“Halo Infinite” Review

Halo Infinite: Directed by Paul Crocker, Joseph Staten. With Steve Downes, Jen Taylor, Nicolas Roye, Bruce Thomas. When all hope is lost and humanity’s fate hangs in the balance, Master Chief is ready to confront the most ruthless foe he’s ever faced.

Released back in 2021 in the tail end of the global pandemic that at current count has killed over 2 million people, I had no idea that loading this game up to try getting through the campaign would bring back some of true horrors of that time: Republicans in power. I originally bought this, (as a steelbook!), but was so turned off by the story and features that it went back into my “to be played” pile and sat there over the years, constantly being pre-empted by dozens of other games. There’s a lot of not like here, from the obscenely long load times, the first level being absolutely nothing like the rest of the game, the unfulfilled promise of repairing the halo, the missing story beats, the game constantly telling us about the cool shit and not showing the cool shit, to the instability of the game (and the xbox system itself) causing infrequently but still frustrating crashes.

The story does sorta wrap up the “Cortana goes rogue” storyline in an egregiously offensive offscreen situation that’s shown in goofy flashbacks that make little to no sense, and I found myself directly comparing the first few games in which the final moments were on the run from an exploding environment, but this time around it was a cut scene in which you got to watch your character get himself out of trouble instead of experiencing it yourself.

It’s not all bad though, I found myself really appreciating the right bumper button abilities that all felt familiar with the addition of the new grabble hook, which I have to personally suspend some disbelief that this 800 pound hulking cyborg in a suit of armor is just zipping around on a 100 meter cable that’s able to attach to pretty much anything. The environments are damn nice and the verticality of most of the areas is at times breathtaking.

I’m not sure if the franchise can be saved at this point, and I mean that from the story side of things. I’ve never been a strong Halo multiplayer participant, but my understanding is that the game is failing on that side of things as much as it is narratively.

I do want to re-iterate a point that I made a long while ago, and I’m calling it the “Selvidge Rule of Science Fiction”: Left running long enough, all science fiction stories will use time travel.

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