Lead to Halo on PC: Halo 5: Guardians Review

With Halo 4 not exactly being up to snuff but not god awful, 343 got to work on Halo 5, the first in the series with a subtitle in the name. The game that would save the ailing Xbox One and show that 343 could learn from it's mistakes while expanding on the story of the Master Chief. Does 343 pull i- fuck no, this game is fucked, let's talk about it.

Set a year after the end of Halo 4, Halo 5 follows the Master Chief as he, after learning that Cortana is alive on the world of Meridian, decides to go on the run with his squad to find her. Except not really because the game is actually about Jameson Locke, an Assassin turned Spartan tasked with his team, Fireteam Osiris, to hunt down the Chief. Although the emergence of a new Promethean villain, giant death robots, and the splintering of the Covenant will lead to events that will rock the Galaxy.... and the dumbest cliff hanger since Halo 2.

And the game's first problem comes to light just when I was trying to summarize this story, the story is scatterbrained to shit. The first mission only serves to nullify a storyline from Halo 4 Spartan Ops and honestly they could have said "And we fixed it off screen." for all it adds to the story. And then the real plot starts with the Master Chief and the game's second problem comes to light, too many damned characters with a whopping six new ones, three per each team. With the Chief's team adding Fred, Kelly, and Linda; all from the books and god do they not get the love they deserved, they're a lot better developed in those books than here where they're basically window dressing. Locke's team meanwhile gets Locke himself, Olympia Vale, and Holly Tanaka all of whom play the "explain your backstory instead of having a personality" game. Of course the good news is that Buck returns from Halo 3: ODST and he actually has good writing and good moments with the rest of Osiris that enhance all of them, he probably saves this story from being a snoozefest of painful mediocrity.

Of course then you have the Chief going on the run storyline, which the game wanted you to think was this big deal. But it's about as serious as the Chief parking his Warthog in a no-park zone for all it matters. Osiris is just like your younger siblings going "Mom said it's time to come home!" while you're off in the woods. In other words, shit kinda hardly matters here, but maybe that Cortana storyline goes somewhere? Oh it goes somewhere, right into character assassinationville. Cortana has become a meglamonical bitch which I thought would make sense given she's based off a woman who kidnapped children to be super-soldiers but nope. She doesn't even act like the snarky and witty old Cortana who appeared all the way up till around the halfway point of 4, which made sense then given what she was going through. Also, way to fuck up on of the most meaningful deaths in gaming guys, good call on that one.

But don't worry she's not the main villain you'll be fighting, that honor goes to the Warden Eternal who can FUCK RIGHT OFF. You fight this asshole not once, not twice, not three times, but SEVEN, SEVEN TIMES. He's the only boss in the game and sure, you may have repeated the Scarab in 3, but at least that used different environments and forced you to navigate your way through the Scarab. Here it's just "Shoot him till he dies." and god does that shit get tedious quickly. Also he never shuts the hell up, claiming his superiority over you and constantly taunting you and GOD do I hate him. Oh and some later fights have you fight 2-3 of him so I hope you liked that shit because my god is this just painful.

But the most main painful thing about Halo 5 is that better stories are happening in the background. You can pick up audio logs telling tales ranging from an Elite who goes on an emotional journey from wanting to kill the Arbiter (who is back from 3) to worshiping him; to a UNSC Sniper trapped on a garden paradise teeming with death all around them. There are far better stories going on while Osiris bumbles around on the Elite Homeworld for a 3rd of the game. That's the more painful thing here, the better stories not being told here outshine Osiris', and they are the main protag as Locke has 12 missions to the Chief's 3.

Okay, but that's enough bitching about story, how about that Campaign design? Well it is better.... for one mission. Specifically when you wind up in the glasslands of Meridian and wind up with more Halo 3 esque level design. Then it goes back to 2's design like 4 did with the narrow corridors, though to 5's credit, it realizes that companions help alleviate the pain like it did in 2. So you at least have a lot more company here than in 4, even if it is more painfull mediocre here than it was in 2. Though the oddest part of 5 are three missions where you walk around and just talk to people. It's such an odd time waster that i have to wonder who thought this was a good idea. But at least there's some variety to the missions, whether running through a snow covered warzone or rampaging through areas in a tank, 5 is at least trying not to bore you. Though it's attempt at "puzzle solving" with the new ARTEMIS System is downright insulting, just press the button and boom problem solved. Now there is co-op but I never used it so, no words. But you can command your squad, which doesn't work for me.

