The damn Warden, in all of his robot glory.
Halo 5 is better than its reputation. It's a well-made campaign, with some brilliant set pieces and excellent graphics. You play mostly as Spartan Locke, who has been commissioned to hunt down Master Chief after he went rogue to look for Cortana. Locke is fine; he's not a great character, but this is Halo, which doesn't really care too much about characters and whether or not they develop in interesting ways (or at all). The whole Cortana-as-a-villain arc doesn't get completely revealed until the end, and then much of what would've made a sequel satisfying was jettisoned in Halo Infinite, which functions as a soft reboot. And that's too bad, since as much as I like Infinite, it doesn't do anything interesting with its story either, except let it function as a way to get the setting back to Master Chef versus the Covenant (oops, I mean Banished). Halo 5's big gameplay innovation is that you're always playing with a squad. You can order them around, but I mostly ignored that function. What they're really good for is saving your ass. You do seem a little more fragile in Halo 5, but thankfully, your teammates will revive you pretty quickly if your armor locks up. Graphically, Halo 5 was ahead of its time. Really, it looks just as good and sometimes better than Infinite, which features a different art style (as well as higher-res textures and improved lighting, to be honest) and runs at a much higher resolution without noticeable DRS. Its campaign also has many big set pieces that Infinite lacks. You'll take out a giant Kraken vehicle, assaulting it first from the outside with Wasps, and then venturing into its innards to blow it up, culminating in a daring escape. The best section has Locke visiting Sanghelios, the homeworld of the Elites, to help the Arbiter put down a Covenant civil war. You switch up environments much more often than Infinite, and the action runs smoother. The biggest detriments to fun are the Prometheans, who are still not as fun to fight as the Covenant, and the multiple boss fights against the Warden, a giant terminator with a sword. The only way to really damage the Warden is to circle strafe him and shoot him in the back, which is harder than it sounds and not much fun. You'll face this asshole at least five times, and every time he shows up, I nearly turned off my console.
Halo 5 isn't as much fun to play as Halo Infinite, but it has more interesting ideas (squad-based gameplay; a different main character) and more epic set pieces, making it a decent ride overall. It is unfortunate the 343 couldn't have added some of Halo 5's better attributes to Infinite to make it a more memorable campaign. The former is recommended for Halo fans, as well as FPS junkies looking for a good single player experience on Game Pass.
That's some spectacle.
No comments:
Post a Comment