Originally Posted by
Rare White Ape
I've now played a nice little chunk of the Halo Infinite campaign and I really like it!
It takes about 2-3 hours of gameplay to finally get onto Zeta Halo and enjoy the open-worldyness, but those 2-3 hours are spot-on. The combat is great and each enemy behaves exactly as they did before, even down to classic grunt one-liners about being brave then instantly running away when you fire a few rounds at them. However there's a different vibe with the background music and cutscenes. It seems a little more serious, and a little less chill than the Bungie Halos.
But even so, the pacing, where the combat intensifies and where it slows down and lets you catch your breath for a few minutes, is just like classic Halo. Nothing better than to clear the last enemy, their weapon clatters to the ground and suddenly the room is quiet, and you realise your shield alarm has been beeping for 20 seconds when it goes 'bwoooooop' and fills up again.
I've only done the first open world bit, a sunlit valley with wrecked hulk of a crashed UNSC frigate looming on a high clifftop just above you. It's like your usual arena-sized Halo combat zone with enemy placement and trodden paths asking you to move forward and up onto a landing platform. It is worth exploring here, even before you take on the obvious enemies in front of you. One might even find a plasma sword right there in the opening throes of the game if their ears are peeled enough to find the breadcrumb trail that leads to it. But this isn't as open or vast as the very first introduction to a Halo landscape back when Halo: CE launched. Instead of being given a Warthog to fang off to the next bit with a group of dudes you will be asked to climb into a Pelican and be whisked away by air to the next waypoint. That's a slight disappointment but one I am sure will allow players to get to grips with things before being too overwhelmed.
One thing that will definitely be a game changer is the grapple shot. Unlike multiplayer, you get unlimited uses of this device but you just have to wait for it to recharge, which is thankfully quite quick. I can predict that this will open up the possibility of skilled players to do some amazing stuff in speedruns and with tricks (assuming the developer is worthy enough to build such things into their game) and for the more humble players among us to just have fun exploring hard-to-reach areas now that we can launch ourselves onto higher platforms. It also makes some parts of combat so satisfying. You can rip yourself towards enemies and finish them with a brutal melee attack, or fly from cover to cover, or retrieve objects like weapons and explosive barrels, and the one-two takedown of jackals where you knock their shield back and follow up with a quick burst of rifle kinda makes you feel sorry for them!
This is good so far. Really good. I can't wait to be pulled deeper into it.