STARSBarry
Member
Finished it.
The open world was good, but needs more. Searching for Spartan Cores, Skulls, and MP armor is ok as is taking FOBs and other facilities but after that you are left with a very empty open world even for its relative small size. I liked the HVT missions but they were a wasted opportunity to flesh out some side stories. They all amounted to "this guy is bad. kill him". A bit shallow. Having said that, taking on those bases was a lot of fun.
The gunplay is marvelous although it can be frustrating having to drop a preferred weapon and scavenging for something, anything, during a fight because of lack of ammo. Less variations in ammo type would have helped. Kinetic and energy should have been enough. Adding shock, power, and I don't know what else is too much. Half the time I don't even realize that the ammo refill thing I'm running towards isn't compatible with what the weapon I have. But the combat is awesome regardless. Love the grappling hook. I think I use it and sensor thing more than anything else.
Hard to comment on the story because for a first time Halo player it is a confusing mess. But that's on me really. I could have watched YouTube videos to get caught up but I decided I was going to play them from the beginning instead. So hopefully it will make sense eventually. As it is, I'm not sure if the ending was supposed to be a cliffhanger or not. Hopefully more content is on the way because I really don't know what the point was.
The story missions were far too repetitive and linear. Could have been procedurally generated every time and I wouldn't know the difference. I was ready to kill Escharum just to shut us his stupid speeches.
Overall, the game is a 7/10. Good, not great, open world. Fantastic combat. Average story. Bottom line: I had fun. Good game.
Don't worry coming from someone that finished everything but Halo 5 the story was still a confusing jumbled mess, and from other comment's knowing fives won't change that. Hell even with Halo Wars 2 campaign knowledge its mostly just exposition dumps to try and force the story to work by imposing sudden "twists" into already established time line periods.
Like the parts where its repeated again and again that cortana got to choose and had a prior relationship with chief and then go play though Halo CE, it just strait up doesn't work, those two are strangers... having more Halo knowledge makes the story sadly worse because its not building on it, its trying to rewrite periods so the story 343 wants to tell fits.
I thought the campaign was enjoyable enough if somewhat average once I got over the grappling hook. The only hard to find collectable I had to go out of my way to look up was the unmarked final skull, no way I would of found that one without a guide, everything outside of skulls and audio logs I believe gets marked for you on Ubisofts patented "tower" system (renamed FOB's in infinite). Other than that pretty slim on content and easily weighs in at under 10 hours, which is alright for a shooter, but pretty slim for a open world one.
Also what the hell is with those Banshees that just phase in and out of existence when the game feels like you have been in an air vehicle too long? Like I get it, you didn't add anything to the weapon sandbox to counter players using air vehicles outside that one HVT with the homing rockets, but come on they just feel cheap.
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