Halo Infinite

Halo Infinite's campaign sets the stage for an incredible sequel someday. Today is not that day. Consider this a fine rental or excuse to burn through a single month of Xbox Game Pass, either now or whenever the co-op mode finally goes live in 2022.

The important core essentials have been nailed, though. After six years, 343 Industries could not afford another miss and with Infinite it has built some incredibly strong foundations for whatever comes next. The team clearly now understands what this series is – the shooting, the flow of combat and movement, the character of Master Chief and his closest companions, and a totally new structure to catalyse some monumental silliness. It recaptures the old, adds the new, and we now can’t wait for the future.

Given the slow burn recession the series has experienced over the past decade, it's impossible to read Halo Infinite as anything other than a shocking return to form...Single player missions come replete with some of the game's most spectacular set pieces and dramatic boss fights that had my heart exploding out my chest.

Somewhere between those map icons is tantalising mystery, and that's what Silent Cartographer was all about, wasn't it? Being on an alien world, not knowing the whys or the hows or the whos. Working things out while finishing the fight. Halo Infinite, underneath it all, is about just that. And, if nothing else, you can always rely on that golden triangle - Master Chief and his gun, grenade and Gravity Hammer - this time on your own terms, the best it's been in a decade.

I do know this: As a longtime Halo devotee, it is so, so good to be back to a Halo that genuinely feels like a Halo. I’ve been playing these games for, f.ck, man, two decades now. Time was, somewhere in the era before (and momentarily after) Halo 5, I could picture myself hitting a point where I was take-it-or-leave-it on the series. Now? Absolutely not.

In some ways, the grappling hook feels like a perfect microcosm of Halo Infinite as a whole. It’s an addition that somehow shakes things up while also feeling like it belonged the entire time. In Halo Infinite’s design tenets and its iconic characters, 343 Industries has created something that bears the weight of the Halo legacy, and it’s poised to carry that weight into the future. It’s invigorating to be so excited about Halo again. [Polygon Recommends]

It’s a very modern interpretation of what Halo can be, pulling from the kinds of games that are as big today as Halo was when it first launched. Rather that feeling like a Greatest Hits of modern video gaming, though, it still feels distinctly like Halo. Meanwhile, its potential to grow and change seems like it will have a much more lasting impact than any amount of bopping aliens in the head. Maybe “combat evolved” just means something new now.

343 Industries has laid some really solid groundwork here and deserves a lot of credit for managing to modernize the series while focusing on what people loved most about it. At this point, though, it’s not so much a reinvention as simply a very good Halo campaign.

Halo Infinite didn’t really do it for me. The repetition of stakes and open world activities made the final 15 hours of gameplay something I was actively dreading. At the same time, the first 10 hours or so were exciting and engaging, and I imagine that someone not trying to power through the game in a week to make a review embargo deadline of Sunday night might have a better way of spacing things out. The open world sandbox is truly fun, especially once you have access to flying vehicles late in the game, but there’s only so many hijinks to get up to (at least until the co-op campaign releases). For a game about new possibilities, and titled Infinite, the game’s universe ends up feeling pretty constrained.