While campaign design isn't much better than 4, 5 does change up the actual gameplay big time.
Those armor abilities from 4 are gone leaving you with just a sprint and the ability to use thruster packs. Thruster packs essentially act as a third component to your set up in this game. With making you run faster, allowing you to dodge, or slam into the ground, the game wants you to run fast and thrust hard. I will admit for as odd as it is there's nothing more fun and getting in a fast sprint, sliding, jumping, and then hitting the thrusters halfway through to feel like a champ. Only problem is that the campaign doesn't take advantage of this mechanic and sticks to the Halo 2 formula. The map design in multiplayer also doesn't work with this mechanic, namely the sprint unless you play on the larger maps in the game.

While we're on the topic of multiplayer... oh boy. On the one hand thanks to the class system being gone we're back to the more arena style and to the game's credit there are improvements, namely with callouts and helping players figure out where the big important guns are. Arena is basically classic Halo with the new thrusters and it's pretty good, even if the sprint and the new clamber clashes with the map design. Another thing really clashing is aiming down sights from COD but applied to all the guns, which makes the AR/ storm rifle a midrange gun and breaks balance whereas some, like the BR and DMR just have an animation now. 

While we're on it, there are new toys here, much more than 4. Most guns have a redesign and some like the BR, AR, Pistol, Ghost, and Banshee work. While the Rocket Launcher, Scorpion, and Wraith are actually awful and look very little like their iconic selves. The entire Promethean weapon set has been redesigned and for the better, along with the new VTOL craft the Phaeton, which finally gives the Prometheans a vehicle. The humans also get a grenade launcher mongoose variant  along with the return of the SMG and a new Hydra Missle Launcher. And all of these and more can be unlocked in.... Warzone.

Warzone is easily the worst thing about Halo 5 and is also the games main selling point. It's like Big Team Battle but bigger with 12 v 12 matches, larger maps, and instead of finding new weapons you collect REQ cards, which you earn with REQ Packs, which you can buy with in game points or real actual money. Yes Halo 5 has Loot Box micro transactions, yes I 100%'d the system, and yes I feel dirty. This essentially ensures that whoever grinds harder or has more cash gets the benefit as you can get weapon variants. Of course you have to wait till you reach a certain level to pull out the new shitty Rocket Launcher or new shitty tanks for both sides so it's not like you can just nuke everything from the start, but by endgame you can. There's also an element of PVE where points are earned by killing CPU enemies and bosses alongside holding strongholds with the first to 1000 points wins. These enemies are also the focus of Warzone Firefight which is a shittier version of Firefight. There's a lot to go over but trust me, it sucks ass and is not worth doing... unless you want the new armors in this game.

And I lied, armor selection is actually the worst part of 5, remember how every game added options to mix and match armors? Well now you get a helmet and an armor set to mix up and that's it, yes, LESS options than before.... how the fuck did they pull that off? This is worse customization than Halo 3, almost as bad as Halo 2, wait, there's still no Elites, okay then it's worse than Halo 2. You can also earn assassination animations and gun skins which honestly I could go either way about. Of course Forge returns and to it's credit with the enhanced options and custom browser, this is actually a better take on Forge than Reach heck you can even bring in all the Warzone variants of weapons and vehicles. It's even available on PC, so if you want in go do it. Theater mode though is basically unusable, don't even bother.

But theater mode is the only real failure on a technical level I can find, the game is solidly built and let's face it, even if it weren't it still would never be as bad as Halo 2. The game maintains a solid 60 fps which, while frame rate isn't super important to me, is a noticeable bump over everything else, easily making this the smoothest game in the series so far. On Xbox One X the game even maintains a solid 4K 60fps, which is even more impressive and makes the game a treat to the eyes, even if it's a bore on the brain. Meanwhile Neil Davidge drops out on composition leaving Jinnochi to take over and sadly this is the second most dull OST in the series, right behind Halo Wars. Everything is so boring and forgettable and even the best tracks are just remixes of past themes.

And I think that best sums up Halo 5, when it returns to past ideas it's pretty good, like with the first Merdian level and the arena. But it falls to it's worst when it introduces new ideas like Warzone or the entire rest of the campaign. The series is on a bit of a break now, one I think was needed, people were fatigued on Halo, especially with the recent failures preceding this. While the gameplay itself is solid to call the design here mediocre would be kind. In fact it felt like the entire franchise had slid into mediocrity since at least 4. So things were taken to change up the franchise, and the first hint of that will come next time with Halo Wars 2, the first game in the series to launch on console and PC Day One.