Halo Infinite

Finally started the campaign and think it's brilliant. End of review.

The ranking system seems remarkably forgiving; I just finished bottom of a losing Strongholds game, and still didn't drop a pixel on the rank bar.

I'm weak-willed enough to have decided that I am going to get the Heroes of Reach battle pass (gotta have my boy back) - but strong-willed enough that I'm saving Reward Points until I can get a gift card to cover it.

Played the first mission of the campaign via my Game Pass trial. No idea what's happening. Was the opening cutscene space battle something from Halo 5, or is everyone dropped into it with no wider context?

Chief really is a sociopath, though - much more, even, than I remember him being. Completely humourlessly fixated on The Mission - every other person and thing that exists is just a tool to be consumed, or an obstacle to be overcome along the way. By the time I had control of the game, I kinda hated him?

It's definitely Halo, though I'm not entirely convinced that's still a good thing.

Disaster: the shoulder armour I was eyeing up in multiplayer (SAP/MT) is not, it turns out, the one I used in Reach. The one I had (SAP/CQC) isn't even in the game yet (though it has been datamined?).

Played the first mission of the campaign via my Game Pass trial. No idea what's happening. Was the opening cutscene space battle something from Halo 5, or is everyone dropped into it with no wider context?

Chief really is a sociopath, though - much more, even, than I remember him being. Completely humourlessly fixated on The Mission - every other person and thing that exists is just a tool to be consumed, or an obstacle to be overcome along the way. By the time I had control of the game, I kinda hated him?

It's definitely Halo, though I'm not entirely convinced that's still a good thing.

I decided to try the first mission today and thought it was very poor.

I also had no idea what was happening, despite it being about 50% cutscenes. How can you have so much non-interactive content in your videogame yet still manage to not say anything coherent? Lots of monkey-men jabbering at length. At one point it wrestled control from me mid-level and made me listen to a monkey-man's entire speech, I'm fairly sure Master Chief would have ignored him or punched something instead.

In terms of gameplay it was exactly the same as every other Halo game but with a more confusing layout, something they obviously realised because now there's a great big marker you can bring up to show you where to go.

I think I'll stick to the multiplayer.