Halo Infinite

<insert "is it me you're looking for" joke here>

I thought I'd try and actually create a thread for this rather than just folding discussion into the PWB megathreads.

So the multiplayer is OUT NOW with the campaign to follow on December 8th. It's still labelled as a "beta" but it's all there, levelling progress is being tracked, achievements are being awarded and it all seems remarkably stable with the servers actually holding up for once.

This is what cavalcade thought:

First impressions of Halo Infinite. I like it. I guess. I think, ultimately, everything for me boils down to, "wouldn't I rather be playing Titanfall 2 multiplayer?" and in this case it's not as good as that. But what is?

But, taking HI on its own merits it's perfectly fine. It looks good (very clean, rather than next-gen per se). Feels pretty good (though, again TF2 and Apex are so good at mobility nothing really comes close). And they've gone a reasonable job on the arenas, which, from the ones I've played do feel well designed and fun to traverse at speed. The combat is just as you'd remember from Halo, grenade spam heavy with a nearly ridiculous TTK. The mixture of the two does add a unique feel to the fights, which have a rhythm unlike anything else. It can be a little bit random and I still contend if I get the drop on you, no way should you be able to turn and engage in combat with about half your health left, but it does separate Halo from ultrafast TTK games like CoD. The kill feedback is well done, like Valorant and Apex and many others the snap of success you get with a kill is poking all the right bits of the brain.

After the hype over the bots I was preparing myself to be amazed. But I've been grinding Apex non stop for weeks and found them a bit of a doddle. Against real humans I first tried Big Team Battle and found that mode far too random and meh for me. Sort of like Battlefield crossed with Totally Accurate Battle Simulator. A lot of flailing. And the lack of mobility means snipers have a field day. The tighter arenas were a lot better. Just good fun. Skill testing, for sure, already players are decent, though I found I wasn't too bad, comfortably coming mid table most matches. I have very specific problems with some of the mouse keys controls - especially the scroll wheel for weapons which has one of the weirdest, shittest implementations I've ever used (like, surely someone playtested this?!). And the baffling choices to get in and out of vehicles, which are bound to things they shouldn't be bound to.

I mean, as far as I know, it's free. So why not give it a try? I think the campaign should be fun though, and I'm now looking forward to it a lot more.

And I'd pretty much agree with that. I've never been much of an online FPS fan, I certainly don't have cav's experience, but I do enjoy a spot of Halo from time to time and this is certainly a Halo game. (He's probably right in that the survivability of the characters - the TTK - is what makes it stand out. It's nice to actually feel you can fight back rather than just dying over and over to better players).

It's very pretty, ridiculously smooth (I haven't played much at 120fps on Series X before and it's very nice), has all the modes you'd expect and the levels I've seen are good. I haven't got my head around all the weapons yet, and working out what the items do is just sheer guesswork as the icons are tiny and it doesn't explain it at all, but it's early days.

The co-op mode against bots it defaults to is really great, it eases you into the game and it's easy enough that you can feel like you know what you're doing from a very early stage. It allows you to experiment a bit without being punished for it. A very nice addition to the series.

The Battle Pass stuff is… meh. Well I guess some people will like it. It seems very slow to unlock anything, and the things it unlocks are largely not worth having, ultimately just slightly different coloured helmets and the like. That's the downside of having a game based around chunky action figures I guess. Fortnite isn't going to be very concerned about this, put it that way.

Anyway I am looking forward to putting more time into this, I'm absolutely hopeless so if you see me online then feel free to drop in and point and laugh.

I'm ashamed to say I actually kind of want the battle pass for this*, because I had a scroll through the stuff last night and it would basically let me recreate my Spartan from Halo Reach.

I played a bit of the technical tests, but I'm very, very bad at PvP Halo (there's a reason my go-to in Reach was Firefight). Then again, this is free, so I may well pop in from time to time if it's not too frustrating.

