Halo Infinite multiplayer impressions: a chance to reclaim the throne

If Halo 3In 2007, it was the most successful multiplayer game franchise. Since then, much has changed.

Call of Duty has become a unique platform; MOBAs have been a way of life; the past five years of multiplayer games are dominated by battle royale. All the while, Halo’s subsequent sequels have tried and failed to re-seize the moment. The surprise release of Halo Infinite’s multiplayer, the series is clearly in a great place to reclaim the throne.

Halo Infinite’s multiplayer is, for the first time in the series, free-to-play, and was released simultaneously on Xbox platforms and PC, via both the Xbox App and Steam. It also came out nearly a month before the game’s campaign. These are important changes as the series moves forward — acknowledgements that the old system of console exclusives and big-budget sequels isn’t how multiplayer games prosper anymore.

Image: 343 Industries/Xbox Game Studios

The release time is a new feature for this franchise. However, the gameplay itself remains very traditional to good effect. The giddy additions of armor capabilities or loadouts taken from Halo 2 are not the best. Halo Infinite gives everyone the same weapons and keeps equipment limited to a few — fairly ineffective — gadgets. This is the Halo that you can remember almost 15 years ago. Halo InfiniteIt is slightly quicker than Halo 3 (thanks to a new sprint mechanic that every player has by default) but it’s still far slower than something like Call of Duty. Fights still require you to break through an enemy’s Energy Shield before killing them, leading to frantic firefights that culminate in well-placed final shots. The one exception to this consistency is Halo’s iconic melee, which feels clumsy and unpredictable in this game, possibly due to some weird physics around player collision.

Infinite’s maps also feel like welcome throwbacks. The small maps effectively force players to either engage in quick and brutal shootouts in tight spaces, or risk running though each map’s sparse centers and being exposed to enemies on all sides. The layouts of each map are simple, but they’re smart and well-designed. Seemingly random corners frequently provided cover for me in the aftermath of harrowing fights This “economy of space” is reminiscent of Halo 3’s best maps, like Guardian or The Pit.

Image: 343 Industries/Xbox Game Studios

These are the maps that host smaller events. Halo Infinite’s Quickplay and Ranked game playlists, which vary widely in quality. Quickplay matches were mostly frustrating: Teams were often imbalanced, players quit in every match, and the larger teams — with sometimes as many as six players per team — made the maps feel overcrowded and messy. Due to the random use of grenades and stray bullets by newly spawned enemies, one-on-one matches are rare in Quickplay.

Quickplay also includes the game’s full variety of weapons, which are mostly a disappointment. There are positive new additions like the Mangler or the Shock Rifle, but most of the new weapons feel either gimmicky or like worse versions of human guns — something every Halo game has struggled with. What’s more, in Quickplay you start with the assault rifle, which feels worse in Halo Infinite than it has ever been in the series thanks to the game’s lackluster melee — which used to provide the assault rifle with an excellent finishing move.

Ranking, however, is a great option. This matches limit teams to four players, keeping the maps clear. Also, players start with only the battle rifle. This feels great in. Infinite. These matches also tend to include players that are more locked in — I’ve rarely had anyone quit in a ranked match — which leads to more competitive games, and more varied use of the maps and mechanics the game has to offer.

Image: 343 Industries/Xbox Game Studios

Both of these problems can cause some issues. Halo Infinite’s smaller modes share, however. One of them is the game’s playlist options. You can pick whether you want to play Ranked, Quickplay or both. Both will have a mixture of Slayer and Oddball as well as King of the Hill and Capture the Flag. There is no way to avoid or select certain modes. While many people love all of Halo’s modes, getting stuck on a team that’s intent on turning Capture the Flag into Slayer is a miserable experience for everyone.

A second of Infinite’s larger issues is respawning. Being returned to life in full view of an enemy player, or somewhere they’re going to step in the next two seconds, is a frequent problem across every matchmaking playlist. No matter how many times it occurred, I never forgot the pain of it.

Halo Infinite also has Big Team Battle, the mode that’s played on Infinite’s larger maps, between two huge teams of 12 players. These match are wild, crazy and great fun. These matches are in many ways the best Halo match. You will see Warthogs racing across the map, Ghosts leaping over them and Scorpion tanks hunting both of them. If one person wins close range duels with a good-timed melee attack, the other player will likely be blown to pieces by a tank less than a second later. It’s exactly the kind of irreverence that makes Halo great, and turns multiplayer matches into hilarious water-cooler stories.

Image: 343 Studios/Microsoft

If there’s one glaring issue with the maps, both big and small, it’s simply that there aren’t that many of them at the moment. Halo Infinite currently has 10 total maps — seven smaller maps and three big ones. The fact that the maps don’t seem to cross over between playlists gives them a nice feeling of specialization — what works for 24 players would be miserable with eight — but it does feel like I’m repeating the same maps a little too frequently. Thankfully, the maps are well designed enough that this isn’t a big problem, especially with more likely on the way.

It’s important to note that developer 343 Industries is referring to this early release of Halo Infinite as a “beta” (even though it’s also Season 1, progression-wise), which means that many of these problems could be fixed by the time the game actually launches on Dec. 8.

This is still one. Infinite’s most important and unanswerable questions: How will 343 keep the game fresh in the long run? On the bright side, 343 is already trying to fix Season 1’s slow progression. On the other hand, it’s still unclear what Halo Infinite’s roadmap will look like post-launch, and what it will mean for new maps, modes, and the like. There is still much to be done in customization. While the esports skins that are currently in its shop look excellent, the inability to customize the color of your armor beyond presets, or to mix and match individual armor pieces, is disappointing, and something 343 will have to improve for the game’s free-to-play strategy to work.

Image: 343 Studios/Xbox Game Studios

Whatever the answer to those questions might be, they’re issues for the future. Present is the future. Halo InfiniteIt does a great job of recreating the most important parts of Halo multiplayer while updating them lightly to make it feel fresh for the first 15 years. Even though it’s still in beta, Halo Infinite already feels like it has most of the right pieces to build a great multiplayer game — 343 just hasn’t quite put them all together yet.