You're a kid out with mom. "Mom, I want Halo!" you plead. "We have Halo at home," your mom says. Halo 5: Guardians is what y'all have at home. With Halo 4, 343 kicked the series in the balls and knocked it down; with Halo 5, 343 curb stomped its skull. Halo 5 more or less took everything I hated about Halo 4 and doubled down on it. That's not to say that the game is 100% garbage or anything, and I'm going to give credit where it's due, but there's a LOT that 343 screwed up with this game, and their actions since its launch indicate that they'd agree with me to some extent. My biggest complaint with Halo 4 was the story, and that's my biggest complaint here, too. Basic synopsis is that Master Chief ignores orders from his UNSC superiors to go look for Cortana who briefly contacted him through means that honestly never get adequately explained, and his Spartan team goes with him. The UNSC then sends a team of Spartan-IVs to apprehend Master Chief and his now-AWOL team. That set-up is my first issue; Master Chief isn't truly the antagonist of the game, but he's not the main protagonist, either. He sort of floats somewhere between the two. Beyond that, I think the game's story is just plain bad in general, but the way they tell it makes it even worse. A Halo game doesn't have to have Master Chief to be good - Reach and ODST proved that - but to have Master Chief be the playable character in only like 15% or 20% of the game just feels off especially when he's positioned as an almost "bad" guy for part of the game. Swing and a miss, my dude. But at least Nathan Fillion's character from ODST makes a comeback, and he makes everything better. Now, to be fair, the game looks phenomenal on Xbox One. However, the performance leaves some to be desired. It seems like 343 went with a "graphical fidelity over performance" approach early on with Halo. To some extent, Halo 4 showed the same thing, but the performance issues are a lot more noticeable with Halo 5. There are a lot of frame rate drops throughout the game, and most annoyingly, enemy models will drop to half the target frame rate when observed at a distance, and it doesn't even have to be that great a distance before the model's frame rate drops. It's extremely jarring once you notice it. I played on Series X, and there were still a plethora of performance issues. Speaking of, Halo 5 never got a Series X optimization patch. That's noteworthy because the Master Chief Collection did get an optimization patch, and it's a year older than Halo 5. To me, that indicates that 343 knows that Halo 5 is the weakest entry in the series because it's literally the only main series game not optimized for Series X. Another similarity that Halo 5 has with Halo 4 that I personally found to be a negative aspect but in a completely subjective way is that it's clear that 343 prioritized the multiplayer over the single player. The multiplayer was excellent in Halo 5, although it didn't have the staying power that the Master Chief Collection had once the newness of it wore off and 343 fixed the numerous issues with which the Master Chief Collection launched. To Halo 5's credit, it definitely did a lot to energize Halo's eSports standing, but it's a shame that Halo 5 seemingly traded lower quality in the single player for higher quality in the multiplayer. Even with the strong multiplayer, though, Halo 5 is an all-around disappointing experience to long-time fans. Halo 5 is the Godfather Part III of the Halo series. The campaign's story is bad in theory and worse in execution, and worst of all, it ends on a cliffhanger that never gets resolved; 343 completely abandons this story thread about Cortana and shifts over to the Banished in Halo Infinite. The multiplayer, while good, is pretty much dead; Master Chief Collection quickly passed it in quality, and when Halo Infinite came out, that was the final nail in the coffin. If you're big into Halo lore, Halo 5 is definitely a game that you need to play through once, and if you're not into Halo at all and don't know anything about the lore, you'll probably enjoy it since you've got no investment in the lore or characters, but honestly, while it's an okay sci-fi shooter, it's a terrible Halo game. That said, it is a pretty game, and the gunplay mechanics are smooth and well-done. Just don't expect a worthy successor to Bungie's Halo games. My Rating - C |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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