Halo 5: Guardians

What happens in Halo 5‘s story, by contrast, feels disappointingly by the numbers, the mysteries not so mysterious after all, the archetypes shuffled back to their starting blocks by the finale. The big plot twist, where the game finally tries to provoke an emotional crisis, feels strangely underwhelming, its sentiment too one-sided given how sanguine and taciturn the story’s heroes are. The novelty of poring ourselves as players into the emotionally blank space where a person ought to be in these games may no longer be working.

Halo 5 has a run-of-the-mill campaign that isn't as interesting or exciting as the one from Halo 4. Of course, that doesn't make the game weak - you can play with pleasure and impatiently wait for the final chapter of the new trilogy. But Guardians shines in a different aspect: the multiplayer portion of the game is phenomenal and will keep you glued to the screen for hundreds of hours.

The ultimate irony here is that what gets our species in trouble in the campaign's narrative is ultimately the kind of needless combat that the game excels at.

I think die-hard Halo fans will love Halo 5: Guardians, as it’s a game made almost exclusively with them in mind. The rest of us might find ourselves a little lost, a bit let down and wistful for an old horizon that once reached for the heavens.

If it weren't for Warzone, Halo 5: Guardians would probably be somewhere on the lower end of the franchise's spectrum for me. It's still a fantastic and well-oiled machine, but the story falls flat, and the shift in gameplay mechanics result in the loss of some elements that made the series so unique in the first place. Still, if you're looking to shoot some dudes online, Guardians is your huckleberry.

Halo 5: Guardians is okay. Its campaign is rubbish, but the multiplayer is solid thanks to the foundation it’s built upon. Warzone is a really enjoyable experience, and while combat is still mostly about tossing grenades and hitting the melee button, the whole Requisition gimmick adds some much-needed flavor to proceedings.

Halo 5: Guardians exists only because it had to. It isn’t a bad game, it’s just a catastrophically uninteresting one.

343 Industries is clearly passionate, but it’s shown a criminal misunderstanding of what makes the franchise work. Halo 5: Guardians has moments of greatness, but it’s a shadow of its former self.

For the most part, Bungie achieved this lofty balance with its Halo games, but after an impressive first shot at the sci-fi series with Halo 4, 343 Industries has fumbled with one of the most important parts of a Halo experience: the solo campaign.

Halo 5: Guardians features an underwhelming, confusing and surprisingly banal campaign that's not actively bad, but equally not quite good enough to warrant a purchase on its own.