Halo Infinite: Multiplayer (BETA)

If you’ve read any of my Halo reviews as I worked my way through the Master Chief Collection you’ll know that I’ve never really been very interested in the multiplayer side of the series. So although I was excited to play the Halo Infinite campaign, I didn’t really have any expectations of or intention to play the MP. No, I expected the MP game I’d really be getting stuck into this Christmas to be Battlefield 2042 . . . and we all know how that turned out.

So with the MP for Halo Infinite releasing in open beta prior to the campaign release, I figured I might as well give it a try. I mean, it couldn’t be any worse than the 2042 beta, right? Well, it’s not. Far from it. I’d actually say this ‘beta’ is more technically polished than many games I’ve played at release. That’s not to say it doesn’t have any issues from a technical / bug / stability point, but they’re pretty minimal and I’m confident the majority of them can be ironed out before the official release.

And, more importantly, unlike 2042, Halo Infinite MP doesn’t have any major or . . . even really minor issues when it comes to the core gameplay. This game feels so good to play. The movement, the shooting, the map and weapon balance. Everything about the gameplay feels so sublime, so carefully considered and deliberate and – most importantly – fun. And maybe that’s because HI: MP takes us back to the basics.

There’s an elegant simplicity to this game. It’s a pure arena shooter that doesn’t rely on spectacle or gimmicks or marketing slogans – BATTLEFIELD MOMENTS! There’s no fancy visual effects. The game doesn’t flood your screen with needless clutter. Everything is so . . . clean and crisp, so easy to read. Maybe it will feel . . . dated, I guess? At least for some players. And I can see people more accustomed to the rapid TTK of games like CoD to absolutely hate it – because Halo has always favoured more precise, tactical play.

Purely in terms of the general game design, I think they’ve really f***king nailed it. It always feels good to play and the more I play, the more I feel I’m improving – learning the maps, learning the weapon spawns, learning how many shots to drop a shield, learning the ideal range for melee – the core might be elegant simplicity, but there’s a lot of depth here, too.

There are a few problems though I do want to mention. Melee connection can, on occasion, feel a little 50 / 50 so that’s something they really need to look at. I tend to prefer ranked play to regular ‘quick’ matches because people do tend to play the objective more – and this is a very objective focused game. However, ranked play has the problem of players either dropping out or getting disconnected at the start of a match and then not being replaced, leading to games that are entirely one sided.

And I have had a few issues with games taking forever to load, only to disconnect at the last moment, or times in a match when there’s a sudden lag spike, totally throwing me off my game. I’m not going to pretend there’s no frustrating little bugs here that need to be worked on but, on the whole, especially compared to that awful 2042 beta, this is still very polished and stable with no obvious, serious issues to resolve.

The game has a decent tutorial and an excellent training mode that lets you fight bots of various skill levels and test / train on any weapon, equipment or map that you want. There’s even a fun series of weapon challenges to play in order to get a feel for how each of them handle. Once your training is out of the way, your first stop will probably be ‘bot boot camp’ which will match you with other players against some mid-level bots.

These matches are a good introduction into the MP and can also be useful as a way to warm up or to knock out some Battle Pass challenges. Then we have Quick Matches which are a 4v4 unranked rotation of Slayer, Capture the Flag, Domination, Oddball and the kind-of-crap One Flag. Ranked play can be set to open input and cross-play, or a solo / duo queue set to either controller or KBM. And finally we have the wonderfully chaotic clusterf**k that is Big Team Battle.

Is Halo Infinite Multiplayer a little thin on the ground in terms of modes and maps? That’s what I’ve seen some people say, but I can’t say I agree. What’s here in this beta is a pretty good start for the game although I do wish there was a way to select what kind of Quick Play matches you’re looking for – a dedicated playlist for each mode would be good.

So let’s talk about the one thing I think pretty much everyone agrees is kind of bad – the Battle Pass. Well, in terms of value and the content you can unlock, I’d say it’s actually pretty decent, and I’d even consider picking it up if the BP progression wasn’t so damn slow. At the time of writing I’ve put 17 hours into this game but I’ve only reached level 9 / 100 in the BP.

Here’s what I think we need – a flat rate of xp for playing a match (they have now added this in, so that’s good) an xp bonus for winning a match, and an xp bonus for coming top of your team – say, 50xp each. This would mean in any given match you would be guaranteed at least 50xp, but could earn 150xp depending upon how you and your team played.

