REVIEW: Halo Infinite is the franchise's return to its best

Table of Contents

1. What is the story of Halo Infinite? 
2. Gameplay 
3. Performance
4. Worth it? 
5. See also other features
   1. Halo Infinite
   2. Pros
   3. Cons

Halo Infinite is the sixth game in the Halo franchise, the main IP of the Microsoft in the gaming world, as well as being one of the biggest FPS franchises in general. The game was revealed last year and arrived for the new generation of consoles and PC on December 8th… or almost. 

The game suffered from some delays and in fact the campaign, which is the focus of the review, was only launched on December 8th. But when no one expected it, the 343 Industries, which develops the game, and Microsoft have released the game's multiplayer completely Free-to-Play on all supported platforms.

I had the opportunity to play through 18 hours of Halo Infinite's campaign, getting to the end of the story and exploring Zeta Halo's open world side-quests. So, without further ado, let's get into the analysis of this new adventure of John, or rather, Master Chief. 

What is the story of Halo Infinite? 

If you're a Halo fan, you know that this franchise is anything but simple. There are 6 games from the main saga, 6 spin-offs, books and even a live action series in production to be released on Paramount+. 

So, it is clear that this story is far from simple. But oddly enough, there is no better time to start exploring the Halo gaming universe.

The main reason is that the Halo Infinite campaign was developed as a kind of spiritual reboot of the franchise. That's because, with the sea of ​​criticism of the Halo 5 campaign, 343 Industries chose return to origins — and I can say that it was a huge success. 

The game starts right after the end of Halo 5, with a cutscene of Master Chief being thrown adrift in space to his inevitable death. The villain so far is Atriox, leader of banned – alien race – who seek to dominate a Halo ring to exterminate humanity from the galaxy. 

After what would be months adrift and the inevitable defeat of humans, a pilot, which we will call Echo-216, rescues the Master Chief from the wreckage of the ship Infinity and reactivates his armor, which has gone into survival mode, keeping the Chief alive. 

With that, we found that in the period that the Chief was off, Zeta halo, the ring that the Outcasts had mastered, had been badly damaged and Atriox was dead.

Your first mission, which ends the story's introduction, is to rescue an artificial intelligence called ARMA. It had been created to help with the process of deleting Cortana, who in the last game had become one of the villains. 

ARMA is an AI created to study Zeta Halo and infiltrate the code of the Outcasts, so she becomes your faithful partner throughout the campaign. 

So, you and your new partner Echo 216 begin the journey to defeat the Outcasts, exploring Zeta Halo and slowly defeating the Outcasts and discovering the secrets of what happened to Atriox and especially Cortana. 

These are all, at best, the first few hours of the Halo Infinite campaign. The game has many twists and turns and makes you care about ARMA and Echo 216 more and more. Another character that gains a little more humanity is precisely Master Chief. 

In addition to the jokes and funny team moments between Arma and Echo 216, the Chief also gains a little more depth and space, becoming a much more interesting character — a very grateful and welcome change. 

But even though Echo 216 saved the Chief, two relationships are the focus of the plot — aside from saving the universe, of course. Cortana and Chief's past relationship, as well as the new relationship with ARMA, are hotspots and given special treatment, gaining depth and an epic and emotional finale. 

The game ends with a hook for a sequel and even a post credits scene. 

Gameplay 

As said, this is a game that is in open world, which differs a little from what we are used to in the franchise, but just like the main news, they are changes that we didn't know we needed.

Halo Infinite has its first hours as a great contextualization of the story and after this more traditional beginning, with combat in a ship, you are introduced to the beautiful open world of Zeta halo.

Of course, in a completely open world game, you expect everything to lose a bit of linearity, but the gameplay can still be approached in both ways. 

Aside from the 100% linear start, you can, as usual, just follow the main story quests and they are very self-evident, without forcing you to follow an unwanted side-quest. 

I'm not a big fan of open world experiences myself, but Halo Infinite has created a vast map of beauty, content, and fun to move around, which even with fast travel, I made a point of using the vehicles and gadgets available. 

The main missions are very simple and traditional, you usually face aliens and in some stages you face Boss Fights. The bosses aren't that outstanding and, most of the time, they don't give you much reason to want to fight them before the boss fight happens.

On the other hand, the side quests are a very nice added point. As much as I'm not a completionist, exploring the world saving human soldiers from the Forsaken's encampments and taking over an outpost is quite fun every now and then as you traverse from one mission to the next. 

In addition to the open world, you have the famous Halo gameplay present, with some new features. The main one is a hook, which you shoot at walls, or enemies, to move around. 

The hook is one of the main items in the game that, without it, would become extremely tiring. Remember I said I didn't use fast travel? In addition to the wide variety of human and Forbidden vehicles, using the grappling hook to move quickly and climb mountains is extremely practical and fun.

It's worth noting that the customization and possibility of different approaches to Halo Infinite's gameplay is huge — or would it be infinite?

During your exploration of Zeta Halo, you may find Spartan Cores, used to upgrade the Master Chief's utility equipment and gadgets, such as the grappling hook itself. 

With this type of customization, you let the gameplay best suit your playstyle. In addition, the game has a complete arsenal, with pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles and more. 

So you are in control of your open world exploration and how you want to proceed through the story and building your loadout. The game nailed it in the way you feel the weapons and movement, as well as all the gadgets available are extremely useful to the point that you want to improve them all.

Performance

Halo Infinite is a next-gen game that, thankfully, had some delays in its release. It was quite evident from the small amount of bugs and glitches that the game was released extremely optimized. 

I played it on PC with an RTX 3060, with everything maxed out at 1440p. Even so, outside the performance target of this graphics card, I couldn't notice any dropped frames and my counter was constantly between 72 and 59 fps.

Because it's a very cinematic experience at times, I've opted for the maximum graphics, but I'll definitely go back to medium for Multiplayer, focusing on reaching 90 fps.

Worth it? 

Absolutely yes. Halo Infinite has one of the best campaigns I've played this year, a vast world to explore with beautiful graphics and extremely optimized.

The franchise has been given back a concise story that puts the Master Chief's adventures back on track, certainly being the spiritual reboot that the devs were looking for.

But one of the points that makes this game even more necessary is the value. It costs 250 reais, but because it is the new Microsoft exclusive, it was released directly within the Xbox Game Pass. 

That's right, you can use your Game Pass membership and play Halo Infinite freely. It's worth noting that this is a great entry point into the franchise, and if you like it, Microsoft's game service library still has all the other games in the saga.

Halo Infinite launched on December 8th as a Microsoft exclusive for Xbox Series, Xbox One, and PC. In addition to free-to-play multiplayer, fans can look forward to a co-op campaign next year.