*Not enough to buy it, mind - but I do miss that gear.

You can always do bot games with real players. Plenty of people play League of Legends and never fight a real person….

Played a few rounds this evening (enough to level up the (free) battle pass thing); turns out I'm not as bad as I thought I was. Even led a couple of games for a while, though usually ended up somewhere around the top of middle.

It's fun, but - like cav - I think I'd rather be playing Titanfall 2.

I thought Titanfall 2 online was overrated.

EDIT - Holy shit this is amazing though, everything feels so meaty and satisfying. Maybe because I haven't touched Halo after 3 but even the standard rifle feels like a real meat mulcher to me. I'm downloading the MCC purely off the back of this…

I thought Titanfall 2 online was overrated.

It's, without a doubt, the best online shooter of all time, from the unmatched traversal through to the unmatched sound design. So, no.

Also, it has Scorch.

It'll never be equalled.

Literally Alastor's worst ever take.

Waiting for MPH to ratio me and hand me an L.

Every ranked game I've played so far has had someone on my side quit within a couple of minutes, leaving us outnumbered and leading to inevitable wipeout.

This is why I don't play online games much. You'd think they'd at least replace them with a bot or something, they wouldn't be as good as a human player but better than 4 vs 3.

Waiting for MPH to ratio me and hand me an L.

Don’t know what those words are but Titanfall 2 multiplayer is good. I’ve played better.

(The single player is pretty much perfect though.)

Didn't ask + L + Ratio + You fell off + The streets listen to Brian Bloodaxe now

em. Yeah!

Every ranked game I've played so far

I almost never play Ranked in anything; should I?

It's usually worthwhile as (in theory) it means you're actually playing against people of your skill level. In Quick Play/Unranked you're just up against a completely random selection.

In Halo Infinite you need to play ten games before it gives you a rank, so to start with it's as much of a crapshoot as unranked, but I'm hoping once I've played my ten games and it's realised I'm incompetent, I'll get matched against other idiots and have a better time of things.

Oh my sweet summer child.

Ranked simply formalises the people on smurf accounts, cheaters and sweaty grinders into the same generalised pool as you, while pubs is the EXACTLY same thing but in an ocean of twats.

Just popping in to say I love Oddball! <3

I'm only ranked as Bronze-4 on Ranked.

Did a bit of BTB today and, well, my team lost but

Almoat all with the Sidekick 🥰

I hope they don't nerf it

The Sidekick is a great little gun.

I started playing with mouse & keyboard last night, but I don't know if it's made me any more accurate. I need to get the keys set up properly, for one thing; I can't figure out why, but the mouse button I set for "throw grenade" is also making me crouch…

Sounds like you've got your default controls set to Feltmonkey.

Surprised how much I'm enjoying this, I'm still absolutely terrible at it but I'm finding it very enjoyable to drop in for a quick round or two each day. The Guardian ran a piece where they basically described it as an online shooter aimed at middle-aged men and they're spot on there, it feels like map knowledge and strategy are more important than a quick trigger finger.

They do need to sort out the progression though. Earning XP for every match regardless of whether you win or lose (or indeed do anything at all) is starting to lead to people AFKing, and progression through the Battle Pass ranks is s-l-o-w. It would also be nice to be able to separate out mouse & keyboard players in every mode, not just Ranked: I'm getting a little fed up of being sniped from across the map by some ninja player on PC. I don't think cross-play is necessarily a good thing in this instance, though I'm sure the PC players would disagree.

I find the drip-feeding of XP very offputting. It's demoralizing to finish a match and see the bar only creep up by a few pixels, because I was dropped in the doing mode to make progress on any other challenges. It doesn't encourage me to keep playing; I usually only manage a couple of matches, then go do something else.

