2.5/5 ★ – elk's review of Halo Infinite.

I really like the presentation of this game. The UI is great, the graphics are nice the art style/look of the enemies and guns as well as MC himself are amazing. The sound design is awesome, for instance, the kill hitmarker and the juicy sound it makes will play in my head on repeat for the rest of my life. The cutscenes are well directed and nice looking. Some of the special variants for vehicles and weapons look super cool. The combat is probably the best part of this game: MC controls well and it's fun to fight enemies. The grappling hook was a great inclusion and it totally changes my playstyle from the other halo games. Enemies are cool and it's fun and the open world has some quaint easter eggs with cool boss battles and cool variations and stuff to find and it's good and fun and nice. But this game just feels like a single halo mission stretched for 10 hours. Seriously it's insane how little variation there is in environments and every single mission goes the same with no difference at all. You get a waypoint to a structure. You go to the structure. Probably not on a car because the terrain sucks for vehicles. The honeycomb mountains look cool but you can't drive with them. Vehicles control terribly in this, and it sucks. OK Back to my thing. Once you get to the structure you clear out the enemies in front and touch the terminal. You go inside. Go thru a hallway. Identical, metal hallways. You go into a big room with tons of grunts, a couple of brutes, and maybe a few elites. Kill them and touch the terminal. Go into a hallway. This time you cant touch the terminal until you find a power seed. Go grapple back thru the room and get the power seed. Put it in. Touch the terminal. Repeat for like an hour and thats the whole mission. You finish the mission and maybe theres a boss battle at the end, and then it plops you back into the open world. Already you have your next marker. If they cut out like 80% of these missions the whole game could have been one, singular level. I get it, in the original halo's like maybe silent cartographer in CE there would be a big open area and then a small interior. But what I loved about the games was the varying environments. From a forest to a huge earth city to a snowy battlefield to the destroyed remains of a ship in a desert. Alright, who cares about repeating the same sequence for 10 hours? does it at least use the open world for the crazy stuff you could do in the old halos? Like the SCARABS? No there is not a single scarab level moment in this game. In one section, there were a couple of those big ships that drop off enemies flying level with me when I was on the top of a tower. I saw my cursor turn yellow when it went over the plane and I got really excited. Is this the unique set piece? hijacking a flying plane and fighting everyone inside? I tried it and the screen gave a huge warning telling me to return to the battlefield. I went back and when I saw 6 rocket launchers scattered around the floor... a part of my soul died. Oh and I'll just tell you now there's no repulsor in campaign. I wasn't told and I was waiting to unlock it so I can do crazy stuff. Nope.. u just don't get it at all. Ever! This game is really fun and good and there's a lot of creative stuff you can do with the tools you have but there's no point to most of them. Maybe u can hit a car and make it go flying, grappling onto it or something. But whatever its fun it's good it's a single level stretched super long. It's like 343 finished their first level and was getting ready for the 2nd one, but then they realized the game is due tomorrow so they just put the same level over and over again with the same hallways and the same combat rooms it's insane. It's just so fun to play though. When I was in the open world, I did find a small swampy area containing a boss battle. Why? Why put the unique environments in random areas if you're not going to put missions there? granted the swamp looked super ugly. It was just a small area with dirty water and like green mud or something, but it would've been interesting for a level to be there. We had enough grassland battles and metal bases. Jesus!!!!! And don't even get me started on the absolute worst part bar none. What the hell were they thinking? Who approved this? There's no god damn warthog run!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You had it perfectly set up in the end everything was falling apart but oh here's a magic teleporter so you don't have to have a cool escape sequence with awesome music! To conclude, the games alright! It's really fun and entertaining. Recommended!