Halo Infinite Review – Hail to the Chief

There’s few characters in gaming that are iconic as Master Chief Petty Officer John 117 of the UNSC in his classic dark green powered armour, bearing his stoic demeanour and his virtual sidekick Cortana who have shot, bludgeoned and otherwise depopulated several Halo’s worth of gribblies in the quest to defend humanity.

In Halo Infinite, you come back in his boots to – you guessed it – save the day from threat to humanity. While the multiplayer component of Halo Infinite is free with a Warzone like battle pass mechanic, the single player campaign is a somewhat unique hybrid of an open world game with storyline checkpoints. Here’s our Halo Infinite review where we see if the Master Chief’s latest solo outing is worth your money.

What is Halo Infinite

The latest entry in the Halo franchise and the sequel to Halo 5 Guardians, Halo Infinite is actually subdivided into two parts. While the multiplayer aspect is free to play with a purchasable battle pass mechanic for cosmetic upgrades in the vein of many other such games like Fortnite and Warzone, the single player campaign which we’ll be reviewing requires you to pony up cash to play and is a mostly linear experience that integrates an open world sandbox mechanic.. 

Like its predecessors, you play as the Master Chief once more with the majority of the game taking place on the new Zeta Halo ringworld that hides secrets beneath it much like the rest of the other Halos in the game. While the core premise of the game of you combating alien hordes as a one man army remains, the game mixes it up somewhat with a few changes in terms of the storyline and also a few new features on account of events transpiring in-universe.

Your new AI companion in Halo Infinite is The Weapon who bears an uncanny resemblance to Cortana

Instead of Cortana acting as your ingame assistant and expository counterpart, you have a facsimile called the Weapon who acts like her, talks like her but isn’t Cortana. Her mysterious past and the amusing banter in between battles is what keeps the game light and approachable rather than being a drag.

Rather than the Covenant coalition of aliens, you instead take on the Banished which have the same roster of aliens on staff as the Covenant albeit with a different ideology.

Halo Infinite Review – The single player campaign has you as a one man army out to liberate Zeta Halo

Much like the previous games, they’re out to take over Zeta Halo and have already established bases, outposts and more on the ring itself that you’ll have to wrest from their paws, appendages or whatnot. You’ll also get occasional help from loyalist UNSC marines who will crop up here and there to ride shotgun, act as meat shields for you and generally function as distractions for the enemy. 

Many aspects of the game allow you to explore a semi-open sandbox of sorts where you are free to wander about at will about Zeta Halo but it’s gated by mandatory linear missions if you want to progress further in the game.

Halo Infinite Review – Gameplay

Halo Infinite is an FPS shooter that draws on its predecessors for its unique, addictive gameplay loop. As the Master Chief, you have regenerating shields and health with the ability to carry a maximum of two weapons at a time with an arsenal of both human and alien weapons ranging from pistols and rifles all the way to missile launchers in various flavours with human weapons veering towards kinetic impact weapons while alien ones rely on plasma bolts. Old hats and veterans will be immediately familiar with the weapons available in the game and their various handling nuances.

Each of the weapons is unique with a distinctive look, feel and kick and you’ll likely come up with your own preferences in the game after exploring it for a while but there generally aren’t any poorly balanced in the game, for now at least. 

Where Halo Infinite mixes things up is that the Master Chief now has a wrist-mounted grappling hook that adds a massive amount of verticality to the maps in the game. You’re able to use it to climb up sheer cliffs and, in certain cases, rapidly enter melee combat by grappling with a target so you can get up close in seconds to deliver a rifle butt in the face.

Bar the linear levels that gatepost certain chokepoints in the game and which expand the storyline, you’ll mostly be wandering around the open world of Zeta Halo which consists mostly of alien ruins, forests and mountains. 

Unfortunately, that’s the extent of it as there are no other biomes like swamps, arctic deserts or whatnot so it’s all forests and alien corridors here. Much like other sandbox games like the Witcher, there are points of interest across the map you can explore for collectibles and upgrades with dozens of things to collect from audio logs to upgrades for your powered armour.

Getting about is primarily on foot though you can also take advantage of a host of both human and alien vehicles strewn about the world ranging from bikes to tanks. You’ll likely prefer to take the scenic route on foot though as Zeta Halo and the game itself is beautiful with wonderfully rendered terrain and gritty, industrial looking human and alien outposts scattered across the landscape.

Melding the once linear gameplay of the Halo series with an open sandbox design would have been a challenge but they’ve managed to execute it in a competent fashion and the game feels tight and well polished in almost every aspect of its single player campaign. To be fair, there was never a dull moment across our Halo Infinite review experience and there’s always a firefight, enemy or encounter just across the horizon to keep things interesting.

Multiplayer mode is a competently done affair with a host of familiar game modes like the classic deathmatch, capture the flag and the like given a Halo twist. It’s fun in short bursts but the provided battlepass is a chore to grind through if you’re playing for free. 

Halo Infinite Review – Conclusion

The core gameplay loop in the single player campaign revolves around short, sharp and intense firefights where you attempt to free human outposts from the Banished, in a fashion somewhat akin to Far Cry 5, and then putter around finding upgrades and collectibles to become more powerful. 

It’s a fun gameplay loop with a lot of variety when you face different enemies. The weapons you have on hand also require you to swap things up with different tactics on your part. Of course, if all else fails you can just run them over with the game’s signature Warthog all-wheel drive vehicle and gun the rest down with its rear mounted gatling gun.

In the campaign,you’ll inevitably exhaust all the points of interest in a section of Zeta Halo before you’ll have to then move onwards to the next gateposted storyline mission. This steady pace of exploration and action gets you a good 12 or so hours of gameplay on normal difficulty. 

The storyline itself has its moments but there are no big surprises in the campaign. Once you’ve finished off the single player campaign, multiplayer beckons though it’s something you’ll have to approach with some caution as their battle pass is miserly with rewards and levelling up is a chore. If you’re a Halo fan, this is definitely worth a whirl. Replay attempts are fun at higher difficulties and to also find the rarest items in the game – skulls – that can alter the game substantially for better or worse to offer a challenge.

Halo Infinite review unit courtesy of 343 Industries. Available for PC, Xbox One and Xbox series X/S. For more details visit https://www.halowaypoint.com/