And then we have the challenges. There’s nothing really wrong with the challenge system and I don’t think it needs to be scrapped but what it needs to do is to let me choose what 3 challenges I want active. That way, I can play the modes and matches that I want and enjoy and still level up. Challenges could still give more or less xp depending upon their difficulty, but this way you wouldn’t be stuck with one.

I guess if they did that then they couldn’t sell ‘challenge swaps’ but maybe they could then be used to open a new list of challenges to choose from? I don’t think the system is broken but it does need tweaking. I understand they don’t want people to race through the BP too quickly, but there needs to be a balance and there needs to be some way for the player to progress in the way they prefer, not whatever challenges the game randomly decides to throw at them.

Overall though I’ve been having a lot of fun with the Halo Infinite MP beta. I don’t know for how long it will hold my attention, but I’m glad I’ve played it and given how good the combat feels, I’m even more excited to play the campaign.

Now Playing: The Last Autumn & On The Edge (DLC)

I really did enjoy playing Frostpunk when I claimed a free copy through the Epic Store earlier this year. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I decided to pick up the complete edition when it went on sale recently on Steam. If you’ve read my original review you’ll know that, despite liking the main A New Home scenario, I felt the following scenarios – The Arks, The Refugees and The Fall of Winterhome – stretched the gameplay mechanics to the limit.

I said that – ‘The game was clearly designed around the main scenario and everything else feels kind of stuck rigidly around that, and not in a way that entirely works. It’s like a small game trying to be bigger and more expansive than the mechanics really allow.’

Of the additional scenarios, The Fall of Winterhome is by far the most interesting to play, but it does still rely upon the same mechanics and system of progression that you’re already very familiar with. So I was very curious about the two paid DLC scenarios – The Last Autumn and On The Edge. Do they provide a new twist on the Frostpunk formula, or are they just more of the same?

The Last Autumn serves as a prequel to the New Home scenario. Set before the Great Frost, you’re tasked with building a generator that will one day be used to support a city. Initially, the cold isn’t a concern, although the temperature does drop dramatically during the latter stages of the scenario. So it’s not heat that you need to manage in order to progress and survive – but safety.

Yes, safety. You’re essentially a workplace safety officer trying to build the generator before the Great Frost arrives but in a way that doesn’t kill half your workers. Well . . . that’s actually up to you. You can endanger your workers if you like, exposing them to the risks of fire, structural collapse and toxic gas all so you can build the generator faster, or . . .

You can invest in safety equipment, construct ventilators to improve air quality and sign laws to enable shorter working shifts so your people aren’t pushed quite so hard. It is, of course, a balancing act. You have a limited time to construct the generator and ‘acceptable losses’ may be required to get the job done.

But here’s where this scenario gets more interesting – your workers and your engineers will have their own opinion on how to proceed and how valuable they are to the project. Workers might go on strike, forcing you to negotiate with them, offering them increased rations or even a day off. Of course, you can just crack down on them hard and start executing one every day until they learn their lesson and get back to work.

Like the New Home scenario, The Last Autumn is all about making hard choices in order to survive. It’s about putting you in a position where there aren’t always clearly right or wrong decisions. There’s new technologies to research, new buildings to construct, new laws to pass and a new map to explore.

And then we have On The Edge which serves as a sequel scenario to A New Home. You’ve been sent to set up an outpost at an old military facility in order to transfer resources (steel and steam cores) back to New London. But New London begins to make increasingly unpopular demands of you and your people so you decide to go it alone.

The problem is, you have no generator, no source of food and only a limited source of wood. And this is where the new settlements system comes into play. By sending out scouts and construction teams you can contact and build trading outposts within three other settlements, each of which are willing to provide you with coal, wood, workers and raw food.

These resources don’t come for free as each settlement has its own needs and a list of ‘upgrades’ you can help them construct in order to increase their output. Eventually, you’ll build a ‘safe’ route between your outpost and theirs, enabling them to send a regular shipment of their primary resource.

Eventually, New London contacts you asking for your help and you can either choose to save them – with the help of your new allies – or to let them fall. If your allies do help it will be dependent upon how ‘loyal’ they are to you – in other words, how much you’ve invested in upgrading their camps.

