Microsoft’s Halo Infinite Went from Disaster to Triumph

If doubt that legal action is going to do anything here. Most of the cheat developers are far away from the arms of American law.

Halo Combat Evolved is how I got into software development. It only had LAN multiplayer, but tunneling software on your PC enabled you to play over the internet. That blew my mind in high school and I got heavily involved in the community, writing mIRC scripts, chat bots, forum plugins, application skins, and so much more.

Man I spent endless hours playing and coding back then. But I never could get into the later Halos. The gameplay was so drastically different. The CE pistol was the ultimate weapon. It was always available and had the potential to bail you out of any scenario. But you can’t solely rely on it to win competitive games. Powerup timing is king. Everyone knew the exact second overshield/rockets would spawn, so there was a natural flow to the maps as teams pushed to gain these items. Halo 2 and beyond removed all of this.

Can you elaborate on what exactly took the fun away from you? I have had the whole MCC co-op experience too, and Infinite feels like a breath of fresh air to me with its faster-paced high-thrill gameplay as against the old slow and sluggish movements in the classic games. The new guns and tools feel great as well, there's always something new to try when you drop in a map (especially in the campaign); it never felt like a grind to me.

Dropping in to point out that Halo Infinite is way too unoptimized/resource-hungry for a PvP/Arena shooter game that loads (mostly, in user experience) simple maps with simple objects. I didn't see a significant difference in terms of graphics quality between this game and the Doom reboots, but Doom can push up to 200+ FPS on Ultra settings in my laptop while Infinite barely manages to scrape 50FPS in its open maps on the lowest possible settings.

So I played #HaloInfinite campaign last night and the night before. As a former Halo/Halo 2 player (I've played sequels as well) I'm ok with new campaign but it just makes you realize how much of a masterpiece and how great Halo 2 was. I have no way to demonstrate this but I was at one time one of the top Halo 2 players globally (top 200 or so) so I know the franchise well enough.

In Halo 2, you were fighting to save the world. That's awesome. From the moment the game started you felt like you were in a race against time to stop the Covenant. It was epic and the story progressed linearly.

The main issue with the new campaign is that you find yourself in an "open world". But unlike other games like Assassin's Creed or Skyrim, the open world doesn't add any value. You don't level up and the special weapons don't make sense.

Like ok I drive around the cramped spaces and then I can get this special “rare” plasma pistol. But I don't always use a plasma pistol. So... cool I guess? I drive or fast travel to get the special weapon? And the same with the mini-bosses. Why am I fighting mini-bosses? Is this Halo or an RPG?

Ultimately the game suffers from someone just not being in charge and lack of clear vision and direction. It has no soul in the design. It's like the developers saw that open world games were popular and said "me too!". You can see this in other choices as well such as the plethora of unbalanced and useless weapons. This can get fixed in the future, but the "kinetic" versus "energy" distinction and how you might be supposed to use both really (and the ammo crates everywhere which make 0 sense) feels forced and not well thought out. Like the plasma carbine.

And this is to say nothing of the Battle Pass system or any of the monetization aspects, map making, or multiplayer in general.

The one thing they definitely got right is the feel of the game. It feels great to play. I wouldn’t be able to tell any difference between it and Halo 2.

The story itself feels cringe. The writing is terrible. Like Hollywood cliche every step of the way. This guy who is always complaining about everything. There’s nothing EPIC about the game. In Halo 2 I felt like I had to rush to save the world and everything made sense. In Infinite I feel like I’m just trying to find a banshee so I can not have to fight through pointless groups of enemies to get to an objective. Ah yes the two hunters Marvin (or whatever) and they're on the UNSC’s most wanted list. Ok? Am I a cop now too? I guess I get an "achievement" for killing them. But what if we just didn't have them and got rid of the achievement? Sometimes when you add things you take away more than you add.

I was really surprised to see all of the positive comments here. Maybe I’m just an old guy yelling at a cloud now and don’t get it. Idk. Like does nobody remember how scary and creepy the flood was from CE? Whatever happened to the mystery and theater?