Halo Infinite is a very indecisive game. On one hand, it irons out the mistakes of Halo 4/5; bringing back iconic designs of the Bungie era Halo games (weapons, enemies, armor, forerunner architecture, etc), implementing a very fluid and compelling sandbox (arguably just as good as Halo 3's) and making Halo feel like Halo again. While on the other hand, falling flat on deliverance of content (the multiplayer had ZERO updates for the first 6 months of it's launch which is completely unacceptable for a "live service" game) while doubling down on it's absurdly expensive "shop" locking a majority of cosmetics behind sometimes a $30 paywall. Let's get into it.




As mentioned above, ever since Bungie's departure, 343 Industries taking on the mantle of Halo has had it's major downsides over the years, one of those being the disregard of established designs throughout the Halo universe. Halo 4 & 5 suffered greatly from this. Fortunately, Halo Infinite finally struck what made Halo so distinctive back in it's prime: Returning to Bungie's art style. This alone felt like such a warm welcoming especially to a fan who's earliest memories in life are playing Halo: Combat Evolved as a toddler with a controller so big it wasn't possible to hold with my little hands. Halo can once again be recognized as Halo again.

Ever since day one, Halo's gunplay has never failed to satisfy and Infinite is no exception. Doing simple things such as hitting your shots, sticking enemies with grenades, and whipping out a sniper to grab a quick snapshot within a matter of seconds is all very rewarding. Assuming you're in Multiplayer, Jeff Steitzer's performance as the multiplayer announcer is just the cherry on top. The grappling hook offers easily some of the funnest improvised moments and I really hope they keep this feature in Halo going forward.

Back when Forge was introduced in Halo 3, it's main intention was to alter existing dev maps and change the flow of them (moving weapon spawns, vehicles, basic things). However it was quite clear the community had more in mind. A big part of what made Halo so successful with Forge was the limitless potential. However over the years, Forge has evolved from a map editor to a full blown map creator. The amount of community maps I've seen on Infinite are so detailed and immersive they could easily be mistaken as dev maps. Not to mention with the support of Campaign AI in Forge it also brings limitless opportunities to create Firefight maps and even custom Campaign levels.

Despite it being added in 2 years after launch, Firefight is pretty much the only mode I come back to anymore. While Firefight on ODST/Reach were mainly surviving as long as you can, Infinite's Firefight is based around the King of the Hill mode and honestly it's quite surprising how polished it feels. Genuinely have had some of the best moments on Firefight and I'm super glad it's back.




While Halo 5's launch was very empty (lack of forge, only a handful of modes, several staple weapons missing from the sandbox) throughout 2016 Halo 5 received content updates quite frequently. Forge was added 2 months later (still long but definitely worth the wait), plenty of new modes, maps and new weapons (some being classic variations of Halo 1 and 2) were constantly being added to the game. Within a year Halo 5 was quite robust. Halo Infinite however....far from the case. Infinite didn't receive ANY updates for the first 6 months. Forge, a staple feature of the franchise, was added 11 months after launch. This is beyond unacceptable. Guess how many weapons have been added in the sandbox since launch? One. Just one. How is this even possible? Infinite is probably one of the worst live service games I've seen in recent years.

Halo 5 launched with no split-screen which is easily why Halo became so popular back in the day. How did 343 Industries respond to this? They promised the next Halo title would 100% include split-screen. Guess what? While split-screen multiplayer has been a thing since day one, split-screen coop was still in the works. Until they canceled it. There was so much outrage about this that Microsoft threw out the leadership of 343 Industries. So, with the new leadership, you'd expect they'd quickly backtrack on split-screen coop's cancellation, right? Nope. It's still canceled.

I remember back in early 2021, before Infinite's launch, the gaming community as whole heard about promotional "coatings" coming to Infinite, implying specific color customization was no longer a feature with Infinite. There was quite an outrage about it. Halo was mocked about this for quite some time. How did they respond? They didn't. Coatings are here to stay and they really don't care what we think.

The shop has easily been one of the worst additions to Halo Infinite. Ever since launch, people complained about how terrible the store and it's prices were. What did they do to fix it? They doubled down. Now instead of purchasing individual items, you can only purchase bundles which can be as much as $30. Sure, you could say "But hey, it's free to play and they've gotta fund the content somehow, right?" Sure, but that leads to my next point.




2023 was a HUGE turnaround for Halo Infinite. Every 3 months we'd get a new season with new maps, modes and a 100 tier battle pass and even some random 20 tier events scattered throughout the season. There was a LOT of content to chew. January 2024 however, it was announced seasons were no more; they would be replaced by "operations" which are essentially monthly 20 tier passes. Seems like just more frequent updates, right? Wrong. Operations are just cosmetic updates, 90% of which are exclusive to the store. No dev maps, no weapons, no modes, nothing at all. It's a shame really because Infinite was finally shaping into something great, and just when that happened; Microsoft threw it on the chopping block.




All in all, I really wish Steam offered a "Mixed" option for the review because I'm pretty much on the fence about whether I could recommend this to anyone. It had a rough launch, they finally got their act together and just when things were coming around they put a full stop to it's content updates. As it stands now: Halo Infinite really does have a lot of great content here. As long as you ignore the outrageous shop prices and acknowledge the game probably won't be getting content anymore, it's at least a relatively polished product.

