My Credentials

Author: ACEdreadWOLF
Status: Amateur/Casual
Rank: Platinum 6 (for now; could go either way)
Platform: PC (Game Pass)
Play Style: Controller
Button Layout: Custom
My Gear: Wireless Xbox One Controller Blue Sport, Collective Minds Strikepack Eliminator, Elgato Wave:3 Microphone, Turtle Beach Recon 70 Wired Gaming Headset
PC Specs: Not Ideal, But They Get the Job Done
Swear Words Yelled While Playing: [ 458 (# of Matchmaking Games Played, So Far) x 86 (Random # for Effect) ] + [ 35 (Hours to Complete Legendary Campaign and Get All the Collectibles) x 25,000 (# to Reflect How Many Times It Felt Like Bassus Hit Me With the Stupid Hammer) ] + [ 458 / 2 (Let's Just Say Half the Matchmaking Games I've Played Have Had Server Problems...Yeah, That's What We'll Tell 'Em) ] = It doesn't matter, because the equation is fake, and you should get the point by now! THE GAME CAN BE FRUSTRATING!!! But I still have fun playing it.

The Campaign is Best Legendary

I played the campaign on Legendary up to the Outpost Tremonious mission, which is where the Master Chief first sets foot on Zeta Halo soil. However, I missed a skull in one of the first two missions (Warship Gbraakon and Foundation). So, I created a save file on Normal to go snag that missing skull. After that experience, I realized: The campaign is best played on Legendary if you're a veteran of the franchise or if you want to challenge yourself.

Before Outpost Tremonious, players will first fight...Tremonious...in the Foundation mission. It was fighting Tremoniuous where I realized the vast difficulty difference between Normal and Legendary. To be frank, don't even worry about your shield if you fight him on Normal; just walk right up to that big ape, and slap him on the nose, because he's stupid easy on Normal. On Legendary, you actually have to strategize to defeat him, which is how every boss battle will be on Legendary (except Adjutant Resolution; he's a pushover; you'll see).

I contemplate playing on Easy to see just how stupid enemies must be in that mode...and to pop the Forza Veloce achievement, because I'm not even gonna try to complete all the missions on Legendary in under eight hours—I ain't stupid!

Finishing the campaign on Legendary is so satisfying. Plus, I'm lazy, and I wanted to pop all the campaign difficulty achievements at once.

3 Things that Suck About the Campaign:

• Not Enough Challenges in Open World Zeta: There is an emptiness to the open world of Zeta Halo. It's nice to ride around and defeat the enemies at outposts and other facilities, but after a while, things get a little stale in the open-world portions of the game. It gets repetitive after a while to go from place to place and clear areas, especially when the Hornets and Banshees become available. The lack of variety may deter players from exploring the map thoroughly because there's not really much there—mostly a bunch of trees and the occasional Easter Egg or hidden gun. It does not compete with games like Spider-Man (PS4), Red Dead Redemption 2, or Grand Theft Auto V. I'm not sure 343 Industries was necessarily trying to compete with those games though; I'm not sure what they set out to do with the open-world aspects. I just know, they feel kind of like an afterthought.

• Lackluster Collectibles: This applies to all the different collectibles in the Campaign. First, the armor/weapon/vehicle color coating unlocks are not awful looking, but they lack variety. Most are slap-a-little-red-paint-on-it-and-call-it-a-day type weapon/vehicle coatings, called Warmaster's Prize (weapon coatings) and Banished Deception (vehicle coatings). You don't even unlock them all at once. Each weapon/vehicle has a separate Mjolnir Armory Locker where the coatings are found all over the Zeta Halo map. Having said that, I am a fan of the Midnight Griffin armor coating, and I still use it in Multiplayer. Second, collecting the audio recordings is a pain, because they don't really add much to the story. They are fragments of stories that are easily forgotten as soon as they've been listened to once. Then they get stored away, where you'll probably never listen to them ever again. It's a shame, really. I like the concept of them though.

• Delayed Co-Op: It's been said a bajillion times by everyone else, but it has to be said.

3 Things the Campaign Does Well:

• Classic Halo: Halo Infinite's Campaign excels at giving you those classic-style Halo missions. Each mission feels like the stakes are getting higher, and they bring back that nostalgia for a veteran player. I actually felt like the classic-style missions were what the game does best.

• Boss Battles: Playing on Legendary, every boss battle presents a unique challenge that tests your ability to think quickly on your feet. None of the bosses felt completely impossible (except for Bassus, at first, because he's an asshole that can jump across the room and slam you with his stupid one-shot-kill hammer). The game does a great job providing the player with the tools you need to defeat each boss, but it doesn't do it in a way that makes them complete pushovers. I felt like I accomplished something great with every boss I took down.