This all might sound like quite a new way to play but I can’t say it’s actually very interesting. Once you’ve got trade established, it’s really just a game of transferring one resource from one settlement to another based upon what you and they need. Your own settlement won’t really expand or evolve much because . . . it doesn’t really need to. It also physically can’t because of how limited the play area is – you’re literally On The Edge of a cliff.

Aside from the settlement stuff which is pretty limited and simple, there’s not really anything new in On The Edge and it’s probably not something you’ll play more than once or twice. Out of these two paid scenarios, The Last Autumn is easily the more engaging to play although it does unfortunately suffer from the same problem A New Home does.

Like A New Home, The Last Autumn plays out more like a puzzle that you need to solve. It’s fun as you figure things out and the game throws unexpected challenges at you, but once you’ve gone through it once, there’s not really any more surprises. You know what to do and how to do it and it’s really just a matter of finding a more efficient way of doing things.

Overall, I’m glad I picked up this complete version of Frostpunk. The extra scenarios, whilst not amazing, are still a good addition and provide their own unique variations on the core mechanics. I think if you’ve played the base game, they’re certainly worth getting on sale. And if you don’t already own Frostpunk, I’d certainly recommend picking up the complete version. There’s plenty here to keep you busy.

The Last Autumn – 7/10 On The Edge – 5/10

Forza Horizon 5: First Impressions

Forza Horizon 5 is the first Forza game I’ve played so, as you can probably guess, I’m not the best person to tell you if it’s a good one or not – at least in comparison to previous games in the series. I’m also not really a big fan of racing games in general. I used to play them a lot more when I was younger, but I don’t think I’ve played more than a handful in the last decade or so which means that I’m also not the best person to review this one – at least in comparison to other contemporary racers.

So why did I even buy it? I guess I had an itch for a racing game and everything I’d seen about Forza Horizon 5 looked pretty good. I jumped in blind, more or less, not even sure if I’d really like it or not but I’m pleased to say my initial impressions are very positive.

Calling Forza Horizon 5 a ‘racing game’ doesn’t quite feel appropriate. I guess ‘driving game’ might be the more suitable label because although there’s a lot of racing in FH5, there’s also a lot of other stuff too.

Before I get stuck into talking about the game, I really want to touch upon the performance. I’m playing Forza on what is now a 9 year old system which, although I’ve made a few upgrades down the years, isn’t exactly cutting edge. Despite that, I’ve been playing FH5 on Ultra settings at a crisp 60FPS. Granted, that’s at 1080p, but I’m still pretty impressed.

Visually, FH5 looks fantastic. The environment and cars, as you’d expect, look great. The only weak aspect when it comes to the visuals are the character models, although I guess they’re not exactly important – but they do look kind of bad compared to everything else.

The game has an impressive opening as you quickly switch between different cars in different parts of the open world map to showcase the variety of environments, vehicles and driving styles. Once that’s out of the way and you’ve finished a couple of ‘story’ based missions, the game opens up and drops a lot of content on you – so much, it’s almost overwhelming.

You’ve got the ‘story’ missions which have a basic kind of narrative to them and these unlock different ‘outposts’ which in turn unlock even more open world stuff to get stuck into – all the different race types, open world activities and collectibles. As you play you’ll earn experience to level up and cash to spend on new cars or upgrades. You also have skill points you can invest in your favourite rides to further boost their experience gain from performing various feats.

You can tune and customise cars to an impressive degree and that’s something I’ve only messed around with a little because I really have no clue what the f**k I’m doing. There’s ‘seasonal’ objectives you can complete for points to earn more cars. There’s a system for building your own custom tracks and sharing them with others. There’s a fun photo mode. There’s a range of multiplayer options ranging from standard races to party games to a battle royale style mode. There’s lots of stuff, so much stuff that it takes a little time to figure out the best way to tackle it all.

And I’m really enjoying it. The variety is great. The challenges are fun. There’s a lot of options to customise your difficulty which in turns boosts the experience you can earn – I’m currently playing on ‘above average’ for AI settings, but there’s about 5 more levels beyond that. There’s always something new to see and do and unlock. It’s been great.

My main criticism of FH5 so far would be that there’s no proper kind of ‘driving school’ tutorial system that really breaks down the different car types, or lets you practice drifting, or explains how to tune your cars to make them better for one kind of race or another. It also doesn’t explain certain features very well – the first time I tried the battle royale mode, I really had no clue what the f**k I was supposed to be doing.

