A year ago, Halo Infinite was a laughingstock. Its gameplay videos were picked apart and parodied, and even Microsoft executives had to pretend to laugh at them, not at them. And the video game that was supposed to be a major release on the new Xbox Series X was postponed for a year, leaving the console without a high-profile novelty. It wasn’t until later this year that games finally started coming out. One of them was even nominated for GOTY. Another was one of the most beautiful releases of this generation. But they will all be eclipsed by the colossus whose name is Halo. The game that was written off, delayed for a year and almost killed off before it was even released has refused to die. And well. This may well be the best release in the history of the great series.
Halo Infinite knows how to grab a player’s attention. Exploding spaceships, the roar of aliens shooting back, and an unperturbed Master Chief make it immediately clear that, yes, this is Halo. It’s still the same Halo as ever: ridiculous, corridor-like, and spectacular. Nothing has changed, and I’m sure fans don’t mind. Halo doesn’t have to change to be interesting.
But that first impression was deceptive. Halo has changed, and how much, though you can’t tell from the screenshots. Studio 343 Industries, which has always remained in the shadow of Bungie, took a risky step, greatly changing the structure of the traditional story campaign. Whereas these games used to be very linear, now we are invited to dive into an open world. I confess that when I first saw the world map, studded with icons, I had mixed feelings. I was fed up with open worlds and, frankly, I really wanted to go back to classic corridor-based Halo. But once I started slowly mastering Halo Zeta, I started to get sucked in.
Despite the fact that by all accounts the open world here is primitive and simple, in the best tradition of the early PS3, you don’t want more. As good as Far Cry 6 was in some places, it was too big and too packed with content, and against it Halo Infinite seems just tiny, with a tiny map and quests that can be completed in a couple of hours. But that’s even a good thing. A lot! Rather than imitating a completely different game, the developers instead took inspiration from where Halo itself started – the early levels of Halo: Combat Evolved. The scenic world of Halo Infinite may have been taken from the map of the greatest console shooter of all time, but it’s bigger than ever. Back in 2001, players were thrilled by the sheer scale of the Xbox exclusive, and now 343 Industries has tried to do the same. And if you compare the novelty to previous installments, the effect is achieved. But comparisons to other IPs don’t hold up. But it does not need it.
The open world of Halo Infinite is its strong point, but not because of the world or its variety, but simply because the combat system is so good. As I mentioned before, the meadows and mountains are all there is to it. You won’t find a variety of biomes or memorable buildings, and the missions are all the same – take over a base, kill a particularly strong enemy, or rescue infantrymen. But how you do it is entirely up to you. Halo Infinite’s greatest strength is that it always provides the player with a plethora of tools to achieve the goal: a variety of weapons, human and alien, are lying around every corner, and there’s no limit to how you approach any given task. If you want, you can go it alone, or request an armored vehicle and take a squad of soldiers with you. Close combat, long-range combat – the choice is yours.
The games in this series have always succeeded in a few things. For example, make the player feel like a superhero, yet always maintain tension. Master Chief is the best example of a shooter protagonist. Playing as him, you feel like a kind of space Rambo, capable of any feat, but Halo Infinite does not forgive even the slightest misstep, and the inattentive quickly discover that even the great Spartan dies after a couple of hits. This has always been the case since the first installment, and in some ways, even twenty years later, nothing has changed. Well, almost…
At heart, Halo Infinite remains the same “Halo” with its ridiculously shrieking enemies dying from a single hit with a buttstock, but no one exists in a vacuum, and it’s not without innovations. Chief among them is the appearance of the cat-hook, which allows Chif to move quickly across the battlefield, attack enemies from a distance, steal tanks, and pick up weapons. Even though it’s a brand new gameplay element, I became so attached to it almost immediately that it’s hard to imagine Halo without it. Master Chief has never been a very mobile character and moved more like a tank, but now he’s got the extra mobility he’s been lacking. Thanks to the hook fighting became even more dynamic and spectacular.