I’ve played a bunch of it, and have to agree on that gripe. I find the Wasp over-tuned on any of the maps, but it’s especially jarring on Valhalla. At least there’s no cliffs for it to hide behind like on other maps, but I still think Valhalla should be Banshees and Wraiths only. The Scorpion is also unfortunately out of place in Valhalla.
This is a great game, especially for free! It has a very unique setting and presentation, and piecing together the story left me wanting to keep playing and playing to get it figured out.
Yeah, there’s unfortunately very little room for nuanced takes with Halo. It’s either one extreme of “343 killed my dog” or the other extreme of “343 literally cannot do any wrong.”
There’s a lot I enjoy about Infinite, I even had a great time playing a few matches today with a friend. The art direction and sound design is superb. The gameplay feels like a great iteration on the original games while still having modern sensibilities to it. New weapons and equipment manage to fill both traditional and new roles without being too out of place or boring. Maps are all generally good to great. The frequency and types of content/updates since Season 3 have been what Infinite needed from the beginning.
At the same time, like I listed in my previous comment, there were some huge issues that took arguably too long to be resolved. I’m glad the game is in a good spot now and I truly enjoy it, I just find it to be a shame as if the game launched in the state it is now, Halo may have seen quite the revitalization.
Same! And there’s so much more than I was expecting. Getting stuff like the Halo 2 E3 demo or Mac World 1999 is amazing, but stuff like the WIP or cut Halo 2 maps, or the unique weapons that got cut, is absolutely amazing. Can’t wait to try them all!
There’s a lot going on around Infinite and Halo/343 as a whole that makes titles and articles like these really difficult to understand and have an honest discussion around. Even though not many people play on Steam, there are other ways to play it on PC and Infinite is still the 6th-most played game on Gamepass, with it still being relatively popular on its main platform - Xbox. At the same time, though, there are some long-standing and glaring issues with 343’s Halo, and it’s not terribly surprising that Infinite didn’t end up capturing and retaining the playerbase it maybe ought to have.
On one side, people in the gaming community (and the Halo community) eat up articles that go “XYZ game is DEAD because-” as it allows some pretty easy grandstanding and attention (or over on reddit/twitter, imaginary internet points farming). For the most part, Infinite is in a pretty okay state in terms of content (after 1.5 years) and player levels, and an article like this one is easy rage-bait for people to interact with.
On the other side, it’s not terribly surprising that this happened. Before Infinite, I would argue that all of 343’s games were resounding flops - not monetarily, they all sold well, but in terms of quickly diminishing playercounts, negative reactions from the community, meager launch content, or even flat-out not working (looking at the initial launch of MCC), 343 had yet to hit a homerun with Halo. The first few weeks of Infinite were great, but the cracks started to show quickly. Bugfixes were non-existent - such as when the BTB playlist broke in December and it took 2 months for 343 to fix it. Content delivery was also non-existent, the game shipping with very few modes and maps with the supposed 3-month seasons being delayed into being 6 to 9 months long, with the bulk of updates being for cosmetic content or modes that had been there on launch-day for other Halo titles. The challenge and cosmetic systems were explicitly frustrating and designed to be so, under the pretense of making people grind/play more, but which ended up having the exact opposite effect and drove players away. Shop and cosmetic prices were ludicrous, and there was no consistent stat or rank-tracking systems. No Forge. No custom games browser. Theater doesn’t work. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Even though Infinite is in a decent spot now and I find it fun to play, it’s not surprising at all that the playerbase is at levels lower than it should be. No, Infinite or Halo aren’t “dead,” but 343 has done a good job at whittling down a titan of a franchise into a middling AA-level game that only the most die-hard fans care much about.
Playing FIFA growing up helped turn me into a world-class soccer player
Agreed. I think Tsunoda is great but throwing him into that RB right now would like what they did to Albon, it would be way too soon.
Agreed! I’m hoping the playlist stays and more Forge maps get added. There’s some great remakes out there like for High Ground, Waterworks, or even Exile from Halo 4 that would suit the playlist very well.