Roundup: Here's What The Critics Are Saying About Halo Infinite

Congratulations to 343 on releasing their best Halo yet by the sounds of it

I think sequels are always hard to top previous entries, even in long running series like this. People often ‘sour’ and it is hard for them to forget past mistakes and see the new games at face value.

I’m expecting this to be a solid entry in the series and a step up from a few of the more recent games. And these reviews show that.

I never liked pcworld reviews 😂😂 not that I'm being bias

@themightyant 100 VG24/7
100 VB GAMESBEAT
100 INVERSE
99 GENERATION XBOX
93 GAME INFORMER
91 PLAYER 2

We can pick a review

90 comic book.com
90 the gamer
90 IGN
90 Xbox achievement
90 gamespot
90 shacknews
90 gamesradar
90 God is feel
90 destructoid
90 press start Australia

Kotaku, eurogamer, CNET, Polygon, and Wellplayed are pending but all positive reviews too. 80 plus scores

87 on Metacritic from 68 reviews... My prediction in the Metacritic predictions article was spot on!

I predicted 80 on metacritic, its currently sitting at 87.

But at this point reviews don't really matter, we are all going to play it on gamepass anyway lol.

How many metascore points this game lost due to its bad progression system? I bet it would be slightly above 90 if it weren't for greed.

@Magabro that's actually a really Good point

@Magabro By pulling the online multiplayer loose in a separate F2P entry, I don't think the multiplayer scores count here...

Yeah, almost all of these reviews are of the campaign only. Not multiplayer so it shouldn’t affect the majority of the scores.

@Bartig Some outlets gave separate review scores for MP and campaign, some issued one single review, but Metacritic and Opencritic have only one single page for Halo Infinite, so I suppose they're averaging the scores of publications that issued separate reviews.

87 Metacritic average from 69 critic reviews

https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-series-x/halo-infinite

@Magabro Hmm, maybe, although I haven't seen many separate scores for the multiplayer, perhaps becuase it was 'soft-launched' with a kind of beta-vibe.

@trev666 Nice!

on a separate note I read screenrant review and totally forgot screenrant was even a thing. I didn't like their review. I've never liked their reviews. 😀

Obviously not played the campaign yet but the IGN review which was a great score summed up what I thought would be missing, which is a shame after 6 years in development.
How they have not managed to put some variety in environments on Zeta ring and weather effects etc is beyond me after all this time.
And as IGN said this is disappointing, but they didn’t downgrade the reviews score for it. Fair enough.
Sounds like Halo Infinite could have been so much more and rocked a 95 ish meta critic had the scope of environmental areas and effects been fully utilised.
Of course Zeta will open up with seasonal content like Destiny that will introduce new and varied environments and weather effects as the mould is already in place to do this, as the campaign already opens areas of Zeta as you progress.
Just a shame some environmental variations should have been then already.
I will look forward to exploring those in winter 2022 😊

@themightyant I think you should skip this game because of the mixed reviews nobody expected that a Microsoft game would get and that you highlighted so quickly 😉😝.

This game needs to either be a controversial cinematic experience to meet general critical acclaim or have Sony or Nintendo as publisher. It's funny how gameplay is dissected when it's obviously better than games that got better reviews. They are video games but it's all about the story these days. In spite of this, it's getting some love (87 on Metacritic right now).

Doom Eternal got the same Metacritic score average so I guess 87-88 is what the best FPS get unless Metroid Prime 4 comes and get 99/100 for some reason 😂.

@Dezzy70 There are some impressive screenshots out there (better than on Pure Xbox review) that show the highly detailed grass, bushes and very well modelled trees in the open world. It's quite impressive for a cross-gen game. I assume that this is Microsoft's last AAA Xbox One game. Weather changes would be great but I wonder if they wouldn't clog Xbox One circuitry.

I liked the Skill Up review a lot. It's on YouTube. It's fairly critical about many points, like lack of variety in the environments and open world activities, lack of unique set-pieces, the story and characters are generic... well, they're critical about a lot of things, but they also praise how fun is the gameplay, how well polished are the encounters, how the game doesn't overstay its welcome or feel repetitive and exhausting like Ubisoft games. Overall it's still a great Halo game that pushes the franchise forward.

@BlueOcean
It seems to look ok, will find when I get to play.
Would have just been nice to have some environmental variety and weather effects, is where I was coming from and some reviewers.

@Dezzy70 Yes and I said that it would be great but I wonder if that's related to its cross-gen nature. Just wondering.

Only halo can bring out the bipolar in players haha

I'm not gonna lie surprised at so many positive reviews and really high scores the game has received so far, really looking forward to playing it soon😃😃😃

Man, I was looking forward to this, but after the 78 from pcgamer and the 3.5/5 from Tom's guide, whoever that is, I have to say I'm still excited to play this!
AAAHHHHaahhhhahhhAHHHHAHHHahhh 😅halo theme, sorry

No more 69 Metacritic memes

@PhhhCough Tom's guide? That site with 30 prompts and obvious solutions to obvious problems?

@BlueOcean @PhhhCough I remember when Tom's Hardware was a good site. That benchmarked hardware. It was a go to source for graphs on GPU and CPU performance. Then it became whatever generic Ziff-Davis nightmare clickfest it became.

@themightyant "but is pretty scathing about the narrative and repetitive level design."

I find that an easy criticism to believe since it describes well Bungies Halo design from the beginning. That criticism could apply to 1-3 as well just as easily, which means this probably does evoke the same feel as those games. Applies to Destiny as well for that matter.

I still wonder where these critiques were for GoW, where every level felt like the same room for an hour with the same 5 enemies..... For better or worse, GoW has a "very Bungie" design. The overall design of the games has a lot in common, even if the melee combo focus on GoW masks it from being obvious. But basically no reviews called that problem out. Some did, but they were minor ones that got no attention.

@NEStalgia I would even go further and say that the same thing could be defined in a very different way. Halo Infinite seems to be a very cohesive game but you can be negative about it and say that it's repetitive.

@BlueOcean Assuming Infinite doesn't distance itself in design from past Halo games, for better or worse, "repetitive" is a more than fair criticism. It's been part of Halo's DNA since Silent Cartographer where each zone of the area looked suspiciously like the previous one and the hallways all looked the same.... Back then it was due to technical limitation, but Bungie kept that same design through the trilogy, ODST, and even carried it into Destiny 1 and 2. So I think it's a fair criticism, and to not be repetitive, it would have to stray from Halo formula (which would then warrant other criticism...) I just find it funny that if you take GoW, remove the Boi, add guns and neon and a peppy copyright infringing Marty soundtrack, it's basically Halo but with less open areas, but nobody found the same criticisms in it, somehow.

Graphics and story seem to be the main negatives. Story is my concern, as that's the main point of campaign — driving the story forward in interesting ways. I'll judge for myself this week.

@NEStalgia You're right about it but that could be said about many games, it depends on the spin they want to give it. However, if Halo features an open world and there is an addictive gameplay loop that gets bigger like in the good FPS games, I'll love it. If it's Halo but bigger and better, fans will love it. We'll see.

@NEStalgia I think that Gears of War is not like Halo but like Resident Evil 5 and The Mercenaries with very well-designed cover shooting. I loved 1, 2, 3 and 4. Judgement and 5 are just okay. 5 Hivebusters is original and enjoyable and looks and plays better than 5. I think that 4 has the most varied gameplay and graphics and 1, 2 and 3 the best characters and scripts.

@BlueOcean Repetative game loop is normal for a lot of games that aren't RPGs, but what stands out to me about both the GoW reboot, and Halo (since the beginning) is the repetitive environments. For GoW it's actually shocking because so much of the old series was built around the unique setpieces, so while the hack & slash was super repetative the environments were very dynamic and elaborate, unique places. The Bungie style recurring hallways was sriking in the new one. For Halo, it's just baked in the series as part of the style. memory limits on the OG Xbox meant they had to reuse assets ad nauseum. Cartographer was the biggest area, but it reused the same beach and interiors over and over. Then you had the Warthog ride through the interior and it was literally the same series of indoor bridge rooms over and over. Heck the game started out on the Autumn where every hallway was the same darned hallway for far too long. Same with the covenant ship. And then the freaking Library. Then you had to do it all again in reverse. Obviously tech limits caused most of that, but it became kind of the series design template, and didn't change too much for the rest of the main trilogy. We'll see how similar or not to that design this one is, but since they said they were trying to follow the original styling, I'm sure it's kind of similar. I think most importantly for an FPS, though, is the minute to minute gameplay. Bungie had that famous (though misunderstood) quote about Halo's loop with 30 seconds of fun every 3 minutes or something like that. I always felt the environment was too repetitive still, but it did remain engaging because of their deliberate pacing with that loop. The action constantly lured you into playing just a little further into the next area. That worked on rails, but if they maintaned that same feel with the open world, that really matters more than the rest. Environments are cool, but mostly you play Halo to shoot aliens in the face and get your dopamine rush doing so....

Going back to the GoW comparison (which I think is probably the most similar game design to Halo/Destiny out there even if it keeps the similarity out of sight if you're not looking) where it sometimes lets up is it lets the action stop. The puzzle/navigation challenges are an interesting idea but it puts too much lull in the combat, and it has no more enemy variety than Halo 1. I'd often get bored in quiet, empty rooms with nothing going on, instead of that "just a little bit more" carrot on a stick that Bungie's games always provided (we won't talk about 343's prior campaigns.... ) Which to me is so weird about GoW because the series history centered on high-octane Platinum Games style action setpieces. The change in direction was well received, and of course it should be...Destiny 2 is well received, the loop is timelessly appealing to the masses, since Halo CE, but I think it has massive flaws that nobody called out for reasons I can only surpise as "not wanting to be the writer that goes against the grain on a major hype train."

@NEStalgia What is the Gears reboot? 4 and 5? 4 has the most variety in graphics and gameplay. It was actually started by Epic and finished by The Coalition (who has some ex Epic workers). Why is 4 or 5 more repetitive than the Xbox 360 entries? I'm confused.

@BlueOcean Sorry, I was talking Halo, not Gears.

@NEStalgia OK, then 😅.

It doesn't look like it will match the 17 perfect scores that were given to Cyberpunk (currently 5).

All jokes aside I cant wait to play the campaign.