Halo 5: Guardians Reviews

A slap in the face, November 23, 2015

By 

R. McAdams (CA, USA) – See all my reviews

  

I wasn’t all that happy with this game, it was all right.

PROS:
-Master Chief! (’nuff said)
-Solid gameplay (for the most part, did have the game lock up once forcing a hard restart)
-The graphics really were very nice
-The sound was well done
-There was a single player campaign/story, and you can play it Co-Op with your friends! (looking at YOU, Star Wars Battlefront … YOU … can die in a fire)
-Multiplayer was solid, but the new fighting moves like the hover-punch (or whatever it is called) threw off the balance, I felt.

CONS (without spoilers):
-The story was muddled and NOT well written
-I DID NOT approve of the villain/antagonist they went with for this one
-I miss the constant banter between the Chief and Cortana during the game. Just little things like her egging him on, and betting on whether he can stick a grenade to an Elite, those are the touches that MADE the games MAGICAL! With them missing, it just feels … kind of empty.
-I miss the humor from prior entries. No marines riding along on any missions to provide funny comments. No companion Cortana riding along in your suit. It really drops the experience level down, and makes it less fun.
-The A.I. wasn’t very good. Unlike Bungie’s A.I. from, let’s say 3, in 5, if you are far enough away, you can just shoot them until they drop, they just stand there. In 3, you could barely get them to hold still even for the first long distance shot.
-Speaking of long distance, for some bizarre (I am going to go with, 343 can’t do A.I.) reason, the game was enforcing multiplayer-type "DO NOT LEAVE THE INVISIBLE FENCE AROUND THE BATTLEFIELD OR WE WILL KILL YOU IN TEN SECONDS" — rule. That was … ridiculous. I was killed for "leaving the battlefield" for flying ABOVE the enemy we were SUPPOSED to be attacking. Flying ABOVE an enemy in an AIRCRAFT is a legitimate tactic, and it is RIDICULOUS that it would be disallowed with an invisible fence with a 10 second timer on it that will kill you. If they want to do that in the online multiplayer, fine. In the story mode … that is OUTRAGEOUS. I will play my game as I feel like it, thankyouverymuch. If I can get to it in the game, that should be the end of it. As long as I am not cheating/hacking the game, that should be the end of it. Arbitrarily limiting WHERE I can go during a battle, and enforcing it with a kill timer is infuriating, especially if the battle is taking place in an area with NO COVER. On legendary, cover is KIND OF IMPORTANT! They lost a star for this all by itself.
-Why … was Nathan Fillion in the game as a modeled character? That was weird. o_O
-I don’t CARE about team "Osiris" and I didn’t enjoy playing as them. Hey, 343? [waves] Yeah, um, Bungie may not have told you this on their way out, but … I think most of us would like to play as the MASTER CHIEF in our Halo Games. At least, most of the time. Kthxbai.
-Seriously, we’re fighting the Covenant/Prometheans, AGAIN?! Guys, SERIOUSLY, it is a GALAXY spanning game, take a tip from Mass Effect and introduce some new races. There HAVE TO BE more out there than just Elites, Grunts, Jackals and Prometheans to fight. Honestly, humanity is technically at peace with the races from the Covenant anyway, so it is weird that we keep fighting them, even if they are "rebels" or offshoots, or whatever.
-The story was predictable, and the "twist" could be seen coming a mile away. Even the little twists they threw in there were telegraphed WAY earlier and were easy to predict. Bad writing.

Conclusion (without spoilers, see below if you want spoilers):
The game earns 3 stars for being solid, and having a story/campaign that can be played co-op, right out of the gate. However, because of the problems with the story, and the lack of a wow factor, and the issues I listed above, I can’t bring myself to give it any more stars than that.
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SPOILERS BELOW!

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SERIOUSLY, SPOILERS BELOW! LAST WARNING!
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Okay, if you are down here, you are all right with spoilers. So … here’s the thing, we have spent 4 main entries in this series, and a couple of side-entries at least having it mentioned that Master Chief and Cortana are for all intents and purposes best friends and would-be lovers if it wasn’t for that whole physical vs. digital divide problem. We saw it devastate the Chief when Cortana sacrificed herself for him at the end of 4. And we saw how much it meant to her to touch him at the end, before she fell apart.

