3.5/5 ★ – Jumzatron's review of Halo Infinite.

Context: Completed the campaign on Heroic difficulty and played ~8 hours of multiplayer. I'll most likely return to play the LASO campaign when coop is released. The previous Halo games are among my favorites - Halo: CE being in my top 5 - mostly for the lore and campaigns. Multiplayer is secondary. It is a shame that the open world is mostly limited to a wilderness-type biome, because traveling across it, POI to POI, was more fun than I expected. Collecting weapon variants from high value targets to outfit the marines loaded in the back of my Razorback made for a fun gameplay loop. 343 rewards exploring the map by hiding away audio logs and scanables in caves and crevices, but there is little reason to poke around the map otherwise, as the critical path is not gated by any FOB unlocks. Also, I found no reason to use any other armor ability after lowering the cooldown of the grapple shot. It is very fun to use, especially with the sheer amount of fusion coils scattered throughout the map. The narrative was very character focused, with most cutscenes being intimate closeups of one or two of the handful of main characters. The narrower scope allows for some much needed characterization of Master Chief - as well as addressing Cortana - but at the expense of the grand, scifi epic I was looking forward to. Unfortunately, in attempting to clean up the messy Halo 5, the overall plot moves forward very little. More questions are raised by the end than are answered. The multiplayer was lacking. The base amount of customization is extremely limited, with most of the interesting customization options locked behind a slow-to-progress season pass. Though each of the available MP maps are fun to play, they are too few and can become quite stale. I am sure that new maps will be released as part of the live service business model, but I will have moved on by then. I did enjoy the little I played however. Playing online with a bunch of friends was a nostalgia rush, but the game held up past that with solid gunplay and an interesting arsenal of weapons and power-ups. Overall, Halo: Infinite was enjoyable. Both aesthetically and tonally, it felt like a modernized Halo 1, complete with it's up's and down's. With this foundation however, I am excited to see where Halo goes next. Here's hoping that lore from the larger universe is brought back in when it makes sense because we all know that lore is the only reason to play games.