• Helps Prepare You for Multiplayer: The campaign encourages players to try new weapons. Zeta Halo has a plethora of weapons scattered all over the map, and the valor progression sees that you have a decent selection of weapons to play with at each FOB. Playing Multiplayer after playing Legendary Campaign prepared me for the fast-paced combat of Matchmaking Games. Knowing the basics about each weapon goes a long way in Multiplayer. The Campaign gives you a place to get your feet wet, without making you feel like you're drowning in a sea of death. Having said that, it's not going to assure you Onyx rank just because you finished on the highest difficulty. That takes practice, determination, and perseverance in the face of 343's currently crappy matchmaking and servers, which brings us to...

...Multiplayer

It's a disaster...but the fun kind...or at least I think I'm having fun. I might just be addicted...??? Oh, and it's free-to-play. The Multiplayer harkens back to the good ol' days of Halo 2 and 3, but it's a world where you don't have any friends around to eat chips baked with cheese in a den of soda-filled joyous LAN party goodness. Ahhh...good times!

NO!!! Instead, you're all alone, sitting at your PC, playing with the silent enigmas on the other end of the 343 servers, where they've either matched you with god-tier players or the most incompetent little jackasses that sit AFK for the whole match then dip out before the match is over. I'm not salty; you're salty! 

Forget the awful microtransactions. Forget the crappy Battle Pass rewards. Really, I have to win two separate shoulder pads, but the knee pads come as a set...?!? Forget the mysterious ranking system. Forget the lack of game modes. Even forget the apparently "rampant cheaters" in the game. The servers. They need to be fixed! I'm looking at you, Big Team Battle!

If I have to maneuver through the endless loop of error messages that keep popping up, just to get to the Exit to Desktop button in the Settings menu, so I can restart the game on PC, one more time...!!!

Needless to say, the Multiplayer has some issues. Don't get me wrong, I've played it—a lot—and I've enjoyed several games while playing with friends on Discord, and I plan to continue playing. But something's gotta be fixed with Multiplayer. There are too many problems, and I'm not talking about the Mangler. 

Don't you Nerf the Mangler, 343!!! I don't care what stupid "pro players" are saying! 

Ranking up in Ranked Arena is not fun. You never know what you're gonna get. You might get a team of people with similar ranks to you, or you might get a mixed bag of unranked players and silver and golds. You might even be placed in a match where you start one player down and you're basically forced to play a team of four or quit out. Also, the one-player-down scenario could definitely happen several times in a row, which means if you quit out on all of those games, you're gonna get the 15-minute ban. Nobody should be punished for this crap!

Now, I've heard 343 is supposedly working on all these problems, and I really hope they find some good solutions, because Multiplayer can be fun when things work properly. Even losing a match is tolerable when the servers and matchmaking are working smoothly. The game has a good base build; it just needs to be polished.

Thoughts, So Far

Halo Infinite's Campaign is definitely worth playing if you're a Halo fan. However, some people might not want to shell out the money for a sequel to 5+ games that they may or may not have played. To them, I say, "Find a video on YouTube that explains the story in a nutshell (like I did)." If you're still not interested, don't buy it. If you have Game Pass, why not give it a try? I am not the best fan of the Halo franchise, but I am still a fan, and watching a summary of the main story, so far, made me appreciate the franchise more. The story of Halo Infinite is not ultra-strong, but it held my interest enough for me to play through Legendary. Either way, the gameplay has always been solid in Halo games, with Halo Infinite keeping the standard up, and that's what keeps me invested. The game's mechanics are so satisfying for a first-person shooter.

The Multiplayer: It could use some work. The servers are atrocious, and the matchmaking is frustrating. The ranking system feels flawed, and most of the rewards for playing the Battle Pass and Weekly Challenges are not very satisfying. I really hope 343 Industries can figure out how to fix the issues with the servers and to make the Multiplayer more rewarding to play. It's nice the Multiplayer is free-to-play, but in a world where many free-to-play first-person-shooters exist, 343 has put themselves in an uphill battle situation to compete with those other games that seemingly know how to play the free-to-play game. I am hopeful that 343 will fix the Multiplayer issues, and I hope they fix the real problems before they start messing with the gun specs and other minor issues.

Promises, Promises

343 Industries has gone on record with several promises for fixes to the Multiplayer, and they've given updates about upcoming events for Halo Infinite's Multiplayer and Co-Op being added to the Campaign, soon. Here are some of the things they've said:

• More Fracture: Tenrai events in the future

• New Cyber Showdown event (January 18th, 2022 – January 31st, 2022)

• Cheaper store prices

• More Multiplayer game modes (the newest is Attrition)

• Big Team Battle fixes

• Cheating and desync fixes

• Big February patch

• Season 2 of Battle Pass (Spring 2022)

• Possible Co-Op in Season 2 (but I hope it's sooner)

We may have missed a few things, here, but these are the ones we saw at the time of writing this article.