FH5 is a game I’ve had to regularly Alt-Tab out of to check out a guide or a video to explain something and that’s not really ideal. I also can’t say I’ve enjoyed any of the online races I’ve tried yet because even at release I’m coming up against players over level 100 with their own custom tuned cars whilst I’m stuck with a stock rental. Even when I race well in a car I’ve not driven before, half the time I get a DNF because they’re so f**king far ahead.

I’m sure as I progress and unlock new cars and get accustomed to tuning them I’ll be able to enter these races and be more competitive, but right now it just feels like a waste of time.

Despite that, I really hooked on FH5 right now and it’s honestly hard to pull myself away. It’s engaging and addictive and there’s so much fun stuff to get stuck into – I can see myself putting a lot more time into this.

Now Playing: Tales of Arise

Because I can’t remember if I actually played Tales of Symphonia or not, I’m going to say that Tales of Arise is the first Tales game I’ve played and as such, I’m not really the best person to say if it’s a good ‘Tales’ game or not. I can’t compare it to other games in the series. I can’t say what it does better or worse. All I can can do is review what I played, and what I played I really enjoyed.

Tales of Arise begins with a mysterious masked slave living in the harsh realm of Calaglia. ‘Iron Mask’ doesn’t remember anything about his past, at least not until he encounters Shionne, a Renan woman on the run from her own kind. The Renans have enslaved the people of Dahna for 300 years, harvesting their astral energy as part of a contest to determine their next Sovereign.

The Renans come from the artificial moon of Lenegis, and they divided Dahna into five realms, each controlled by a Lord tasked within harvesting astral energy of a certain elemental type – fire, water, earth, wind and light. Iron Mask, who we later come to know as Alphen, decides to join the local resistance against the Lord of Calaglia, aided by Shionne.

As you can probably guess, the Lord is defeated, but then Alphen sets his sights on liberating all of Dahna, which means travelling to four other realms and defeating four other Lords, each with an affinity for a particular type of astral energy. Shionne has her own reasons for fighting against her own people, reasons that become more clear as you progress.

As far as setting up the plot goes, it seems fairly obvious how the rest of the game will play out. The first region is ‘fire’ based, so most of the enemies you’ll fight will have a weakness to water based attacks. The next is a region blanketed by snow so – you guessed it – fire is now your friend. As you progress through each realm you’ll encounter new characters who will join your party and your fight against the Renans.

It might sound fairly by the numbers but the game does eventually go in a direction that you might not expect. Liberating all of the realms isn’t the end of the story – far from it. There’s a lot more to the game and the story beyond this that I’m not going to spoil. And the story can get surprisingly dark at times, exploring themes like slavery, exploitation and genocide.

Overall, I really liked the story and the characters and the direction the game takes. I do have my issues with various aspects of it and I’d probably be dead of alcohol poisoning if I took a shot every time Alphen says ‘Shionne . . .’ in his concerned voice but overall, I liked it. If I had one major criticism of the story, it’s the pacing once you finish the fifth realm.

There’s a section beyond this where you feel like you’re just running from one cut-scene to another for a couple of hours. It’s just an endless series of info dumps and exposition scenes to set up the third and final act. The game also, for some bizarre reason, unlocks a lot of post-game content at this stage, but because there’s no indication for what a quest’s recommended level is, you’ll waste a lot of time travelling to these quests, only to discover they’re intended to be played post-game when you’re 10-20 levels higher.

Tales of Arise isn’t open world, more a series of smaller, interconnected levels which works quite well. It is a fairly linear path through each environment, but there are times where that path will branch, offering alternative ways forward, or optional enemies to fight in exchange for various rewards. And the environments, it must be said, look fantastic. The game uses this lovely ‘watercolour’ style and because each level is fairly small, they’re all well designed and highly detailed.

The character models are anime-as-fuck and they all look good, but I do wish there was a lot more costume / armour variations. The vast majority of armour you’ll buy or discover won’t actually have a visual model – they’re purely stat based. In fact, even by the end of the game you won’t have a great deal of choice when it comes to your character’s appearance. I do like that you can set their visual appearance separately to their equipped gear, but the range of gear that actually has a distinct visual appearance (and isn’t just a differently coloured reskin) is disappointingly small.

