2.5/5 ★ – enovo15's review of Halo 5: Guardians.

Played in 2022 Easily the worst game in the mainline series, Halo 5: Guardians does some okay things, but the core game felt very different than prior entries, and telling a story with Master Chief involved but very rarely playing as Master Chief was not a good decision. Taking place a few months after the mediocre Halo 4, you play mostly as Spartan Locke trying to track down Master Chief who is searching for Cortana with his team of Spartans. Of the 15 missions, the game is a 12-3 split in playable character in favor of Locke over Master Chief, which was very underwhelming, since I didn’t care about Locke or the rest of Fireteam Osiris. The only bright spot of Osiris was Buck, and that’s only because he makes his return from ODST. Master Chief’s Spartan team was also underwhelming, but growing to love Master Chief over the first 4 games makes playing as him way better than Locke. On top of the underwhelming new characters, the gameplay feels way too much like Call of Duty and not enough like Halo. Along with a different feel to the shooting, both Locke and Master Chief felt way weaker than prior versions of Master Chief, dying often, and needing to be revived by a member of your team. The story in the game was okay, and sets up more games, but the new feel to the gameplay and too much focus on Locke instead of Master Chief made this entry much weaker than every other mainline Halo game.