Halo Infinite is this year's Doom Eternal. It's an unexpected revival of a great gaming series, and like last year's Doom, Master Chief is powered by a litany of specialized weapons and a grappling hook. Infinite's big idea is an open world Halo; thankfully, 343 didn't copy Ubisoft and litter the map with collectables and trivial fights. There are marines to rescue and bases to capture, but they're scattered amongst your main objectives. The main inspiration seems to be the Silent Cartographer level from Halo CE. You'll spend this game trudging through mountain forests and Forerunner Dungeons, although I can say the level design is better than CE, thankfully. Since I didn't play Halo 5, I'm only vaguely aware of the plot, but apparently a lot went on in-between games. Spoiler: Cortana is dead, and the Chief's new companion is called the Weapon, who's basically Cortana, but naive and optimistic. I did appreciate the new dynamic between Chief and the Weapon, which is more father-daughter than whatever the hell was going on in between him and Cortana in Halo 4. Anyway, new bad guys the Banished are basically just the Covenant. They are composed of the same grunts, jackals, elites, and brutes, and they're just as fun to fight as in previous games. New to the series are multiple boss fights, and although many of these guys are bullet sponges, I had a good time hunting them down in the open world. Master Chief's abilities are well-implemented, and I ended up using the grapple and shield wall frequently. The arsenal is pretty awesome; my favorites were the shock rifle, which stuns enemies and can arc electricity between nearby foes, and the Skewer, a brute version of the Spartan Laser that impales your foes. All told, the campaign is good fun, and one of the longer Halo games. My only complaint comes from the technical side of things. The engine that powers Infinite doesn't seem particularly scalable; on my 3700x and 5700 xt powered system, which happens to be the recommended rig, I frequently encountered stutters and frame drops, especially in the open world. Messing with settings, I was able to keep my framerate around 60 fps at 1440p by keeping most settings at High but dropping Geometry, Shadows, and Effects to Medium. Running the game on the Series S, I noticed some pretty bad resolution scaling, as the game struggled to hit 60 at 1080p. Turning on resolution scaling is more noticeable on PC, in my opinion, so I'd recommend not playing with it on, especially since it's bugged and only works when you lock the frame rate to your refresh rate and use the in game vysnc. I can't play without Freesync; anything else just feels stuttery. So anyways, if you're a fan of FPS games, subscribe to Gamepass and give Infinite a try. It's my game of the year.
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