My Halo Infinite Flight Experience

 Da da da duuuuuuhn. Da da da duuuuhhnnn. Halo is back!

I had an opportunity to join in on the Halo Infinite flight over the weekend and I want to share my experience. This time around, I have done something I have never done in a Halo game before: I went full Mouse and Keyboard. Oh yes. It was a mess. But was it fun??

To my surprise, yes. Absolutely. Hands down. This game feels so smooth and nothing on the keyboard feels too far apart. Actually, it may become my preferred style of play down the road. I am primarily a console player (I know I know) so mouse and key is almost foreign to me. It's been since the days of Unreal Tournament 2003 and Soldier of Fortune that I had used these consistently. That's a super long time ago.

So why did I start now? After so many years of perfecting the craft of controller convenience did I decide to lay my fingers down and learn something new? Well, besides the fact that my son has hijacked my Xbox, I wanted to prove to myself that I was capable. I am here to tell you that I struggled. A lot. Going 3 and 16 in my first match, but each one of those 3 kills felt AMAZING. 

I slowly got better to the point of at least going even in my kill/death ratio and that was an achievement to me.

But Is It Halo?

Regardless of my inexperience with these tools of ultimate destruction, Halo has felt like it went back to it's time of old. Which is a very good thing. Not too many people are keen on Halo 4 and 5 in terms of their multiplayer and I get it. While I liked them, something felt off. Halo Infinite, however, brings us back to 3 and adds a lot more tweaks and surprises that are welcomed in my book.

Grapple shots, drop shields and pick ups you can now save for later can absolutely change the fate of a firefight and new dimensions to styles of play. Do you want to live out your Halo x Spiderman crossover dreams by swinging around the map throwing sticky grenades? Well now you can. Sort of. 

I found myself trying out new tactics instead of my "run around the edge of the map and pick everyone off" methods and really ended up enjoying the process. 

Big Team Battle was open to testers this weekend and it was magical. It's always been my personal favorite (besides SWAT, leave me alone) and it is still as hectic as ever now. Vehicles wizzing by you every direction, grenades and rockets exploding everything in your path. Halo is BACK, baby!

Off the field, there is a battle pass you can get (it was free in the Flight) and level up doing your average run of the mill challenges. You get access to new armors, colors themes and consumables throughout your journey. It's nothing revolutionary and is very much expected since Halo Infinite will be Free To Play. I'm just assuming here but I do believe that will bring microtransactions along with it's release as well.

 

Looks Can Be Deceiving

Graphically, Halo Infinite is awesome. The few maps available to us caught my attention to the point where I actually went back to the training mode just to admire them. And sharpen my skills against the bots, of course. 

It LOOKS like a Halo game and that in itself is important. The vehicles, weapon designs and character models are all very recognizable and seem pretty polished. Aesthetically pleasing is just as high priority in games nowadays as the gameplay since graphics are becoming in demand with new consoles and high end GPUs.

I didn't have much trouble with framerate or anything like that but there were some visual glitches. Nothing too crazy, just some standard clipping issues and model warping. 

Free To Play

I fully am onboard with the Free To Play model for Halo here. Not only will it open up the chance to introduce Halo to a whole new audience who haven't played before, but it's a hard market out there right now with games like Warzone, Apex Legends, Valorant and Fortnite being free. Most of which are battle royales, but it's hard to have some one make the choice between 60 dollars right now or free at the moment and 100 dollars plus in cosmetics down the road. 

Overall, I know Halo will do well. Infinite is headed in the right direction that I believe Halo fans have been clamoring for, for years now. I cannot wait until it's full release in November and am already itching to play more.

Halo Infinite comes out on November 15th, 2021 on Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows