Of Spartans and Men (2) - Gaming Thoughts

Halo: Infinite by developer 343 Industries and publisher Xbox Game Studios—Microsoft Xbox Series X gaming thoughts written by Pierre-Yves with a Game Pass subscription.

Check out the first Of Spartans and Men in regards to Halo: ODST.

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Continuously having big shoes to fill, 343 Industries have continued Master Chief's saga through the likes of Halo 4 and Halo 5 without missing a beat. With a long break in between however, Halo: Infinite is finally here and I've found myself wondering if it has been worth the wait.

I've now been playing games for over three decades and while I have a tendency to lean towards Role Playing Games, Strategy Role Playing Games, Turned Based Role Playing Games, Action / Adventure Role Playing Games and blowing up a sentence for no good reason, blame the French in me, I love a good shooter. Starting all the way back when games fit on 3.5" floppies with Doom II, I've shot my way through hell, space and the apocalypse numerous times.

Doom II, Wolfenstein, Hexen, Quake, Golden Eye, Perfect Dark, each had their own charm until this revolutionary first person shooter called Halo was released for the original Xbox. Not having had an Xbox myself, Halo is what I constantly found myself playing with friends whenever we got together either in co-op against the forces of the Covenant or those of the Flood. The controls were slick and smooth and on a console! Move towards Halo 2, Halo 3, I had originally missed out on ODST (check out the original Of Spartans and Men) before all we ever did was Halo Reach which is when I finally had my own Xbox.

Each entry into this series showed a bit more of what could be achieved and while this originally left so many others in the dust, by the time Halo 4 and Halo 5 released under a new studio and direction, the name of the game had already been defined and redefined and the big players had moved past what Bungie had put into place all those years back before they themselves moved onto another Destiny. Heh... see what I did there?

This is not to say that at least Halo 4 wasn't something else for the series as I absolutely loved the integration of a real story on top of solid gameplay mechanics, but with other stellar adventures out there such as Bioshock, Borderlands, Bulletstorm and the new Wolfenstein(s) that would come later amongst others, it was a solid experience but not one that redefined anything. Again, this isn't a bad thing as sometimes having a good experience is better than to be left wanting.

This however is where I'm finding myself so far with Halo: Infinite. Starting off with a heavy enough narrative even though Master Chief is not really doing the talking, there's soon a shift from the straight lines into an open world arena which lets you decide where you want to go first. Do you save captured marines? Take over a forward operating base (FOB) or stick it to the Banished and their seemingly endless amounts of troops?

Getting into the swing of things, I started to poke and prod at each type of situation while blasting my way through each with kinetic, shock and energy weapons before squeeing a bit at getting my hands on both a sword and a rocket launcher within minutes of one another. Looking around each place as the fire fights died down and looking around for audio logs to find out what's been going on, finding upgrade tokens to make our Master Chief that much scarier and armored lockers for cosmetics to bring into multiplayer I found myself wondering... is this it?

In the past year I've gone and platinumed both Horizon Zero Dawn and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, finally playing both past the introductions when I had picked them up for other people in my life. These worlds were huge, plenty to do, plenty to see, plenty to upgrade, and loads of story to carry you along from opening to closing credits. Master Chief's adventure so far within Halo: Infinite looks grand but feels like a basic attempt to create the current fad of an open world and I don't know if that should have been the direction.

While it's great to be able to fast travel, call in new vehicles and load up on custom weapons from each FOB, it's really when you get to a story mission where things are in a linear fashion that Halo: Infinite really started to shine. This isn’t just because it felt like “Halo” with either tight or open environments, plenty of enemies old and new including flying space octopus monkeys, it’s that it felt like a properly calibrated experience that is the reason I showed up for. As a bonus, the suit upgrades are great but I really couldn’t stop thinking of Doom 2016 as I picked them up.

The other big thing and that has been a point of contention is the coop, local or otherwise. While Halo 4 still supported a local co-op, Halo 5 demanded separate consoles having stripped away the local aspect that made this series a great couch partnering experience. Halo: Infinite, while now having launched both the multiplayer and the campaign, it still does not have any co-op at all attached to this campaign. Wanted to get together with a few friends or your partner for a romp against powerful alien foes? Unfortunately that feature isn’t here yet and it makes me wonder if it will or not come around in the future.

Finally, an issue that I doubt that I’m alone on, is the fact that I’m playing this latest adventure through the Xbox Game Pass. Where this starts to give some issues is that the main “install” was a tad misleading as while it was ready to go, I had to then open it up on day 1 and install the actual title. Fine, it was only twenty or so gigs which on my connection gave me time to whip up something quick in the kitchen before getting started. Where I’ve been having some issues however is that when I put my console into rest mode and re-open it all good to go, if the link to the servers are too slow I get kicked right out of the game because I’m not “authorized” to use this content. It’ll eventually clue in that yes, yes I do have access to this content but then I also had to restart whatever I may have been in the middle of.

Xbox Game Pass issues aside that I’ve just gone around by simply not “stopping in the middle of something”, I obviously still have plenty to see and do before making a final opinion on the matter as I’m still only about 5-6 hours in. While it looks gorgeous, it feels empty as even with multiple side missions to be tackled, there’s no extra story attached, there’s no side plotlines, there’s only a few unlockable items to make things a bit more fun and in your favor before getting to the good stuff of the main storyline missions.

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Minecraft Dungeons - XB1 Review

Minecraft Dungeons by developers Mojang Studios, Double Eleven and publisher Xbox Game Studios—Microsoft Xbox One review written by Pierre-Yves with an Ultimate Game Pass Subscription provided by Microsoft for Minecraft Dungeons Review.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Having released last week, Minecraft Dungeons is the latest in the Minecraft universe to hit video game platforms from the consoles to the PC. Shunned, thrown out and left to wander alone, a now powerful Illiger is taking revenge on everyone in the land and if they won't submit, they die. Picking up your weapon as the hero that you are, it's up to you and possibly three others to slay monsters, gain experience points, and stop the evil rampaging through the lands.

One thing right from the get go that I appreciated was that you didn’t have to be a big or avid Minecraft fan to enjoy Minecraft Dungeons. Having only dabbled with it in version… 0.3? Sometime back in 2012 at any rate, there’s a lot of the lore and the currently in place elements that I wouldn’t be able to tell you where they came from. That said, the story gives you enough to follow along and enjoy yourself even if you’re not quite sure where certain things are coming from, or what an “Illiger” really is. Thankfully if you don’t know, you’re sure to have friends close by or the internet to find out!

Diving into the gameplay, Minecraft Dungeons is a pretty standard, if not at times lighter, Dungeon Crawler. It follows a lot of the laid out formulas to the point of even perhaps too much as it even followed the path of features that some of us could pass upon such as never ending final dungeons that are almost obnoxiously long while adding no real flavour for it.

Starting off with a brief tutorial to show you what all of the controls do, you’re soon left to your own devices with the new and shiny gear that you’ll be picking up as you go. Drops from monsters, chests, chests… on pigs? Question mark? Will come in two main categories. Your core equipment and your artifacts. Core equipment is pretty basic with your melee weapon, your ranged weapon and your armor. Each of these is pretty self explanatory however there is a nice variety of gear to be found in order to use with some of my preferred ones being found much later. That is either because of the challenge rating or because of my luck. I’m seriously unsure on that front.

Your weapons will be a major deciding factor on how you want to proceed with crashing into the hordes of enemies that will eventually be coming at you. It was a little slow at first but it ramps up nicely. Swords, twin daggers, axes, pick axes, glaives, claymores, maces all offer up different attack speeds, knockbacks and attack radius giving you an idea of how you should be moving. If things get a bit too dicey, you can dodge roll out of the way but being more of a one time use, it should be kept for emergencies. Thankfully to smooth this out you have artifacts and some of them even let you dodge. Much less summon llamas.

Coming in two flavors. Artifacts either need to cooldown after being used, like summoning aid or dodging, while others like healing yourself and your allies (including summoned help) require gathering souls. Up to three of these can be equipped at a time and there’s no restrictions on what you want to try using with what. Summon a Wolf and a Llama? Done. Summon a wolf, keep a heal on hand for it and you (you do have a cooldown potion by default) and a giant possible beam of death? Also done. The choice of yours and with other things such as a firework for a large ranged area of effect attack? There are a ton of choices for strategy.

Unfortunately it’s not all sunshine and rainbows while fighting against the hordes of undead and the minions of the Arch Illeger. Overall the difficulty scales well enough and on most stages you can even make it harder in order to get more experience points and level up. Doing so means that you may have to play a bit smarter because the enemies are both tougher and stronger than you, but that part is alright. Where things really don’t work and where Minecraft Dungeons falls into that having followed the formula a bit too well is with it’s ranged enemies. They are simply at all times more powerful and generally in a large crowd taking you from Hero to Zero is about a second flat. Adding that you can’t infinitely dodge? It gets brutal especially in the last few stages which does start to suck the fun out of it.

In a way, this can fortunately be leveraged in that Minecraft Dungeons is not a really long game. At least not in the sense of your initial run through the campaign being 4-6 hours while maybe having redone a stage or two on a harder challenge rating for better loot and exp. Things like overly lengthening stages and the artificial increase in difficulty aren’t as bad as they otherwise could have been because of this. Where things do get better, but you do have to pay attention to the enemy archers, is that once you’re done the first difficulty, another unlocks and even the first stages may tell you that you’re below the power level required. Does that stop you? Nope! It just makes it more exciting to see if you can actually survive.

So overall, while Minecraft Dungeons plays it rather safe with the Dungeon Crawling style, it’s fun to play either on your own or with friends. With the current state of affairs, #playapartogether and COVID-19, it is nice that there are both a local and online multiplayer so that families in the same house can play off of one console while friends can just easily add each together to go hacking & slashing against the evil hordes that threaten the land. With more content coming soon as showcased on the world map, I’m interested in seeing what comes next.

 

Score: 7.75 / 10

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