It's been some time since Halo review scores sent a quarter of the entire internet into a frenzy. During the console wars of the 2000s and 2010s—imagine a Ken Burns documentary filter, here—Halo games were sacred to diehard Xbox players. These days, Halo is a source of nostalgic good times in the Master Chief Collection (and hey, it's back on PC), but it hardly feels like
It’s been some time since Halo review scores sent a quarter of the entire internet into a frenzy. During the console wars of the 2000s and 2010s—imagine a Ken Burns documentary filter, here—Halo games were sacred to diehard Xbox players. These days, Halo is a source of nostalgic good times in the Master Chief Collection (and hey, it’s back on PC), but it hardly feels like the juggernaut it once did.
Even if it turns out to be quite good, the slow build to today’s Halo Infinite reveal (embedded above) hasn’t recaptured that 2000s feeling, where Halo was this enormous, spectacular videogame beacon that set forums to war. Some of us remain casually optimistic that it’ll be cool, though others on the PC Gamer team weren’t convinced at all by what we saw today. Here are our immediate reactions to Halo Infinite’s reveal. Feel free to rant with us in the comments. First impressions
Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor: Where should we start?
Tim Clark, Brand Director: Halo doesn’t need a grappling hook. How about there? Or at least it wasn’t clear from that footage why it needs one. Is it a traversal thing because the world is so open and vertical? Or is it just a glorified finisher move thing. Probably both, I guess. But in either case I still don’t think I care to see Master Chief making like Reinhold Messner in power armor.
Steven Messner, Senior Reporter: A grappling hook just feels like the safest cliche in games these days. Verticality, ho!
Andy Chalk, News Lead: I’ve always thought that Halo was a mediocre, thoroughly dull shooter that only got traction because Xbox owners didn’t have any better options, and nothing I see in this trailer moves the needle on that in the slightest. It’s 2003 with a grappling hook.
Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: I feel compelled to point out that Andy has played hundreds of hours of Destiny, which, scientifically, is just Halo with space wizards. The Bungie shooter DNA is still in there! I’m seeing a longer campaign demo for Infinite which I hope manges to better convey why the scope is a big deal, here, because as much as I do love classic Halo, for a game five years in the making, I really expected to be wowed by something. But it just looked… fine?
Spider-Chief, Spider-Chief… (Image credit: Microsoft)
Maybe the issue is just that we’ve explored a Halo ring before, multiple times, that looked just like this, only not quite as pretty. Wes Fenlon
Tim: Let the record state that I am the PC Gamer team’s foremost Bungie apologist, but I have to say that Halo Infinite suffered quite a bit in comparison to Destiny 2: Beyond Light’s appearance later in the showcase. 343 Industries’ work on the series has always (and probably inevitably) felt like ersatz Halo to me, so much so that I bounced off Halo 5 completely. Whereas Beyond Light showcased an exciting bunch of new ice-themed powers that will let Destiny’s guardians create their own platforms to hop around and other freeze/shatter combos, Halo Infinite feels like it’s scrambling to recreate the original game’s now 19 year-old DNA. Going after Combat Evolved so slavishly only emphasises the gap.
James Davenport, Features Producer: Ya’ll are missing The Point of Halo. Scale is a big deal with sandbox shooting like this, though the reveal didn’t do a great job underlining the potential here, and to be fair, maybe I’m banking too much on possibility. My strongest memories of the series always go back to two distinct moments: the first time you peel out of the caverns in Halo CE and into the open air, picking away at a few enemy emplacements from whatever direction you like, and then Halo 3’s huge Scarab tank set piece. An arena with several tiers, turrets, vehicles on the ground and in the air, soldiers and Combine running all over—and you gotta take down a massive quadrupedal tank in the middle of it all. A Halo game that throws multiple enemy factions into an open world? The grappling hook barely registers. I’m too preoccupied thinking about the potential here for hoarding vehicles and weapons, heavy recon and preparation, that familiar sandbox shooting (maybe ‘bouncy castle shooting’ is more apt) spread deeper and wider, nested more faithfully in physics and AI and player ingenuity than ever. It’s Halo: Crysis. Hopefully, at least. I’m surprised we didn’t get a more explicit demonstration of the scale and open-ended nature of Infinite here.
Wes: Maybe the issue is just that we’ve explored a Halo ring before, multiple times, that looked just like this, only not quite as pretty. I have the same feelings about the old Halo games, but by trying so hard to evoke Combat Evolved but at a bigger scale, Infinite just reminds me, yeah, I’ve already done this. A lot.
Halo’s big now. (Image credit: Microsoft)The shooting
Tim: What did you make of the shooter fundamentals? I know I’m being the resident downer here, but it didn’t really fizz for me. There seemed to be an almost slight delay between killing blow and death animation that robbed the gunplay of the crackle and pop I look for from a sci-fi shooter. By which I guess I mean, watching the footage, I wasn’t excited to fire those weapons or punch those faces.
