Magius   30 October 2015

After the disastrous launch of the surprisingly good remaster of the previous main series Halo games contained in the Master Chief Collection, 343 Industries brings us the very first “nextgen” Halo game. Is this a system seller or a damp squib?

Design and Aesthetic
The first thing that you’ll notice is that the menu system is very simple when compared to the MCC menu. It’s much easier to navigate as the design is clean and simple. This is a welcome change from MCC as that menu could be quite confusing at times.
The level design is something very different from prior games. The reliance on corridors to funnel you forward is now almost completely gone. The maps now feel more like arenas with multiple paths. High ground is now important and reachable via the vaulting mechanic. Double tap A and your Spartan jumps up and uses his right hand to pull himself up the ledge in reach. This plays into one of the new Spartan abilities, the ill named “Ground Pound”, a fun mechanic that encourages you to seek higher ground.
Each map offers a vibrant colour pallet. The desert maps offer various shades of brown (?), what else would you expect, but the skylines contrast that with blue. The jungle maps offer blues and greens and the ice worlds throw up white and blue. All in all the colours are bright and varied, but never cartoony. Weapons too are suitably colourful. UNSC weapons tend to be functional and militaristic, much like the Spartans themselves. Covenant and Promethean weapons tends to be more creative in design and colours, from the bright pink Needler ammo to the orange hues highlighting the Suppressor. Aesthetically I prefer the alien weapons, they just look cooler.
One design decision that I felt should be optional is the HUD. The HUD is made to look like you are wearing the character’s helmet. This is a nice visual cue as to which character you are playing between, Locke or Master Chief, as their helmets have different designs. However, it takes up too much space on screen cutting down on visibility which is realistic, but not necessary in a game, in my opinion.
Even though the Xbox is the supposedly less powerful console, this exclusive does show off its graphical abilities. It’s a beautiful game, pleasing to the eye.
Gameplay
Disclaimer time, I have only spent time playing the campaign and by myself. I will update the review with MP and Co-Op impressions when I get the chance.
As mentioned above the maps are arena based, offering you the opportunity to find multiple paths to your objective. In my opinion this is the biggest improvement in the game design. Adding an element of verticality to the maps allows you to achieve your nigh sole objective of committing alien genocide in a variety of ways. This verticality allows you the opportunity to use the aforementioned Ground Pound Spartan Ability. By leaping off a platform and holding down RB you are given about 5 to 10 seconds to aim your attack via a white aiming reticule on the ground indicating where you will land. The reticule moves slowly, so you have to be very close to where you want to land at initiation. When you get it right, slam into a group of enemies and see them go flying, the rush achieved is insane. This is the best move in the entire game and the maps are designed to give you ample opportunity to use it.
In addition to the new platforming-lite parts of a map, you can also seek out hidden weapons caches and paths behind breakable walls. You gain access to these areas by breaking through using a Spartan Dash. Spartan Dash also allows you to melee enemies. Sprint at a target and as you get in range tap RB to send the enemy flying. This requires timing as you can easily over- or undershoot and leave yourself vulnerable. The final new mechanic is basically a dodge using the dash mechanic. To avoid fire you can use the armour’s built in booster rockets to dodge left or right. To be honest I hardly used this mechanic.
Navigation is relatively easy, even with the multiple paths. It is almost impossible to get lost, but on the rare occasion where you do get turned around, tapping D-Pad Down activates an assistant that briefly places a waypoint on your HUD allowing you to re-orient yourself. This is useful, but will only work once you clear a map, so if you have one teleporting Promethean running around and you don’t know this, the waypoint won’t appear.
The game is very fast paced, leaving you little time to actually admire the beautiful scenery. It may be fast, but never feels short. Each map is action packed, keeping your heart rate up. Maps are filled with enemies and often you and your team are outnumbered, by my guess, at least 10 to 1. Movement is your friend here, stand still and you will be picked off. Speaking of friends, Halo 5 introduces a new mechanic in that you are always accompanied by a team. The AI controls the other three team members in single player. The AI performs admirably as the team targets individual enemies, however in order to more effectively clear these maps where you are outnumbered, you can assign the team a target via D-Pad Up. Doing this will override the AI and get the team to concentrate on one enemy, useful in boss fights. The team also introduces what I consider to be the biggest change, the revival mechanic.
Once your health hits zero, your avatar drops to his knees. Pressing X calls on your teammates to come to your rescue and gives them about 15 seconds to revive you. On normal difficulty this removes the consequence of being too ambitious and running too far ahead of your team and getting in trouble. On the few occasions where I did die, I restarted at a checkpoint, but that seldom happened as my team was almost always able to reach me. The downside to this mechanic rears its head during boss battles, once you call for help, your teammates rush to you to their detriment; as one falls another comes over and is also killed. I would’ve appreciated a mechanic whereby once you fall you can switch to another teammate to continue or keep the enemies at bay while someone else revives the fallen.
As stated, maps are on the whole very easy to navigate. However, once in a while, you are stuck on a map clearing enemies thinking that you have to find a way through and you cannot. On a particular mission map where you are trying to board a Guardian as Team Osiris, every bit of dialogue states that the Guardian is about to warp out and you need to hurry, but there are tons of enemies and no clear path to the Guardian in the distance. I spent five minutes seeking this path, when in fact all I had to do was clear the map to trigger a cut scene that would get me to the Guardian.
The weapons behave very differently, not just within each race’s weapons sets, but also between similar types across the races. I tended to favour the SMG and SAW from UNSC and the Promethean Suppressor and the Covenant Carbine. The weapons feel different and do different amounts damage against different enemies. The SAW is great against bullet sponges like Knights and Elites, but against agile Soldiers and Elites, the Needler and Suppressor with the ammo that follows the target to an extent are the best. The sniper rifles are great, with the Promethean one doing insane amounts of damage; the only issue is that once spotted, any fire that hits you knocks you out of the down the sights aiming mode.
Finally on to vehicle sections. Vehicle combat is relatively rare, the first Blue Team Mission ends with you needing to use a Banshee, and the Scorpion Tank makes an appearance late in the game when Osiris lands on the world the Guardians are warping to. Vehicles handle as you expect with the odd control scheme from previous games in place i.e. the left stick is accelerate/brake/reverse and the right for steering. Vehicles are a fun diversion, but not the game’s core competency. For instance, if you jump on the back of a Warthog and let an AI teammate drive you can end up in the situation where the AI drives in circles far from the enemies making clearing the map more difficult.