It was something Apex got horribly wrong in Season 1 too but has progressively refined. Current battle passes for stuff like Valorant and Apex are finely tuned to give out enough for people who don't live and breathe the game, but also a dusting of stuff for people who grind 24/7. I'm surprised Halo got it so wrong, but I do wonder if chucking the MP out of the gate a month early caused a few areas to not get a final lick of polish.

That said Apex have currently fucked up their RP system again, so I do think it's a thing that's really hard to balance and get right.

Sea of Thieves gets it close to right. I only really play at the weekends and I manage to max out each season's rewards every time.

I think one thing Sea of Thieves does well is that there are loads of little challenges along the way, so you're almost always close to something - levelling up a Trading Company, unlocking a Commendation, or just affording a new hat. As well as that, you make progress toward the Season rewards for everything you do - you can rank up just by fishing, if you do enough of it.

Halo's biggest mistake is not giving credit for being a good player - it doesn't even have to be a lot, but all those medals should mean something.

I mostly don't pay attention to the challenges and progression but I understand people's concerns about it, but definitely agree that you should get something for playing the objective properly and gaining medals, I mean you're given a score at the end/during a match, but all that really does is sort your placement on the boards.

I'm getting a bit better at this; actually managed to end in the top half of the leaderboard in my last few Ranked games (though I'm still one match off actually getting a rank…). I think switching to M+K helped, but I still just panic when I'm stuck in a close fight with someone, and it often ends up a coin toss whether or not I survive.

Still oddly tempted by the battle pass, just so I can (eventually) have my Reach armor back.

The single-player is wonderful. The open world doesn’t really add anything, and every map icon is just “fight a Halo battle”, but the gunplay is so good you don’t care. The sound design is incredible too, definitely a game to play with headphones on.

I hadn't even considered the single-player, really; I don't know how essential to one's enjoyment or understanding 5 is, but the last one I played was 4, and that ended with enough finality that I'll manage without any more plot.

I have no clue what’s happening in the plot. I honestly couldn’t tell you who Cortana is, aside from some sort of helpful AI, and I’ve played every mainline Halo game.

Give the single-player a go. It’s some of the best shooty gameplay I’ve ever played.

If I had GamePass, I undoubtedly would - certainly once co-op launches, as that's how we've traditionally played Halo campaigns.

Finally got round to finishing ranking matches - Silver 6.

I have no idea how good or bad that is.

I checked. It's not very good.

I got Silver 2, so significantly worse than you, which is fair. And I think I'm probably a bit over-rated, thanks mostly to a game of Capture the Flag where all the other players just decided to have a massive scrap in the middle of the bazaar while I ran backwards and forwards capturing every flag.

I'm playing on the Controller Only ranked playlist though, which I suspect some people don't even realise exists, so it's probably not even comparable to you.

Oh, what, bigger numbers are higher-ranked? Something in my brain assumed that Silver 1 would be the top, not 6. Maybe I don't suck as much as I thought.

And I think I'm probably a bit over-rated, thanks mostly to a game of Capture the Flag where all the other players just decided to have a massive scrap in the middle of the bazaar while I ran backwards and forwards capturing every flag.

This morning, while trying to find out what the ranks meant, I found an article which suggested that, unlike in other games, rank isn't based purely on win/loss, but your own personal performance in a match. So as long as you're racking up points for something, the AlGoRiThM shouldn't punish you.

I'm playing on the Controller Only ranked playlist though, which I suspect some people don't even realise exists

I didn't. I wonder how it compares on PC.

It’s the little thunk.

I was trying to figure out why the gunfights are SO satisfying, and it’s the thunk. The final, killing shot is accompanied by a little sound effect, and whoever designed it needs a raise. It’s so crisp and satisfying. It even gets louder depending on enemy difficulty, and it’s my new favourite thing.

I'm not sure about Halo, but I remember reading about the headshot sound effect in Overwatch, which is the clink-hiss of a beer bottle opening.

A string of spectacular luck in a Ranked match has seen me claw my way up into Gold 1.

