Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions of Halo 5: Guardians for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder to all that where feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but self-editing (brevity) is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mainly reading. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.

While I'm not a massive fan of Halo I've completed the campaigns of all but Halo 2 ( in progress currently) and enjoyed them but 5 was just a slog. The story was not only boring but poorly told, looking for suspense or surprises then look elsewhere.
While the graphics and sound were polished the actual locations were generally dull and generic to the point where I can barely remember them well enough to describe here.
But the big problem for me was the gameplay, playing on normal the enemies were so damaging and accurate I had to play the game as a poor man's cover shooter forever hiding and waiting for the shield to recharge. In contrast while playing reach on normal difficulty with my son I would charge in and normally survive whilst feeling like a super soldier, in 5 you feel like a new recruit with crappy equipment. I still rarely died or had any difficulties progressing it just made it slow and dull.
The only bright spot was firefight, no not the pay to win competitive which before release I was looking forward to but the co-op which my son and I played for hours with the cards adding to the experience rather than spoiling it.
Apart from the co-op firefight Halo 5 was a massive disappointment moving Halo further away from it's original identity than ever. The name alone of the next Halo does doe not make me think this is going to change.

Halo 5 felt like it was caught between two ambitions, one for 343 to do something that provided their own stamp after 4 and another to still try and make it feel like Halo.

It is not the most even of campaigns and suffers from the same fractured storytelling that the second game had, albeit I did enjoy the overall narrative and I have enough investment in the characters, in Cortana, to want to know what happens next. And while the shooting may not hit the heights of three and Reach I still like it, there is an interplay of shields, ammo and movement that still woks for me even if the level design does not engage in quite the same way. In saying that sliding down a Guardian at the start of one level was a huge amount of fun at the time.

Halo's biggest problem feels like one of age and nostalgia, where the history creates an imprint the series can never escape from. 5 is no different, feeling like it wanted to provide a refresh without moving away from the core tenants of what went before but in doing that created something that become a blurry vision, albeit one that I still enjoyed playing. It is just hard to know if that is because the game's gameplay pulled me through, or the narrative made me want to finish it because I was that invested.

A special mention must go to the multiplayer however. Warzone was great fun, a full battle with both PvE and PvP that allowed me to contribute consistently despite my poor aim against other human players. It was consistently great fun, and personally I rarely felt the req packs ever got in the way.

Firing Halo 5: Guardians up on my Xbox One for the first time, I couldn't have been more hyped. I hadn't played a Halo game in years and it was my chance to be re-acquainted with the series.

The weapons and movement in Halo 5 all felt amazing (especially with the boost/climb/ground slam/assassination mechanics to navigate the environment and getting out of tough spots). I enjoyed the mix between the Human, Covenant and Promethean weapons, each having a purpose within the variety of encounters. Favourites of mine were the missile launching Hydra and of course my trusty Battle Rifle.

Each combat encounter was still as fun as ever, with the manic collection of enemies fluidly reacting to what my team of Spartans was throwing at them. Pure Halo fun.

The graphics and sound also were a step up from Halo 4 on the Xbox 360. The lavish details on the Spartans, enemies, cutscenes and environments just looked incredible.

I didn't mind playing as Spartan Locke. He was a cool enough character, just himself and the other Spartans were not really memorable. I personally thought The Arbiter and Dr. Halsey were much more memorable characters, just from how good they looked in the gorgeous cutscenes.

The story also took many interesting twists and turns and ended on a bold note, so I'm really looking forward to Halo Infinite to see how/if they carry on from there.

One thing I couldn't stand were the repeating boss battles (note, there was only one boss i.e. The Warden). Sure, maybe repeat a boss twice in a game, but in this game it was ridiculous. 343 didn't even change up the boss whenever you fought him on other occasions (aside from cloning him on the final battle, which wasn't fun).

I didn't play much of the multiplayer, but I heard from people on the Internet that it is one of the best incarnations, since all of the movement options from the singleplayer campaign are present and correct. The Halo Championship Series is still active to this day and hopefully Halo multiplayer receives a large boost with Halo Infinite.

The inclusion of the Requisition System and REQ Packs in the multiplayer wasn't necessary in my opinion and I wish 343/Microsoft had found another way to monetize the game rather than through microtransactions.

All in all, Halo 5: Guardians was awesome with a few hiccups and hopefully 343 have taken in all of the feedback from Halo 4 and 5 and will make something even better. Judging from the footage of Halo Infinite so far, it looks like they may succeed! Fingers crossed!

For a number of reasons, I wasn't really in a frame of mind at the time of launch to give Halo 5 a fair shake, despite rather enjoying Halo 4. I was turned off by the opening cinematic, which felt a little too Marvel Cinematic Universe to me, and I was especially irritated by the game's marketing, which seemed hellbent on making you think you'd be hunting Master Chief all game.

Leading up to its release, I'd gotten fairly hyped up for Halo 5's story by listening to the two "Hunt the Truth" radio-drama-like podcast seasons, but it quickly became apparent to me that Halo 5 wasn't really interested in picking up any of the series' plot threads, so I set it aside.

I played a fair share of the multiplayer, however, and I still maintain it's maybe the best the series has been since Halo 3. I absolutely loved the added mobility 343 gave the Spartans, and the gunplay felt as good to me as Bungie's ever had. The fact that the game ran at 60 FPS really helped, too, except that it seemed to have come at the expense of some of Halo 5's other visuals.

Multiplayer maps are visually inconsistent at best. While the character models themselves all look great, my concerns with the art direction for the Spartans aside, environments are all over the place quality-wise. I honestly wondered at times if a bug was preventing certain textures from loading into the game.

I also really loved the idea of Warzone: PVP meets PVE. The REQ cards weren't really my thing, but I also enjoyed playing around with unique variations of some classic Halo weapons and vehicles.

It took nearly 5 years, but eventually I got around to revisiting the campaign just last month. Halo 5's a good game that's held back from being a great one by a number of its decisions. The narrative pulls the player along on the loosest of threads. At one point, Locke's chasing Chief to bring him in for... defying orders? Something like that. I dunno. Chief just wants to find

Spoiler: show

Cortana.

And then outta nowhere, it seems the reason Locke really needs to find Chief is because he's the only one who can save the universe again... this time from

Spoiler: show

Cortana.

The important thing is that you get to fight a lot of aliens along the way. The level design opens up here and there into the kinds of near-open-worlds that the series made itself famous for, and I also rather liked the couple of hub world missions that allowed me to quietly explore at my leisure. And while I didn't like it at first, the squad mechanic grew on me, too.

There are some great set pieces--riding down the outside of that building/ship thing was a particular highlight--but, much like Spartan Locke and company, the game's action is mostly serviceable without feeling memorable. For good and ill, it's the videogame equivalent of a popcorn movie.

And that's fine enough. I like popcorn movies.