Technical Difficulties
There are one or two technical glitches in an otherwise technically accomplished game. At a distance, enemies drop to 30FPS, thus animating every second frame. Honestly unless you are very observant or looking for this you probably won’t notice it. In a couple of instances, I experienced frame rate drops during the end or opening mission cut scenes and when transitioning to a new map on a level. Irritating, but not game breaking. Overall the game runs smoothly with few glitches.

Story
Now to the weakest link in the chain. Master Chief and Blue Team go AWOL after being contacted by an old friend. They decide to go off and investigate, against orders. Fireteam Osiris are then tasked with catching Blue and investigating the transmission that Blue received. The whole treason story and Blue Team being declared dead that was central to season two of the Hunt the Truth Podcast is never really mentioned. It may have been in a cut scene, but if it did, it never made enough of an impact for me to remember it. Also a simple phone call to UNSC/ONI by Chief would’ve cleared up the whole mess and not necessitated the whole game.
Based on this setup, you play the majority of the game as Osiris hunting Blue. To me this feels like 343 saying Chief is Bungie’s mascot, Locke is ours. The problem with this is twofold. Firstly, Locke’s motivation is neither clear nor very compelling, as he is blindly hunting Chief and Blue, and never questioning why. Secondly, Buck is the far more charismatic character, but that’s probably my bias as I am a Nathan Fillion fan.
My gameplay issue with this mechanic is that both teams play exactly the same. There are no overt or subtle differences in tactics or play style. It would make the game far more interesting if Chief played more like a Hunter, big, slow and powerful, while Locke played more like a Jackal or Elite being more agile, if less powerful.
Finally, if you aren’t a Halo veteran, the story will be so much Sci-Fi gibberish. It relies on knowledge of not just the previous games, but also of the expanded universe from the books and comics. Don’t worry though, shoot stuff and you will have fun. In other words this isn’t an RPG where overall enjoyment is reliant on a deep and engaging story.

Conclusion
343 have done a great technical job with this game, using the Xbox One to close to its full potential. The new map designs and game play mechanics from 343 put their stamp on the game, but it builds on the solid base that they inherited. There are a couple of small technical glitches, but nothing game breaking. Combat is fast and brutal, without being over the top. The weakest part of the game is the story and characters, Locke is boring with the story undeveloped and feeling almost unnecessary as presented.

Pros Cons
Looks great HUD obscures too much of screen
Fast, fun gameplay No variety in Spartan gameplay styles
Map design gives you options Locke is boring
Map Design allows you ample
opportunity to use
new Spartan Abilities
Story is not developed