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05/01 - Brutal Legend
07/01 - Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
13/01 - Sludge Life
17/01 - AER: Memories of Old
19/01 - Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition (Human - Nero/Dante)
05/03 - CrossCode: A New Home
14/03 - Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
17/03 - Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (100cc)
02/04 - Drakengard (Endings A-D)
14/04 - Drakengard 2 (Ending A)
28/04 - Drakengard 3 (Endings A-D)
02/05 - Rain
10/05 - God of War: Chains of Olympus HD
15/05 - God of War: Ghost of Sparta HD
24/05 - NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139... (Endings A-E)
08/06 - Final Fantasy XV (NG+)
02/07 - God of War II HD
15/07 - Scarlet Nexus (Yuito)
20/07 - TRON: Evolution
21/07 - Sky: Children of the Light
01/08 - Scarlet Nexus (Kasane, NG+)
12/08 - Forza Horizon
18/08 - A Plague Tale: Innocence
21/08 - Contrast
31/08 - Forza Motorsport 7
04/09 - No More Heroes III
13/09 - Metal Gear Solid
23/09 - Metal Gear Solid 2 HD
09/10 - Psychonauts 2
15/10 - Unsighted
17/10 - Sable
18/10 - Halo: Reach (Master Chief Collection)
23/10 - Split/Second
29/10 - Darq
11/11 - Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut
14/11 - Darksiders II (Apocalyptic)
21/11 - Kid A Mnesia Exhibition
23/11 - Forza Horizon 5
27/11 - Exo One
29/11 - Omno
11/12 - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64HD)
15/12 - Halo: Combat Evolved (Master Chief Collection)
19/12 -
Halo Infinite
Originally I wasn’t intending on playing this, given how burned I was by Halo 5 and a lot of red flags that kept showing up during the development of this game. Even hearing early positive reviews had me feeling put off by it, not being too convinced by what they said and remembering how 4 and 5 both had a glowing reception upon release as well. But I gave this one a chance, and honestly it’s not bad. Still has a lot of problems, but it manages to do enough well that I have to give it credit for.
The most surprising and most positive thing about the game is that the combat is excellent. It might even be the best playing a Halo game has ever been. And that’s not something I say lightly at all. Even though I wouldn’t say any Halo game plays badly, I don’t think the series has had any major improvements on the formula since 3. Everything since has mostly just been small redundant tweaks, or simply downgrades that made things worse. But not so here. It feels fast and dynamic, speeding up the rhythm of fights, but while also retaining the back-and-forth pacing that is key to Halo’s character. This game’s version of aim-down-sights feels like it has actual use cases that make it valuable, but without being dominant or restricting movement. Armour abilities add a new element to the gameplay loop that actually feels like a natural and meaningful addition, especially the grappling hook. It allows you to interact with elements of the battlefield in new ways, and lends itself to interesting movement possibilities too. The D-pad selection method is a bit clumsy however, and switching between them in battle can be confusing, as the default mapping doesn’t have much logic to it. This can be fixed by setting your own custom mapping, but doing so also means you lose the ability to manually switch grenades, which seems like a really silly oversight. It was a trade-off I was willing to take for the purpose of being able to use those armour abilities more though, as they really add a lot to the experience. The new weapons are really good as well. Old weapons get a lot of tweaking and refinement, but the new stuff feels distinct and fun to use, and not just another faction’s version of the same thing. A lot of weapons have fun unique quirks to them.
I’m not really sure on the open world though. On one hand it does feel like and expansion to the open level design Halo has always had, but on the other it does make the game feel less like Halo and more like it’s chasing trends to an extent. It adds unnecessary busywork that doesn’t really improve the game, but it does bring in a level of dynamism to how you approach objectives. That means you don’t find yourself pinned down at a choke point like could happen in older games. It helps the game to not feel frustrating when you die in a fight, which happens pretty often, and you don’t have to do the same thing each time and can easily try a different approach. Individual areas of interest in the world do provide different experiences despite a lot of reuse of the same concept or assets. Every Banished Outpost for example feels quite different. Despite being constructed of a lot of the same parts, they way they are organised and how they are placed in to the landscape means each one does offer a distinct sequence of events. But if you take the game broadly across its whole runtime, the experience doesn’t change much. Outside of the gradual unlocking of new weapons and vehicles, you are largely doing the same thing from start to finish. I’m not really convinced Halo needed an open world at all, and despite it not being a disaster, it does kind of make the game feel less like Halo and more like just another game chasing the Ubisoft design trend. But that does feel a bit harsh to say. Perhaps it’s more like Breath of the Wild, in that on paper it has many similarities to an Ubisoft designed game, but in practice it’s quite different. That comparison feels like giving it too much credit however. As well as being a bit of a dumb cliché.
