You’ll use it to traverse mountains and ranges, take out enemies, pull in weapons, vehicles and objects of interest to you, and really just get around the world with. Master Chief’s grappling hook, one of multiple new gadget accessories you’ll unlock and have access to throughout the campaign, is by far the most important tool in Halo Infinite, and it’s not even close. The scale and verticality on offer is unlike anything we’ve seen in a Halo game before - it’s not even close - and sometimes the exploration can be genuinely entertaining, sometimes even therapeutic. Outside of that, the game world is open to explore … provided you tick certain campaign boxes to progress to new “islands”. Many of the game’s main campaign missions follow a very strict, linear pathway, with very little deviation from core objectives. Zeta Halo, our base for Halo Infinite‘s campaign, falls somewhere between sandbox, open-world and corridor shooter. Kind of, sort of open-worldģ43 wasn’t joking when it said Halo Infinite wasn’t a “true” open world. The Halo foundation, drenched in a familiar philosophy, leads into a far deeper, more energetic and engaging experience, one that isn’t truly realised until the world opens up for you. This carries into the multiplayer offering, something many have already dabbled in over a few weeks, thanks to the surprise “beta” release ahead of the full launch on December 9. Halo Infinite is, just as with its predecessors, all about movement, mobility, and variety. There are no surprises here: the core gameplay is still the same satisfying, mostly-accessible foundation of the quintessential Halo experience. The opening few hours for me were weirdly reminiscent of Halo 4‘s closing segments: neon-lit interiors and slick corridors introduce us to Halo Infinite‘s fundamentals, the bare minimum of what you’ll need to survive this world.

If you’re new to Halo, chances are your introduction also won’t be all that memorable: you’ll probably also struggle to know what the hell is going on, such is Infinite‘s - and every Halo game before it’s - narrative inaccessibility.īeyond the chasm that is Infinite‘s multi-hour tutorial, however, is a quasi-open-world battleground that neither bombards you with mindless fetch quests and intimidating map-stacking, nor leaves you with an empty world. Fans of the series will likely blast through these opening moments with ease, and recognise them as just more of the “standard” Halo we’ve been playing for almost two decades.

The opening few hours of the campaign paint a familiar and mostly uninspiring reintroduction to Halo mythology and fundamentals. Regrettably, Halo Infinite does not leave much of a first impression.

It doesn’t get there without a few bumps along the way, however.

Nfs carbon keys