But in Halo Infinite, you’re back on a Halo ring, shooting your way through Grunts, Elites, Jackals, and Brutes with your new, fast-quipping AI pal, The Weapon, who also happens to be voiced by legendary Cortana voice actor Jen Taylor. Together, you team up with cannon-fodder space marines, riding into enemy territory on Warthogs and tanks, and taking down the aliens with Battle Rifles, Needlers, and Gravity Hammers. To use another Star Wars comparison, it all feels like Han and Chewie taking command of the Millennium Falcon for the first time in 30 years. This is Halo‘s The Force Awakens.
Halo Infinite dishes the familiar setting and setup but in a shiny new package for next-gen consoles (not that Halo Infinite‘s graphics are particularly cutting-edge, I actually found them to be a bit underwhelming for an Xbox Series X flagship title). The game opens on a UNSC ship in space, with Master Chief navigating the chaos of a space battle gone terribly wrong, and he’s quickly given a reason to land on Zeta Halo, a mysterious ring that the Banished have captured after annihilating humanity’s forces there.
The Banished themselves call back to the original trilogy’s Covenant in very specific ways. While not directly associated with Halo 2‘s Tartarus and the Brute uprising on High Charity (if you know, you know), the Banished are another faction that broke away from the larger Covenant alliance to form their own galactic superpower. Like the Covenant, the Banished want to reactivate the Halo ring for a very specific purpose that nods to the Flood without actually including the gruesome parasitic species, and it’s up to Master Chief, The Weapon, and a very nervous Pelican pilot (referred to as Echo-216 for most of the game) to stop them.
If all that’s not enough of a nostalgia trip for you, wait until you have boots on the ground. Halo Infinite‘s open world is heavily inspired by one particular section of Combat Evolved: the Silent Cartographer level that remains one of the franchise’s most famous maps with its tall mountains, thick woods, and sandy beaches. Despite boasting a larger setting than past games, Halo Infinite‘s environments never really deviate from the familiar aesthetic and color palette. In fact, it’s arguably to a fault. Infinite lacks the more diverse terrains of past Halo games altogether — there’s no snow area, for example — although the game does let you explore a few high-tech Forerunner installations throughout the adventure that break up the monotony a little bit.
In general, the large map, which is broken up into several sections, is another one of the game’s weak points when it comes to pacing and activities outside of the main story missions (which are generally fantastic). Repetitive side quests and a largely empty map beyond the few points of interest scattered across the ring break up the action more than Halo fans will be used to. You’ll spend a lot of time driving from point A to point B to get to new missions, most of which can be placed in one of three categories: clear the enemy base, find a piece of loot, or kill the high-value target. You’ll have to do these over and over again in slightly different ways in order to 100% Halo Infinite, and it may make you wonder why the open world structure was even necessary, especially after you’re a few hours in and realize the map really has nothing new to offer you beyond what’s already been established.
But then the story missions come in and you’re thankful for the more wide open level design that allows you to tackle objectives in more than one way. In some instances, there are even multiple paths you can take to complete a mission or clear an area — again a nice return to the old Combat Evolved way of doing things over the much more linear Halo 4 and 5. The bigger spaces mean you can employ more vehicles and also make good use of Halo Infinite‘s greatest innovation: the Grapple Shot, a grappling hook that adds more verticality to the experience beyond Master Chief’s traditional long jump. It also speeds the gameplay up significantly, a cure to the franchise’s historically plodding traversal woes of the past. The Grapple Shot gives you more movement and combat options than any other Halo gadget to date. It’s simply spectacular and by far Infinite’s best addition to the classic formula of guns, grenades, and melee.
ncG1vNJzZmhqZGy7psPSmqmorZ6Zwamx1qippZxemLyue8yoraKdXa%2B8r7GOoaawZZiWubB5yKedoqaZqbJursScmKadXam1pnnFq5inm5iewKa%2FjKiup2Wjqa6zedaaqaxlpJ2ybrLOq5qeZZGsrqyxzaxm