I know I wasn’t alone feeling concerned when the Halo series left the hands of the ever capable folks at Bungie. Halo 4 certainly alleviated some of that fear as 343 Industries delivered a clunky but competent sequel to the beloved series while kicking off their own new trilogy for the Master Chief. Now we have Halo 5: Guardians which gives us a much better idea of just what the studio learned from their last endeavor. Unfortunately I’m not sure they took away the right points as the game feels a bit like one step forward, two steps back, and one step to the side just for the hell of it.
Let’s start with the single player, shall we? I pretty much don’t like anything about how the game handles its two protagonists. Every trailer and piece of marketing material for Halo 5 goes out of its way to promise a story where Master Chief and new arrival Spartan Locke wind up on opposing sides of a conflict and have no choice but to square off against one another. Everything from the incredibly deceptive trailers to even the game’s cover art promises a showdown that simply doesn’t exist, in fact the two never share more than four minutes of screen time together during the campaign’s six hour runtime.
They’re actually pretty great pals.
Guardians is largely Locke’s story. The Master Chief only appears in three of the game’s fifteen missions; an especially poor choice since the game’s sole emotional arc is tied to him and not Locke. While there is an interesting story to be told in Chief’s missions it’s mostly chopped up and cut short with the very clear intention of serving as the core conflict of Halo 6. So naturally because we’re dealing almost entirely with exposition the actual journey of Halo 5 is a frustratingly slow excursion that basically stops right when things get interesting.
Now I’m not going to be so bold as to say I’m a Halo superfan, but I do feel like beating every game in the series up to this point should maybe entitle me to have some basic semblance of what the fuck is going on in the story. When the main villain was introduced in Halo 4 I basically felt like I was already supposed to know who he was. Cortana was on a first name basis with him moments after his appearance and I was still a long way from catching up. The titular Guardians in Halo 5 are handled in much the same fashion as the Didact. I don’t know if they’ve been discussed before and I just missed it or if I was supposed to read one of the novels before playing this. I know that die-hard fans are thrilled that 343 is mining the novels for lore but as someone who has no interest in reading the books it’s really alienating me from the games.
The novels aren’t the only supplemental material you’re going to need to be up to date on. I hope you stuck around to finish the Spartan Ops content in Halo 4 because apparently some pretty important shit happened there too. Dr. Halsey only has one arm now? Oh and I probably wasn’t supposed to laugh at the appearance of “Roland” a yellow AI dressed like a World War II pilot who’s incomprehensibly frustrated that no one will listen to him. Yeah man, it’s 2558, nobody’s going to take you seriously while you’re dressed like the Red Baron.
“Someone pay attention to me!”
The single player’s issues don’t just reside in the story, there’s plenty of design issues to go along with it. First of all you’ve likely already mourned split screen, which was sacrificed in the name of the great god of 60 FPS. But that doesn’t mean the series has abandoned co-op, both Locke and Chief have an equally boring team of three Spartans along for the journey with them. These teammates can be controlled by other players via the internet or can be occupied by the game’s really poor friendly AI. It’s less noticeable on the Normal difficulty but once you start moving up it becomes very obvious that your computer partners aren’t playing with a full deck. Whether it’s running into the middle of certain death to revive a downed partner, jumping into a wall for no reason, or failing to figure out the pathing necessary to climb a ledge and revive you, there will be plenty of times for you to shout “seriously?!” at your television screen.
Gone are the days of dying and immediately starting over from a checkpoint. Instead, assuming they weren’t vaporized or thrown off a cliff, Locke or Chief will fall to the ground upon death and can be revived by their teammates. Unfortunately this feature makes the lower difficulties even easier, and the hard difficulties significantly more frustrating. Now when playing on Legendary instead of dying and starting over you get to wait for your idiot AI teammates to run in and get massacred before you can try again.
There is one boss encounter to be found in the game which I thought was really cool the first time it appeared. Then it happened again, but with the boss being duplicated into two bodies. Challenging, still kind of cool I guess. Then it happened again with the boss being split into three. Really guys?
Much has already been said about the numerous sacrifices made to keep this game at 60 FPS. There are a lot of neat tricks that 343 has included and for the most part I think they largely succeeded in their endeavor to make the game feel great. Except when it comes to the player’s field of vision. Maybe not everyone will feel this way but I found the players FOV (especially Locke’s visor) incredibly claustrophobic and oftentimes distracting. Especially when the game takes a more vertical approach to its levels or collectible hunts.
So the single player is bad. Maybe even the worst campaign in the series (excluding ODST), but that doesn’t mean their isn’t anything nice to say about Halo 5. In fact from a gameplay perspective the multiplayer component is better than it’s ever been.
Guardians introduces some badly needed updates to movement in the Halo engine. Mounting up ledges, charging mid-sprint, and hovering momentarily in the air to line up a ground pound all feel so good it’ll likely make it very hard for you to go play the old Halo titles again. (Maybe now you can be grateful the Master Chief Collection doesn’t work.) Even the incredibly controversial addition of being able to aim down the sights of your weapon is implemented perfectly. 343 has really done a remarkable job bringing Halo up to speed with all its FPS competition without compromising the overall feeling and spirit of the game.
All your favorite game modes are there, with the most noteworthy new addition being Warzone, an enormous 24 player combat mode that feels like someone mixed some Battlefield into your Halo. AI enemies are also thrown into the mix, similar to the way they were used in Titanfall. This means that if your talents don’t lie in killing other players there’s still some PVE elements to be enjoyed as well.
So what’s not to like? Well most of my complaints regarding the game are tied to the Requisition system that’s used to unlock multiplayer content. You see instead of unlocked weapons and skins in a traditional fashion they’re not tied to randomly generated card packs, which you can of course earn by normal means or purchase with real money.
Customizing my spartan with cool armor and perks has always been a highlight in these games and I’m very disappointed by seeing almost all of those features crammed into a random number generator. Formerly if you saw someone wearing a cool helmet or visor you would know they’d achieved a great feat in game or at the very least bought some Doritos at 7-11. Now spotting someone with neat equipment just means they either spent more money or got luckier than you.
Requisition (or Req) packs don’t just offer aesthetic upgrades, they also give you the ability to spawn vehicles and items in the new Warzone mode. That means that if you want a nice big tank to serve as a tactical advantage over the other team, you’re going to have to buy some packs to get one. The system doesn’t feel even remotely appropriate for this game and I would classify it as a big mis-step that’s going to make 343 and Microsoft a ton of money and almost certainly appear again from here on out.
I am absolutely certain that some fans are going to be absolutely thrilled with that 343 is doing with Halo but honestly I much preferred the days when Bungie was in charge, and Halo 5 feels even further away from what I wanted than 4. The campaign is incomprehensible and while the multiplayer is some of the best the series has had it’s also moving customization and leveling up in the complete wrong direction. I’ll likely stick around to see how this trilogy ends, but I’m getting worried that they don’t really make Halo games for me anymore.