So … it feels like a slap in the face that they would introduce her as the deluded antagonist in this entry. Sure, she still trusts the Chief, although she is letting him have to face her Guardian over and over (and over) again in lethal combat. And sure, she still wants to…

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Worst Halo Yet. Mediocre (At Best) Multiplayer, Garbage Campaign., November 14, 2015

I’ll just get down to business. Spoilers below.

Story/Campaign:

The campaign has always been what drew me to Halo. And sure, every Halo has it’s plot issues in one way or another. But Halo 5 was just bad storytelling. I’ll start with character introduction.

If you played the old Halo games, but never engaged with outside materials like books or comics, you’ll only know who 25% of the main Spartans are: Master Chief and Buck (from ODST). Never once in any mission is it explained how Master Chief’s Blue Team buddies joined him. Nor is it explained how Buck, a former ODST, is now a Spartan. There’s no explanation of the new Spartan IV program that Fireteam Osiris emerged from. There’s barely any explanation for anything else, either.

The major reveal where Halsey explains (to a point) why Cortana is behaving the way she is is treated so insignificantly by the game that the bulk of players flat-out missed it entirely. Other interesting plot developments, like the Arbiter being in the final campaign against the Covenant remnant on Sanghelios, are glossed over.

The Forerunner history is butchered, too. Long portrayed as wise and powerful, the race who protected life and sacrificed themselves in the process are recast as little more than galactic fascists with nothing but selfish motivations. It’s as though 343i can’t come up with original ideas, so they just decide to turn a character or a race of characters "evil" to string along another story in an attempt to justify their existence. The one new character that truly seemed inspired and interesting is Exuberant Witness, a Forerunner AI who gives you a hand.

In regards to the campaign itself, it’s way too short. A playthrough on normal difficulty will probably run you 5-6 hours max. Obviously upping the difficulty will prolong the playtime. That said, you won’t want to prolong it. The narrative is poor, and the AI is just as bad. Your AI teammates are dumber than a pile of bricks. The enemy AI is highly predictable and are often little more than time-wasting bullet sponges. And you literally fight the EXACT SAME BOSS about half a dozen times. A boss, mind you, that is utterly inconsequential to the story, as Cortana’s power proves he’s little more than a cheerleader for her.

The levels are mostly linear (in story if not in shape), and enemy encounters are mostly predictable. And to top it all off, the most interesting things in the entire campaign are mostly tied up in cutscenes, depriving you of actually playing the most exciting or interesting moments in the game, leaving you with nothing but the drudgery of a typical level template.

Chances are good that if you’re a Halo fan, you’ve played a ton of split screen co-op. No more. It’s not in the game. At all. Your kids can’t play together on the same console. You and your friends can’t play together on your couch. My wife and I (both longtime Halo fans) can’t play together. Not in campaign, not in Arena, not in Warzone, not in Forge, not in custom games. A central feature of EVERY Halo game is now gone. Have fun playing alone.

As if all that wasn’t enough, you only play 3(!) out of 15 missions as Master Chief. 3 more missions are nothing more than "go talk to that person" missions.

In short, the campaign has a poorly-written/developed story, terrible AI, is way too short for something in development for several years, and feels more like an ODST-style half-release than a main entry into the series. Easily the worst campaign of the Halo games yet.

Multiplayer:

For players like me who have played Halo multiplayer since the beginning, Halo 5 features perhaps some of the most radical shifts in gameplay you’ll find in the series. Each Halo release from CE to Reach seemed to make some minor tweaks in the way the game was played. Dual-wielded guns, weapons added or removed, the presence of a health bar, locking vs non-locking rockets, equipment, etc. all varied from game to game. So change is not exactly uncommon in Halo.

But with Halo 4 came some big changes, and Halo 5 doubled down on them. Killstreaks and sprinting were the big changes in Halo 4, and they went over like a lead balloon. The community divided between those who wanted a more modern, CoD-like Halo and the "purists" who wanted to preserve the differences between Halo and modern FPS games.

With Halo 5, the "purists" have definitely lost. Halo 5 adds a true Aim-Down-Sights system, sprinting is still there, dashing, boosting, hovering, clambering, and "ground pound" (among others) make up Spartan Abilities.

In and of themselves, these things aren’t bad in shooters. Most are common features. And if this game was called anything other than Halo, their inclusion might be celebrated. But it IS called Halo. And the…

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