Halo Infinite Technical Flight Impressions

 

 I could have done productive things this weekend, and I kinda did. But for the most part life  this weekend was two things, work and Halo Infinite. 343 put out the first technical flight for Infinite and that consumed my life from Thursday to Monday. But now it's over and it's time for some closure by talking about the flight and what I liked and what could be fixed.

 I think we should talk about what's most important, Halo Infinite's gameplay which is so good. Infinite feels like a hybrid of Halo 5 and Halo 2 and the guns feel great to use. I mean for once the meta isn't just Battle Rifle which is nice, it's kind of an issue I've always had with Halo where the primary weapon is the Battle Rifle, Pistol, or you die. I actually found myself using the AR a lot which is viable at mid-range now but needs to be burst fired, which encourages variety in weaponry. 

 The new weapons slapped too, namely the Skewer which has some great feed back and serves as an alternate sniper, only one shot before reload but it kills instantly on any part of the body. The Commando was a great in-between for the AR and BR that emphasizes controlling your shots. The Pulse Carbine and Ravager fire too similarly for my taste but that's more of a me issue. Meanwhile the new Sidekick pistol feels like a great compromise between the Halo 2 and Halo 5 pistols.

 The movement is also great, removing thrusters and reducing sprint speed had a great effect on making the speed feel more balanced as well as making map design more on par with Halo 2 and Halo 3. On a similar note the three maps; Bazaar, Live Fire, and Recharge were great with some actually asymmetrical design, which gets away from Halo 5's big issue of all the non Forge maps just being symmetrical three route affairs; which was great for pro-play, but terrible for map variety in casual play which hurt Halo 5.

 All in all, I actually think what I've played of Infinite addresses almost all the faults Halo 5 had; which is great because Halo 5 was so close to being great. The main problem had been going too far in the pro-player direction at the cost of casual play. Luckily 343 has seemed to have course corrected and has achieved a perfect balance of pro and casual play. But that's just me and my opinions tend to be bad so who knows how the pro community and Halotubers will react.

 That said the flight wasn't perfect and oh boy this was a glitch fest. But that's expected and I don't want to talk about glitches that are probably going to be fixed by launch. Though I want to know if Infinite is just badly optimized for my PC or if that's a work in progress. That's unimportant for now; what matters are the minor UI and accessibility issues that I want to talk to about with the flight.

 I loved the AI quips with my fave being Fret, who was just Prompto from Final Fantasy XV. But some don't like the AI so I think a slider from none to call outs to call outs and quips would work. The call outs were fairly useful so I think having an option to just do AI call outs like power items or objectives would be great. Also my AI kept defaulting to stinky butler man and I wasn't a fan of that, but I assume that's just a glitch.

 I would also like to know when members in my party are talking the way Halo 3 did it, lighting up their icon on my HUD. It helps when someone says ON ME during a firefight to know where they are. PvP experience worked fairly well though for the two hours I got to play with it.

 The armor coloring could also be improved, right now you can't change your armor colors like you could in all past Halo's, just choose from a preset pattern of colors.  My fix would be you choose a preset pattern but the actual colors themselves can be chosen by the player. Best of both worlds, 343 can sell patterns and players can choose their preferred colors.

 Those were the only major things that stuck out to me as needing to be fixed that wasn't just technical bugginess that will be sorted out by launch. Overall, if my only actual issue's were some UI issues with the AI voices, player indicators, and color choicebwhile having a great combat and gameplay loop, then I think Infinite is in a great place to truly succeed where Halo 4 and Halo 5 failed. Now 343, when's the next flight? I need to see my boy, Fret.