The aesthetics are really good. The best a 343 Halo has ever been, but it still doesn’t get it quite right. The change back to the old Forerunner style architecture is great, and they did a good job of at least getting much closer to the feeling of the vast and imposing eeriness they used to have, rather than the somewhat generic and overly clean look it had in 4 and 5. This new ring does have some of that slightly surreal natural beauty, and the hexagonal columns are a real nice touch. They are something new and unique, but also feel very fitting to the existing aesthetic. The way they jut out of the landscape in a clearly artificial way, yet are reminiscent of basalt columns you see in the real world, like they could be a natural geological phenomenon of some mineral we don’t understand. This landscape makes for some dramatic vistas, especially during sunrise and sunset. The broken up chunks of the ring are a cool touch too. It’s fun to be able to walk up to the edge of one and look down directly in to outer space.
But there isn’t much variation. Like with the structure of the open world gameplay feeling rather similar throughout, the game world itself is kind of the same all the way through. It’s a nice aesthetic, but it’s only really got one. None of the different weather patterns or biomes that older games had. It doesn’t do much to emphasise the feeling of being in this space either. Sometimes alludes to it with off-hand dialogue, and it is possible to stop and smell the roses, but it doesn’t feel like the game is “about” the ring like the old ones were. It’s pretty, but it lacks that sense of reverence.
The music is good, as it goes back to the character of composition from the old games too, but it’s perhaps cheating a bit by reusing old tracks. Halo has always done that though, but they at least mixed in new stuff as well. But probably worse than that is the music is less prominent in general. It has less of a kick to it, and way less variation in mood and style. Percussion is toned down, and there’s much less interesting use of instruments and synth elements. It feels like it’s being neglected and pushed to background, but music has always been a huge part of character and mood in these games. That’s just mostly gone here, and it suffers for it. Bringing back old favourite tracks doesn’t help much if you don’t use them well. There was only one point in the game where it brought the music to the forefront, near the end of the story, and it was actually a great little moment. There was nothing else like that in the whole game.
Audio in general has a similar story. While sound design feels good on a kinaesthetic level, it has a huge lack of character. It’s a common problem in a lot of similar games, so I don’t want to spend too long going over it again. Weapons have a punchy feel to them, but that’s basically all they have. There’s nothing that stands out of it memorable. This didn’t have to be a trade-off, you can have both, yet this game doesn’t.
The story is pretty terrible too. There isn’t a sense that there’s much of an arc to it, without the situation changing much as you go through it. The villains are all just brooding, paper thin cut-outs, spouting nouns and trying to seem imposing throughout. They are extremely one-note. It also feels like there are huge omissions here, like there was an entire game’s worth of story that was simply missed since Halo 5. That ended on a massive cliffhanger where the major threat wasn’t dealt with, and now that’s gone and we’re on to a completely different set of antagonists now. The main leader of the Banished also has a tedious habit of going on and on about a certain Atriox, the previous leader of the group who only appeared for a few seconds in the opening cutscene. He plays zero role in this story, but they won’t shut up about him, to the point where I know his name way more than anyone else in his faction. From what I have gathered, this seemingly missing game actually exists however, and it’s called Halo Wars 2. Supposedly that is where The Banished are from, but I’m not sure if that’s where they wrapped up Halo 5’s loose ends too. Either way a very poor way to do things. I find it pretty baffling that 343 keep trying this, having their stories rely so much on outside knowledge that the vast majority of players won’t have. That got heavily criticised in both their previous games, yet they still think it’s a good idea somehow.
I don’t like the new characters on the UNSC side either. The unnamed pilot who carries you from place to place, and I assume is meant to be more of a relatable audience surrogate is extremely grating and annoying. He’s also an example of that cliché of shallow character writing wherein we’re expected to connect with him simply because he has a family. That we never see or interact with. There comes a point where he and Chief have a heart-to-heart where he explains why he acts the way he does, but it falls totally flat. It doesn’t change anything about the character or their relationship. The new AI companion simply called “The Weapon” I just find extremely creepy. She’s supposed to be like Cortana, but a younger version. More chirpy and naive. But instead her performance feels very forced and strained. She comes off more like a corporate PR spokesperson who has been blackmailed with something horrific if she didn’t smile enough. Again this game is making the same mistakes of previous 343 stories by trying to have a heavy focus on character-driven stories, despite them being awful at writing characters. I’ve never been sure why they decided to go down this route when that was never an appeal or strength of Halo at the best of times either.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say this story is on the same level as that of Halo 5. A story so bad I basically gave up hope of this series ever being good again. But it manages to not ruin Infinite because of the change to the overall structure of the game. You can to a degree ignore it, as it doesn’t feel like the driving force of the experience here. Instead the open world and various other gameplay changes are what grab your attention.
Despite having many issues with the Infinite, I’m actually somewhat positive on the overall game. It’s undeniably a big step up from previous 343 games, and is much better than I was expecting it to be going in. There’s still a very long way to go in getting this series back on track, and I have many issues with this entry, but it is an impressive move in the right direction. Although there are many negatives I can point to with this game, the fact that the combat is so good is a pretty big deal. It is after all the core of a shooter, so that being so well done goes a long way to earning good will. That deserves credit. This game clearly bears the scars of a very troubled development, but the achievements it does make in light of the situation it has been through are pretty admirable.