Halo Infinite expects you to know how to play when you load up multiplayer. Take a look at all the multiplayer modes and how to play them before jumping in.
Online FPS games live and die based on two main factors: Their maps and their modes. A good shooter needs both in order to keep the player’s attention and the community engaged for hours on end. Halo Infinite launched as a free-to-play multiplayer experience even before the campaign was out — a first for the series — and while celebrated for having solid gameplay, the game was lacking in the number of modes on offer. Developer 343 has been hard at work improving the game, promising more maps and modes as the seasons go on, but the ones that are there are at least the classics we all know and love from the best Halo games. Because Halo Infinite is rather different from most modern shooters, it can include game modes that don’t typically work in games where you can kill, or be killed, in a fraction of a second. And since the series has been out of the limelight for longer than ever, a ton of brand new people are jumping into the free multiplayer to see what it’s all about. Halo Infinite expects you to know how to play when you load up multiplayer, so for the sake of your team, take a look at all the multiplayer modes and how they’re played before suiting up for battle. Let’s start out with the classic Arena Slayer game mode. If you’re really old school, then this would technically be known as Team Slayer, but it’s been simplified for Halo Infinite. This is the most straightforward game mode in the multiplayer. It pits your team of four spartans against another with the only goal being to kill the enemy faster than they can kill you. Each kill you get earns your team one point, with the game ending either when one team reaches the maximum point total or the time running out. In the case of the latter, whichever team has the most points when the time expires wins. Arena Slayer is available in both Quick Play and Ranked Arena playlists, has a maximum score of 50, and time limit of 12 minutes. BTB Slayer is the slight tweak on Arena Slayer you get when booting up the BTB playlist. You are still placed in a team with no objective other than to kill and not die, but now both teams have 12 members, are on larger maps, have higher kill and time limits, and typically include vehicles to spice things up. The point limit is now 100 total points, while the time limit is bumped up to 15 minutes. Obviously, this type of Slayer will only appear in the Big Team Battle playlist. FFA Slayer is what Slayer, or Deathmatch, used to mean. This is your every man for themselves, or free for all, version of slayer. You’ve got no one to watch your back in this mode. This is much more hectic and wild than the team-focused modes, but would be a great choice for anyone who doesn’t have a team to party up with. We say would be because FFA Slayer isn’t available in any matchmaking playlists, and only found in Custom Games, which require you to invite players you know to fill up the game. When it eventually makes its way into an online playlist, we’ll update this section. For now, this mode defaults to a score limit of 25 points and time limit of 10 minutes. Besides Slayer, Halo is probably best known for Capture the Flag. While by no means the only FPS to include this simple yet intense objective mode, it does fit the Halo formula quite will since the time to kill is a bit longer than most other shooters on the market, letting the matches feel more fair to people who are carrying the flag. This simple concept of bringing a flag from one place to another has a surprising amount of variants that completely change how you approach the game. First, as always, we start with the classic Arena Capture the Flag mode. Here, two teams of four go head to head in trying to capture the other team’s flag by grabbing it, running it across the map, and bringing it to your own flag location. At the same time, the other team is also trying to do the same to your flag, forcing both teams to play offense and defense simultaneously because you cannot score the enemy team’s flag if your own flag is not still at your base.
