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dkirschner's Halo Infinite (PC)
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| [December 14, 2021 02:50:59 PM]
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Campaign complete. It's fun to play through, if a bit bland. The shooting is the star. Weapons feel great and have a big variety. Enemies are varied and deadly. I didn't play around much with vehicles, but Halo driving physics are as zany as ever. I initially thought vehicles would be the way to get around fast, but the new grappling hook is faster (and more fun).
The whole game takes place on one small, broken piece of a ring, so, unfortunately, you're in the same type of location the entire time. Well, two locations: topside (one hilly, mountainous environment) and in buildings (usually feel like you're in a corridor or a cavern). I assume multiplayer has more varied maps than "mountains" and "inside."
I enjoyed the tone of the story and, from what I could follow, the threads of it. I'm not a big Halo person, so the constant references to people, places, and events in past games were lost on me. They could really use a compendium or encyclopedia or something in the menu. I followed the story for probably the first half of the game, and then again toward the end. There is a time though when there's all sorts of stuff with Cortana (AI from previous games) and the bad guys talking about Halo lore, which I had no clue about. During those times, I just listened politely and then got on with the shooting.
Thinking about the relatively barren world and the way the story is presented, Halo Infinite strikes me as a bit minimalistic. The visuals and audio support this as well. There are no pounding drums or frenetic music. It's choral sci-fi sounding stuff. Earlier I said that the buildings all looked the same inside and that they often felt like corridors or caverns. I actually liked that minimalist feeling. Buildings look slick and have tall ceilings, everything is metallic.
Random thought while playing: Why are there basic grunts in the end levels of the game? Or of any game? Like, the deepest, most badass of places guarded by...3-foot-tall yelping grunts that run away when you kill one of them. It should be nothing but hunters! Is there a social hierarchy of Halo enemies? Do the hunters make fun of the grunts when they are guarding the same area? One wonders.
Other thoughts: (1) Halo Infinite has sweet boss battles! Like more than a few of them. They are all intense. They should keep doing this; (2) The voice actor for Cortana/the Weapon is great; (3) The waypoint feature doesn't always correspond to map markers, which is confusing, and the waypoints will move about (one time I spent 10 minutes looking for the Pilot because the map kept changing where it was telling me he was; finding collectibles could also be really annoying because of this); (4) I forgot that in some earlier Halo games you can just sprint through checkpoints and avoid fighting. It was magical when I remembered and tried toward the end. This is a fun challenge and I should have a plaque for sparing the lives of countless baddies; (5) Can't you dual wield other Halo games? I remember dual wielding Needlers. No dual wielding here :-( but the constant changing of weapons and being able to switch between two is a fine replacement; (6) In many ways, the campaign just feels like a "lite" version of some other, bigger open-world shooter games like the Just Causes and Far Cries of the world. The "things to do" besides the story in Halo Infinite are bare-bones (rescue allied squads, kill some named bad guys, shoot up some bigger facilities, destroy comms towers, find collectibles). I did that stuff for about half the game, at which point I basically had all the skill upgrades I wanted, and so I just shot through the story after that.
Solid game, all in all, with some really high points and some bland points. Worth a play through, especially if you like Halo.
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dkirschner's Halo Infinite (PC)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Sunday 12 December, 2021
GameLog closed on: Tuesday 14 December, 2021 |
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