3/5 ★ – Feirsteax's review of Halo 5: Guardians.

Campaign Review: Halo 5: Guardians was for the most part, a blast to play. It feels like a mechanically refined, aesthetically gorgeous evolution of the core Halo gameplay. The various new movement abilities are all fun and responsive (Master Chief is the most fluid to control that he’s ever felt in the series), and the arsenal of weapons is possibly the best so far; they managed to take the Forerunner weaponry that I was kinda "meh" on in Halo 4 and turn them into something fun and distinctive-feeling. Vehicles are also all great, and a few levels with set pieces including Mantises, Banshees, Warthogs and the like are all bombastic and their inclusion feels like a fine continuation of the tradition of vehicular combat that the Halo series always does well. Enemy variety was quite good too, and I eventually found a satisfying method to deal with most of them. Even though the Covenant are still the most fun to fight, the Forerunners in this game have their own distinct weaknesses and strengths that, once you figure them out, become smooth and satisfying puzzles to solve as part of the core combat loop. The environments and planets you visit throughout the game are all very well realised and gorgeous to look at, and each one has a story behind it that helps set the greater galactic backdrop of the game. Tying all this together is the fantastic soundtrack by Japanese composer Kazuma Jinnouchi, who previously worked on Metal Gear Solid 4. The new themes felt at once unique and new while still maintaining the legacy feeling of the Halo series, while renditions of classic Halo themes were deployed to excellent effect during climactic campaign moments. Great stuff all round. There are, however, a few sore points that hold this game back from being great. First of all, despite my feeling that the gameplay is refined, the level design never truly reaches the heights and wow-factor of open playgrounds like “The Silent Cartographer” in Halo: CE. Most of the levels in Halo 5 are more linear affairs. However, each level does feel complex and dense with lots of nooks and crannies and alternate paths to find packed with secrets that goes some way to make up for this. On top of this are the almost infamous Warden boss fights. The same boss, seven times over, with pretty much no iteration on gameplay. Now that's a major yawn! In the history of Halo games, boss fights have never been a strong point, and Halo 5 is no exception here. But possibly the worst aspect was the groan-worthy narrative and writing that just kept getting in the way of me really enjoying myself. It felt like "Halo Spartans: Avengers Assemble" or something. A whole fistful of new characters take centre stage, and none of them are given time to breathe or establish their own space in the story. They're all just jammed into various set-pieces as the muddled plotline staggers from one cliché to the next. Cortana’s character arc also fell flat for me. Going from one of the strongest characters in the series to being a bog-standard Hollywood villain was quite the whiplash. There were an abundance of melodramatic soliloquys that were deeply uninteresting from both Cortana and the Warden, and too much blunt exposition rather than more natural environmental storytelling. Blue Team should be renamed Beige Team given how bland they are. Who even are they? At one point someone suggests that "they're like family to the Chief". But they haven't been present in any of the previous games, and the writing does very little to demonstrate this idea; they're interchangeable, forgettable and utterly devoid of personality. Their presence actively removed from what could have been lovely sections of "Metroid Prime"-esque journeys through mysterious, atmospheric locales. They chip in with radio chatter to kill the mood while you explore a spooky abandoned space station or an intriguing Forerunner "Genesis Planet" which is full of cool flora and fauna and intriguing geology. Previous games in the series did have allies with you a lot of the time too, but it felt diluted and tonally wrong this time round. There were a few characters who I did enjoy though, mostly down to great design and voice acting. The AI monitor, 031 Exuberant Witness had a bit of charm about it. It says a lot that this floating eyeball thing has more personality than half the cast. The fact that it telemagically provides you a Scorpion tank to blast Covenant with certainly doesn't hurt either! The Arbiter makes a return and his band of rebels, The Swords of Sanghelios, are some of the coolest allies in the game, they feel independent and on an equal footing with you rather than just sidekick material. Keith David as the voice of Arbiter also goes a long way to solidify the character’s coolness factor, too. Overall it felt extremely fun from a gameplay perspective, but the campaign was a missed opportunity. Now, watching the trailer for Halo Infinite after playing this has got me worryingly hyped. I feel like if they take this excellent core gameplay and put it in a big, playground-like, Alpha Halo-style environment, it could be absolutely phenomenal... but given the latest scandal with Cyberpunk and all its hype, I should really try to temper my expectations!