izigame.me

As a long-time Halo fan for the past 20 years, I was excited to dive into Halo Infinite, especially after being impressed by several of the flights leading up to the surprise multiplayer launch. To give 343 credit where it's due, this game blows Halo 4 and 5 out of the water and, despite enhanced movement and other fancy new bells and whistles, really looks and FEELS more like a traditional Halo game. At launch, I enjoyed it for what it was, and looked forward to the promise of more content to come in the near future with the launch of campaign. Promises of more maps, the addition of missing gamemodes, more cosmetics and F2P ways to earn them, improvements and additions to the sandbox, a progression system, Forge mode, co-op campaign, cross-core cosmetics and armour kit customisation, fixes to broken cosmetics, fixes to desync, more reasonable mtx pricing, a fix to matchmaking for BTB, a better report system, a Theatre mode that isn't completely broken, and working custom games along with a browser, to name some of the things that were actually acknowledged by 343.
However, nearly a year and a half later, I don't believe 343 has satisfactorily delivered on these promises. The new Forge mode seems amazing, and the custom games browser is a big win for 343 (I'd like to see it take off as well as the MCC one did). I think consistent implementation of community maps and gamemodes to the matchmaking pools would add some much needed variety to multiplayer, ESPECIALLY where the community has already perfectly recreated old gamemodes that 343 refuses to hurry up and add to the game until they can tie some boring event to it where you have to buy all of best cosmetics in the shop. Cross-core has not been implemented despite bots having it since Day 1, armour kits can't be customised, micro prices were decreased then re-increased, there is still no progression system, matchmaking and desync issues are still rampant, iconic gamemodes and maps are still missing, splitscreen got axed, and so on. 343 have had ample time to deliver on many of their promises but have failed and continue to fail to do so, which I find troubling given Infinite's long development history and keeping extra time they've had with last year's constant content delays in mind.
The campaign was fun despite no co-op at launch, however the open world was - while sometimes enjoyable - overall dull and lacked variety in biome and activities. The linear missions also lacked variety, but were serviceable in a more low-stakes, nostalgia baiting story that rightfully sought to erase Halo 5 from memory. Somehow I still look forward to the continuation of Halo's story be it in another game or a campaign DLC (ignoring the disheartening though understandable lack of any news what with the game struggling to maintain a playerbase!). To address the cost of the campaign at full price in a F2P Halo game, I don't feel I got my money's worth versus purchasing any of the previous titles where I could just earn multiplayer cosmetics through gameplay rather than paid BPs or store micros. The F2P model is predatory and it sucks!
For Infinite to have any chance of surviving it will need a massive 2.0-style update that overhauls the game from end to end, which I just can't see happening with 343's current lead times. While every recent update seems to be another small step in the right direction, the player retention stats prove it's far too little, far too late. Though the future of Infinite seems dismal, I truly hope I can one day return to a feature-complete game to give it a more positive wrap.