My Halo Infinite review.
Overall, I came away mixed on the game.
The positives are that the combat is still top tier. 343 deserves a lot of credit for just how good these games play. 4 and 5 are both great playing games (at least at 60fps) and Infinite takes it to the next level.
The already slick combat is improved no end by the grappleshot. This is by far the best addition to the game. I thought it looked lame in the previews, but dam, it feels good to grapple around the map. One of those gameplay things that just feels right. It also can be used in combat in cool ways. I can't see a Halo game in the future not having the grappleshot.
Oh, the grunts are funnier than ever.
The open world did not work, for me. I liked it more than I thought I would as it's nothing like Far Cry or Ass Creed. The biggest issue I had with it was how frivolous the whole thing feels. You absolutely do not have to engage with it, at all, to complete the game. You can search the open world for armour upgrades, but on normal or lower these are not needed. Probably the same for heroic, too. The actual campaign is about the same length as 4 and 5. It just has an open world bolted on to it. I can see what 343 were going for but they need to find a better balance. The open world needed to be weaved into the main campaign.
The campaign falls into the old Halo fault of repeating interiors over and over again. The is especially grating down the last 1/3rd of the game. Which give the impression of a rush job to get it finished.
Another fault with the campaign is the mission design. Far too much of it is uninteresting. It often boils down to getting a power seed and then later plugging it in to power something up. Cue enemies attacking, rinse and repeat. I was also disappointed that the enemy encounters mostly take place on one flat level. I was hoping that they would be more dynamic and that you would be forced to use the grpplehook to get up top to fight enemies from a different angle.
And as for the story, I found it to be almost as messy as 5 was. I always like these games when the story is smaller in scale. It starts off that way here, but by the time credits rolled I had a lot of questions, which isn't always a bad thing, but in this case I had almost no desire to find out the answers. 343 could do with some fresh writers.
Overall - Halo continues to have some of, if not the best, fps mechanics on console. It's just a shame the rest of the game can not live up to those standards. 7/10.