I think I do like Ranked a little better than free play, if only because more people actually play the fucking objective in Ranked…

Playing through the campaign now, and it's so Halo. Like, how many times has Master Chief been blown into space now? It's like a daily occurrence. And considering what he's done in the past, I'm not sure how many times we need the loop of him going "yep, all I need is a pistol and imma fuck up this battle cruiser" and a rando civillian going "you're not really going to are you chief! that's maaaadnesssss!". I started skipping the cutscenes after the first couple as it really is all a bit 2004.

But holy fuck I am so down for basically bringing in Pathfinder from Apex Legends into the game. The grapple works so well. And the kill feedback. orgasmic noises MPH nails it above. You could give me that little red cross and THUNK all day and I'd never get tired of it.

The game is just bullshit you have to endure between that sweet, sweet THUNK THUNK THUNK.

Master Chief is cool as fuck though. :<

He's a very adolescent version of cool, though - "invincible, stoic killing machine in power armour" doesn't make for a particularly interesting story, but it does work as a faceless "badass" avatar for the player to inhabit.

He's just a bloke in a helmet. Doom guy did it first, and even that wasn't anything great.

Infinite works around this by introducing a companion character with Actual Emotions. But yes Halo is one of the sillier games; I don't think anyone is playing these for the story.

Hey, you couldn't tell under the armour of course, but in Halo 4 he was pretty peeposad about Cortana. And I think his generic level of badass is just pretty fun and likable, like the 'we'll make it' part of Halo CE or the bit in Halo 3 where he tells Cortana 'I was thinking of shooting my way out, mix things up a bit'.

I feel he's pretty different to Doom Guy who in Doom 2016 was an amazing showcase of how you could have a totally silent protagonist have a lot of personality through actions.

EDIT - Not started this yet lol :clown:

Some people are really invested in the Halo story, there are novels and all sorts. I remember genuine outrage when Reach was considered to have retconned some minor detail in a spin-off novel from several years prior.

Nowadays it’s essentially disappeared up its own arse: I think the general consensus with Infinite is it makes no sense, but it doesn’t matter much.

Yeah, I'm not too invested in the overall story anymore, I was invested in the Cortana story in Halo 4 though because I like her and Chief as a duo and like I said, he basically goes into the 5 stages of grief over her impending demise.

The game is absolutely brilliant. I challenge the idea that Master Chief is purely a one-dimensional badass. I think there's something interesting about Master Chief's character that shows up particularly in this game, and is highlighted by the open-world aspects.

Chief just doesn't care about humanity. At all. In fact, he views them with open contempt. He leads soldiers into suicidal missions knowing full well that he will survive and they will definitely die. They won't even be much help to him completing his nebulous "missions". Early on he meets a guy who has been floating in his spaceship with only a hologram image of his family for company, like Tony Stark at the beginning of Avengers Endgame. Chief's reappearance means he has some hope of getting home and seeing his family, but Chief doesn't even acknowledge his desire to do so. He completely ignores him as a living being, most of the time rudely not even answering when he is being spoken to, and sees him as nothing more than an extension of the ship he needs to get him to the next battlefield. He treats him the way a Tory MP treats their driver. On Halo itself, there is no way in-game to protect the soldiers you encounter. You can't order them to stay put, or go back to base. They follow him, he does his own thing even though it means their inevitable death, he doesn't look back. Most of the time he doesn't even notice when they die.

In short, Master Chief is a prick.

I was going to post something about Chief being The Perfect Soldier™, but even as I was typing it, I realised he's not. He isn't a soldier at all - he's a weapon. All that matters is the target, and collateral damage is irrelevant.

The gun doesn't care what it hits, it only wants to be fired.

Is Locke in Infinite?

Caring about other people in any way would undermine the juvenile, ultra-masculine, one-man-against-the-universe power fantasy that Master Chief acts as a vessel for. You can't be the ultimate badass if you have feelings, or empathy.