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

I have a lot of thoughts about Halo: Infinite. Most are good. Some are bad. But my main takeaway from Microsoft's latest attempt at soft-rebooting the big green spaceman franchise is that I'm excited to talk about it. As someone who lost interest in post-Bungee Halo, this is the first iteration of the series to hook me since 343 took the reins. The studio has finally stopped trying to make what it thinks should be a Halo game and has forged out in its own direction, and although it doesn't quite stick the landing in every regard, Infinite gets away with it because it's something fresh. As always, the multiplayer is astoundingly good, but to be honest, I'm not gonna dissect it. I played a few matches, I enjoyed them a lot and the fact it's free was a strong move on Microsoft's part. 343 has been doing a cracking job with the online play for years now and Infinite is no exception, so if you like Halo, have at it. However, It's the campaign that's the most interesting element of this next-gen riff on Halo. One of my biggest complaints with the 343-era is that the team seems to spend every game rebooting the story and offering some contrived retcon that essentially resets the playing field. Infinite doesn't buck that trend. Listen, I'm no Halo lore-fiend and Guardians was admittedly a hot mess, but didn't Cortana basically start the robopocalypse in the last game? Wasn't Spartan Locke pegged to be a crucial character? Weren't their big forerunner robot gods floating around? Forget all of that, cause outside of some loosely-linked story beats and grunt dialogue, 343 wants to wipe the slate again. This time though, I can get behind the soft-reboot stance because there's more direction behind starting anew. 343 has sat back and had a glance at the gaming landscape, and as a result, Infinite's campaign becomes this impressive mixing pot of popular trends and ideas. Yes, the major one seems to be Breath of the Wild, although it's clear time constraints meant it couldn't quite achieve that vision. There's a giant open-world area introduced during the first act with bases to liberate, targets to take down and checkpoints to conquer... but let's be honest, it's just intergalactic Far Cry. Granted, intergalactic Far Cry with genre-best shooting and far more freedom, but intergalactic Far Cry all the same. After reading Jason Schreier and Dina Bass' recent Bloomberg article on Infinite, it's clear there's a version of this game where the campaign is entirely non-linear; where you can complete main story missions in any order you want, Divine Beast style. But it seems time just wasn't on 343's side and what we got was more a proof of concept than the official Energy Sword of the Wild we all wanted. But the small glimpses of that potential open-world sci-fi epic make me desperate to see the concept realised. You can approach situations with almost Metal Gear Solid V levels of freedom, taking out targets from range using a sniper, barreling through outposts in vehicles or raining down fire with heavy ordinance. You can explore the map, unlock powerful weapon variants and uncover hidden lore. Even the way the missions are seamlessly integrated into the environment is impressive. Whatever Halo 7 is (whether it's tacked onto Halo Infinite as part of 343's new live-servicey platform idea or a fully-fledged sequel), the building blocks are there to make something extraordinary. In terms of Infinite's main story, it's generally nothing special. There's a fun set-up and the Banished are a relatively inventive new way for us to fight the covenant for the billionth time, but there's a ton of mysteries that fizzle out and the pacing is bizarre, backloading the game with big moments and leaving the middle starved of content. The main draw though is that they FINALLY gave Master Chief some fucking character and that's an improvement in of itself. You can tell 343 were sat playing God of War back in 2018 because there's a lot of semi-Kratosy character work here. The Weapon (AKA, new Cortana) sort of acts as an Atreus-esque sidekick, which is a smart move (even if her writing is a touch cringy), but giving Chief some actual emotion and allowing him to elicit humour was a welcome addition to a series that has long needed to give a persona to its bulky guttural space dad. You're not gonna get the sheer depth of Sony Santa Monica's 2018 epic, not by a long shot, but it's a solid start considering it's something entirely new for the traditionally po-faced Halo franchise. Just having cutscenes that seamlessly transition from gameplay was a nice touch, even if they did wear their God of War single-shot influence on their sleeve. There's even one that beat for beat recreates the moment where Kratos is thrown over his house by Baldur... like, directly, which was strange... Honestly, Infinite is just surprisingly good fun. As someone who clocked out after Reach, I finally feel like there's some life returning to the series and I'm optimistic about what the team can do with this revitalized approach. The ending hints that we're getting more, so I'd love to see an expansion with new non-linear content and some extra biomes to explore, because goddamn, the main campaign is ENTIRELY centred around wooded areas and bland sci-fi corridors. Regardless of how they do it, I'm looking forward to seeing where Master Chief will spend 10 hours crying about Cortana next. PS. One side note [and I guess MINOR SPOILERS for the first ten minutes of the game?]. Why did 343 bother to introduce Atriox as an imposing villain in the opening cutscene, unceremoniously can him off-screen and then replace him with a villain who looked exactly the fucking same? I didn't realise it wasn't him until he started getting all teary-eyed about Atriox a few hours in. Just a strange move... and I know there's a little more to it, but like, why? It's sort of like introducing Thanos, killing him off seconds after he batters Hulk and then introducing Danos, his purple-skinned, butt-chinned clone with identical powers and villainous weight but he has a different haircut...