that really add to your memory of the game.

But despite all that man the game is fun. I don't know what it is. Maybe because it's like they peeled away the bullshit. Simple classic weapons and a real embracing of the sandbox. A Chief that feels more agile than ever before. Whatever it is, this game is pure fun. So much fun it really makes up for the mehness of the rest of the package.

[naff]

I still haven't finished the campaign. I'm probably only a few hours off though... I just felt like I'd seen everything I needed to, and there were a lotta bugs and cheaters in the multi so took a break but now I'm talking about it I'll probably log on and smash out the campaign tonight :p The scenario is possibly the weakest in Halo's history; incredibly bland and repetitive. Conversely it's the most fun Halo has ever been to play since first playing CE. I spent so much time just perfecting the ability to grapple around environments, find hidden skulls, kill all those special enemies. If it had a more compelling scenario this game would've been one of the GOAT fps.

[Pissy F Benny]

the lack of visual variety killed the game for me, the way I see it is imagine if every zone of sonic 1 looked like the green hill zone, everyone would stop playing once they hit zone 3 and it's the same old shit all over again.

[Nintex]

the lack of visual variety killed the game for me, the way I see it is imagine if every zone of sonic 1 looked like the green hill zone, everyone would stop playing once they hit zone 3 and it's the same old shit all over again.

I think the game has just enough story beats and progression (and isn't that long thankfully) to pull you through but its secret of course is that it is actually a first person Spider Man game.
They did a really good job in making it fun and feel like HALO overall. But yes, the world while neatly designed can get boring pretty fast.

Still this shouldn't have taken like 10 years to make. I suppose they started from scratch about 2 years ago.

[naff]

the transitional period of building / heavily updating their BLAM engine sounds like it really fucked things up, and then the designers were still beholden to using the old editing tools that apparently haven't changed much since CE. every time ive heard studios take on major updates to their tools like that as part of the dev cycle their resulting product is kinda half baked and behind schedule like crystal tools with final fantasy xiii, it's sequels and XIV, and then dumping it for XV and the "Luminous" engine for XVI (always wonder if we'd have better ff games if they just bit the bullet and paid for middleware), all the games EA have/are forcing their studios shoehorn into Frostbite (Mass Effect Andromeda  ), BF2042 and frostbite 4 flopping hard, maybe not tool specific but all Ubisofts new games feel aged af in structure and gameplay while looking really nice which im sure is in part due to the inflexibility to their purpose built engine. seems like it's probably a good idea long term for big studios to keep pushing in house tools but it also seems like every studio that does has constant issues with the scope and updates required to make them work well while also developing new games.

[Nintex]

The main problem now is losing so many qualified and experienced developers that they end up with a team of juniors who need to figure out poorly documented code.
At Microsoft there also is a rule that half the staff on a team needs to be contractors on a 2 year contract or something, which doesn't really work for something like HALO.

Plus you need good leads and they lacked those too at 343i. Mostly people looking to build their career using HALO as a stepping stone and then leaving as the release dates slipped and worrying they'd be stuck there for too long.

The industry just lacks the number of experienced workers it needs and the scope of these games keeps expanding. In the end they throw away 90% of the work and end up shipping 10% of what they set out to do.
I'm not sure if and how you can fix it. You need a team that works well together and has the skills to pull it off. Microsoft realized it was a pipe dream that their studios could ever produce 2 or 3 games at the same time so they just scooped up good teams that have been successful in making video games. Ubisoft is entering the same area that DICE is in. Lots of their old guard leaving and very few qualified replacements.

[Hamarr]

Driving pretty much anything but a Ghost sucks, you get stuck on geometry and flip every 10 feet. The world doesn't seem designed for it at all.

The campaign kinda sucks in general? The open world is totally lifeless, really adds nothing, and the actual "missions" are about as bland as can be.

Also impressed by how absolutely insufferable they managed to make every single one of the new charcters in the game. Fake Cortana's cutesy "lol oops" shtick belongs in some shitty 15 year old Joss Whedon TV show, the Brute dude literally gives you Saturday morning cartoon villain speeches every 30 minutes, and holy fuck the pilot guy - WHY do they think we would ever care care about this dude? I'm a fraud! I'm not like you! You're not my Dad! Please stop. The Bungie games, especially 3 and Reach, had simple stories and chaarcters but such a great tone (particularly relative to games at the time). 4 and 5 weren't amazing but at least they did an okay job on that front.

I’m taking a break from it but I agree on the world and missions.  That usually seems to be the case with open world type games.  A proper Halo game would have been much better.  There have been some moments that were anti climatic to play after the in mission dialog built it up to be more.

Movement through the open world does feel pretty good, though.  Especially with the grappler.  And the grunt lines are pretty funny.  I do like the verticality of the world and that it’s not stuffed full of crap like Ubi games.