Halo Infinite is a very indecisive game. On one hand, it irons out the mistakes of Halo 4/5; bringing back iconic designs of the Bungie era Halo games (weapons, enemies, armor, forerunner architecture, etc), implementing a very fluid and compelling sandbox (arguably just as good as Halo 3's) and making Halo feel like [b]Halo[/b] again. While on the other hand, falling flat on deliverance of content (the multiplayer had ZERO updates for the first 6 months of it's launch which is completely unacceptable for a "live service" game) while doubling down on it's absurdly expensive "shop" locking a majority of cosmetics behind sometimes a $30 paywall. Let's get into it. [h1]The Good:[/h1] [h3]Return of Familiar Designs:[/h3] As mentioned above, ever since Bungie's departure, 343 Industries taking on the mantle of Halo has had it's major downsides over the years, one of those being the disregard of established designs throughout the Halo universe. Halo 4 & 5 suffered greatly from this. Fortunately, Halo Infinite finally struck what made Halo so distinctive back in it's prime: [b]Returning to Bungie's art style.[/b] This alone felt like such a warm welcoming especially to a fan who's earliest memories in life are playing Halo: Combat Evolved as a toddler with a controller so big it wasn't possible to hold with my little hands. Halo can once again be recognized as Halo again. [h3]Addictive & Rewarding Gunplay:[/h3] Ever since day one, Halo's gunplay has never failed to satisfy and Infinite is no exception. Doing simple things such as hitting your shots, sticking enemies with grenades, and whipping out a sniper to grab a quick snapshot within a matter of seconds is all very rewarding. Assuming you're in Multiplayer, Jeff Steitzer's performance as the multiplayer announcer is just the cherry on top. The grappling hook offers easily some of the funnest improvised moments and I really hope they keep this feature in Halo going forward. [h3]Forge:[/h3] Back when Forge was introduced in Halo 3, it's main intention was to alter existing dev maps and change the flow of them (moving weapon spawns, vehicles, basic things). However it was quite clear the community had more in mind. A big part of what made Halo so successful with Forge was the limitless potential. However over the years, Forge has evolved from a map editor to a full blown map creator. The amount of community maps I've seen on Infinite are so detailed and immersive they could easily be mistaken as dev maps. Not to mention with the support of Campaign AI in Forge it also brings limitless opportunities to create Firefight maps and even custom Campaign levels. [h3]Firefight:[/h3] Despite it being added in 2 years after launch, Firefight is pretty much the only mode I come back to anymore. While Firefight on ODST/Reach were mainly surviving as long as you can, Infinite's Firefight is based around the King of the Hill mode and honestly it's quite surprising how polished it feels. Genuinely have had some of the best moments on Firefight and I'm super glad it's back. [h1]The Bad:[/h1] [h3]"Live Service":[/h3] While Halo 5's launch was very empty (lack of forge, only a handful of modes, several staple weapons missing from the sandbox) throughout 2016 Halo 5 received content updates quite frequently. Forge was added 2 months later (still long but definitely worth the wait), plenty of new modes, maps and new weapons (some being classic variations of Halo 1 and 2) were constantly being added to the game. Within a year Halo 5 was quite robust. Halo Infinite however....far from the case. Infinite didn't receive ANY updates for the first 6 months. [b]Forge, a staple feature of the franchise, was added 11 months after launch.[/b] This is beyond unacceptable. Guess how many weapons have been added in the sandbox since launch? [b]One. Just one.[/b] How is this even possible? Infinite is probably one of the worst live service games I've seen in recent years. [h3]Breaking Promises:[/h3] Halo 5 launched with no split-screen which is easily why Halo became so popular back in the day. How did 343 Industries respond to this? They promised the next Halo title would 100% include split-screen. Guess what? While split-screen multiplayer has been a thing since day one, split-screen coop was still in the works. Until they canceled it. There was so much outrage about this that Microsoft threw out the leadership of 343 Industries. So, with the new leadership, you'd expect they'd quickly backtrack on split-screen coop's cancellation, right? Nope. It's still canceled. [h3]Ignoring the Community:[/h3] I remember back in early 2021, before Infinite's launch, the gaming community as whole heard about promotional "coatings" coming to Infinite, implying specific color customization was no longer a feature with Infinite. There was quite an outrage about it. Halo was mocked about this for quite some time. How did they respond? They didn't. Coatings are here to stay and they really don't care what we think. [h3]The Shop:[/h3] The shop has easily been one of the worst additions to Halo Infinite. Ever since launch, people complained about how terrible the store and it's prices were. What did they do to fix it? They doubled down. Now instead of purchasing individual items, [b]you can only purchase bundles which can be as much as $30.[/b] Sure, you could say "But hey, it's free to play and they've gotta fund the content somehow, right?" Sure, but that leads to my next point. [h1]The Ugly:[/h1] [h3]Operations:[/h3] 2023 was a HUGE turnaround for Halo Infinite. Every 3 months we'd get a new season with new maps, modes and a 100 tier battle pass and even some random 20 tier events scattered throughout the season. There was a LOT of content to chew. January 2024 however, it was announced seasons were no more; they would be replaced by "operations" which are essentially monthly 20 tier passes. Seems like just more frequent updates, right? Wrong. Operations are just cosmetic updates, 90% of which are exclusive to the store. No dev maps, no weapons, no modes, nothing at all. It's a shame really because Infinite was finally shaping into something great, and just when that happened; Microsoft threw it on the chopping block. [h1]Final Thoughts:[/h1] All in all, I really wish Steam offered a "Mixed" option for the review because I'm pretty much on the fence about whether I could recommend this to anyone. It had a rough launch, they finally got their act together and just when things were coming around they put a full stop to it's content updates. As it stands now: Halo Infinite really does have a lot of great content here. As long as you ignore the outrageous shop prices and acknowledge the game probably won't be getting content anymore, it's at least a relatively polished product.