Imperfect Game: Halo Infinite

Hello and welcome to Imperfect Game less of a review blog and more of a personal journey across my favorite video game memories today I am covering Halo Infinite on the Xbox One. I was quite young when I first saw it, let alone played a halo game. Now at the not quite old age of 24, I’ve started playing more on console gaming, which is something I should have done as my PC while good at running Retro or 2D games well enough doesn’t handle more modern games on today’s Market. But thanks to my brother Kyle having an Xbox One and asking my mother to get me a game pass, I am able to play games from the more modern age of gaming.

The Story is the chief got beaten by a big bad brute and both he and the UNSC go down. After falling into a coma for six months is revived by a lone pilot known as Echo 216 and continues his fight against the new bad guy faction called the Banished on Zeta Halo which is like the covenant but these guys chose red as their favorite color instead of purple, am more of a blue or green fan myself. While I won’t spoil the whole story, it mostly revolves around the small cast of characters from both the older Halo games and the few new characters introduced by Infinite. The story is surprisingly well done for an FPS game so you should be able to enjoy it.

The weapons in Halo Infinite have something for every kind of situation you can come across on Zeta Halo (aka the ring the game is set in.) ranging from the classic assault rifle or the energy swords carried by high rank Elites. The developers have culled out most of the underused guns leaving only the surviving classics like the plasma pistol and Rocket Launcher and the newcomers to the weapon sandbox. The plasma carbine which pops off shields of enemy jackals and does decent work popping grunts dead in a short three shot burst. You got your far ranged weapons in the form of the Sniper and Stalker rifle for picking off targets far away. Then you have the two melees in the form of the energy sword and the gravity hammer both returning from past Halo games for rushing down enemies either low on health or to open their shields for a killing blow.

Since this is an open-world game unlike its more linear brothers before it Halo Infinite’s new open-world needs something to do in its world. So that's why in Infinite you have FOBs, short for Forward Operating Bases that have fallen into Banished hands and are just waiting for the Master Chief to raid them in order to return those FOBs into the rightful hands of the UNSC. You also have scattered marine squads that need saving and special missions where you assassinate high-value targets of the Banished. While the past games played with the idea of boss battles before they never truly gave any meaningful boss battles. Infinite fixes this by introducing named boss enemies both in the main story and out in the world of Zeta Halo. While you have the mandatory bosses you encounter over the course of the main story you also have optional bosses carrying modded versions of existing weapons that when the boss carrying them is killed off add another weapon to use at any point in the FOBs weapon lockers.

Once you take over a FOB you can fast travel to it and access useful tools like weapon lockers that provide weapons and the ability to summon vehicles. honestly, I think the vehicles are pretty much useless as the terrain outside of the roads are very rocky or have a mountain in the way so I would just run on foot and use the grapple shot to scale the landscape, though I did make use of the Ghost (another returning classic) to pick up enemies sometime so maybe that's just me.

Another open-world/Metroidvania element added in Infinite is the addition of an upgrade system, you find a collectible called a spartan core and use them to buy upgrades for the different gadgets you find over the course of the main story. While I personally didn’t make use of or even upgrade most of them as they grapple shot was just the best possible choice for me but I'm guessing the other gadgets are more useful in harder difficulties as I mainly played on easy mode for this game. The grapple shot really opens up combat by allowing more aggressive approaches to fighting enemies and the stunning upgrade where the enemy hit by a hook shot is shocked and left helpless and screaming was just too much fun to upgrade the other tools you get access to.

The enemy designs are the same as classic Halo but given a lot of modern game polish, the Grunts still run away after a leader is killed or just run away in general and the high-ranked Elites still pull out a sword when pulled to their limits kind of like a samurai would. You have the sneaky Jackals who if they're not carrying a shield are far away using a stalker rifle to snipe you dead to rights. Then you have the Brutes that just bull charge you and punch you, while most Brutes just wear shoot-able head protection. Then you have some kind of flying monkeys that are new. They feel like flying grunts in my gameplay. Then you also have the flying robot sentinels in the deeper areas of Zeta Halo.

Another unique thing about Halo Infinite is it’s multiplayer, the multiplayer for Infinite has one huge thing going for it and that’s the fact it’s technically free to play! While the campaign is locked behind either buying the full game or getting the game pass to allow access to the story mode, the multiplayer is free. Sure there is a battle pass that locks out extra cosmetic content stuff like armor colors and armor pieces but otherwise the multiplayer is fully accessible for free. I’ve played a few rounds of it myself mostly on the quickplay format where teams of four fight in a handful of game modes like Slayer where you are scored based on kills, Oddball where you fight for control over a human skull in classic halo fashion and then your classic Capture the Flag and Territory control which are exactly as they sound.

Inclosing Halo Infinite is a great game and since it’s on game pass for as little as 15 dollars you can find yourself losing hours of time playing Halo Infinite as your main game. I had fun grapple hooking into enemies just to beat them over the head with the butt of my gun and blasting my way to the end of the game. This has been Imperfect Game and thanks for reading.