How Halo’s Infinite Beta Revitalized My Love For The Series

While I did enjoy my time with 343 Industries entries in the Halo series, neither Halo 4 nor Halo 5 impacted me like the original trilogy. I used to play endless hours of multiplayer with friends and even travel to different states to take part in big LAN parties in a friend’s basement. Months passed dirty with vehicle physics, developing rivalries to capture the flag or dissecting maps to learn the most efficient ways to avoid it. Halo hasn’t given me that kind of excitement or experimental experience in a long time. That is until I felt a flash in the recent Halo Infinite technical preview.

Over the course of this past weekend, this first flight of the Infinite tech preview was limited to matches of Slayer 4v4 against bots, which received wild AI updates each day of the test. Given the smaller skirmishes, the available maps were of a similar scale, although I never felt trapped or found myself directly spawned in a gunfight. Each area has many ways to move. Due to the density of more open corridors, corridors, and battlefields, I was never short of the option to attack someone’s flank or run straight into conflict.

After playing a few games to feel the controls, I was surprised to fall back into my old Halo habits. Lying in the fire of a heavy assault rifle as I closed the distance and finished off my target with a quick hit face-to-face was my first classic recreation, and luckily the tactic still pays off. The movement speed of the heavy and mechanical Spartans is intended to be slower than the operators of Call of Duty or the Apex Legends, and the performance in Infinity feels how I remember the Master Chief moving, even to the floating jumps. Classic Halo has those hard-to-replicate little intangibles, but in my time in the bot war, 343 is nailing the feel of the early games.

343’s vision for Halo Infinite doesn’t seem to be reverting to Bungie’s exact mold from the original games, instead finding its essence and building on it. Halo 4 and 5 had some great ideas that have been featured in Infinite, albeit with a few tweaks. Wall climbing makes it come back from the previous game and it feels great so far. Whether I’m trying my best at parkour by jumping over barriers or trying to catch an enemy by surprise, ledge grip always feels agile and natural.

Deployable items like active camo, motion sensors, and the versatile Grappleshot are making a comeback as well. Designed for utility, the Grappleshot allows a Spartan to hook a weapon from afar (even while airborne!), Glide into hard-to-reach areas, and take it straight into an unsuspecting enemy’s personal bubble. While I didn’t have much of a chance to use it, throwing my heavy frame into the air to attempt a tricky shot across the map was exciting. Aiming and shooting with the new accessory is surprisingly accurate and useful in the right hands. I can’t wait to play with it anymore and explore the possibilities it opens up in battle. The wall of fall, which I had the most experience with, is not exciting on paper, but it saved my life several times. Standing behind your barrier of tiles gives one or two chances for protection in any square of the energy field. These tiles provide enough coverage to stay alive in a firefight or detect an escape route, though you’ll have to keep in mind which side you’re on because it only provides one-way protection.

Halo’s basic weapon set goes very well with the Assault Rifle, Plasma Pistol, Battle Rifle, and Needler, offering similar performance to their Halo 3 counterparts. Although it is not the Halo Super Pistol: Combat Evolved, the default handgun in Infinite, is a great option to have on hand. I found that when a target is far enough away for the assault rifle to hit reliably, or only had a tight space to shoot, this pistol is more than capable of getting the job done effectively.

My problems with the arsenal I tested lie in some of the newer firearms. Specifically, I was disappointed in the Heatwave, a new forerunner weapon that shoots a line of fireballs that bounce off either vertical or horizontal formations depending on its firing mode. Its portrait mode, which I assume is designed to dispatch individual targets quickly, never killed fast enough on direct hits and was never a better option than less flashy weapons.

After the technical preview closed, I immediately reinstalled the Master Chief Collection so that I could continue to enjoy Halo’s multiplayer mode. A week ago, I was not expecting to play Halo Infinite and was disappointed with the franchise. But after having some fun with it, Microsoft’s flagship game for this holiday season is now at the top of my list of most anticipated games of the year. Most of my time with the technical preview was a blast, and although connecting to the servers was sometimes a problem or the game freezing mid-game, those are the types of errors these tests are used to. remove. I can’t wait to see the next flights and the final product. when it launches (hopefully) later this year.