The enemies you’ll fight are all pretty cool, although there are a lot of reskins here too. As you might guess, you get elemental variations of a lot of the basic enemy types – the fire bird, the ice bird etc. But there are a good selection of unique enemies – Gigant Zeugles – to fight beyond the story based boss characters too.

In terms of side content, there are 70 side quests to work through which mostly just involve collecting various items (which you’ll probably already have if you harvested the previous area thoroughly) or killing specific enemies. There’s an arena based ‘training ground’ where you can engage in solo challenges for each one of your six party members, or a series of group fights. These are worth doing if you want to unlock more cosmetic customisation options for your characters and also for experimenting with each party member and their unique skills.

There’s also a lot of really enjoyable post-game content to work through and I’m pleased to say, none of it feels like a grind. I finished the main quest around level 60, but the game has a level cap of 100. I was worried the post-game content would just be one long grind but you actually have a series of fairly short but enjoyable dungeons to work through and you’ll level up to around 90 or so without the need to repeat any content or grind any enemies.

The only time I needed to grind a little was right at the very end when I was level 95 and I’d completed absolutely everything else – I just had to fight the final ‘secret’ boss 3-4 times to push me up to the level cap. And I’m not someone who typically bothers too much with post-game stuff. But I liked Tales of Arise enough to do everything – even the fishing. And I think that’s because Arise didn’t waste my time.

It always gave me new content to explore appropriate for my level from beginning to end. It didn’t require me to grind for experience, gear or items. It gave me a generous amount of fast travel points on each map so I didn’t have to waste time backtracking through previous areas. Even the fishing mini-game accommodates the player by telling them exactly what kind of fish are in each location and marking each type off as you catch them so you’re never struggling to recall what you need or where.

What really keeps you playing Arise though is the combat. You begin with just Alphen to control, but by the time you reach the fourth realm you’ll have a party of 6. You can switch between characters at will during a fight in order to utilise each character’s specific skills to their best effect. You have a basic combo move and you can set 3 different ‘artes’ for ground based attacks, and 3 for air. Later, you’ll unlock the ability to have a second set you can switch to on the fly for a total of 12 possible active artes per character, per battle.

The artes are your primary way to deal damage and chaining them together builds up your combo. They come in the elemental variations that you’d expect, so utilising the right kind of arte against the right kind of enemy is important – and you can switch them in and out mid-battle as much as you want. As you attack enemies each member of your party will build their ‘boost’ meter and once that’s full you can trigger a special attack. Boost moves aren’t just about dealing damage though as each character has a boost attack for a very specific purpose – one is used for breaking armour, another to interrupt enemy spell casting – so you need to use them at the right time targeting the right enemy for them to be effective.

Your artes cost ‘AG’ points to use and when you run out you’ll have to resort to regular attacks to recharge them – but you’ll likely also lose your combo. However, activating a boost attack at just the right time can immediately restore your AG, letting you keep pummelling away.

When you attack an enemy and whittle away at its health you’ll build a separate combo bar which, when full, will let you activate a ‘tag’ special move in which two of your characters (somewhat randomised, based on who you initially choose) will unleash a devastating attack. Your party can also enter an ‘overlimit’ mode in which artes no longer cost AG points to use, and by performing a combo combining a certain number of different artes, you can perform another special, very damaging attack.

As you can guess, it’s quite a lot to keep track of and when all of these various artes are popping off all over your screen at once, it can get a little crazy. But the game does ease you into all of this madness by starting you off with only Alphen and a limited number of skills. Of course, Alphen himself has some unique abilities in combat, with the ability to utilise the ‘blazing sword’ which can massively increase his damage output at the cost of his health.

Alphen is, more or less, the main guy you’ll play as because a) his boost ability to immediately down pretty much any enemy is by far the most valuable and b) his blazing sword is by far the fastest way to inflict heavy damage. That said, there will be fights and particular enemy types where it’s actually much easier and more efficient to switch to one of the other characters, or switch between them as the fight progresses. This will, however, depend upon your chosen difficulty.

Difficulty doesn’t really impact anything in Arise – I think you earn a little more level experience / sp points (used to unlock skills) per fight, but the difference is negligible. So you really can play on whatever you find comfortable but I’d actually recommend playing Arise on the Hard difficulty because that’s where, I think, the combat becomes a lot more interesting. On lower difficulties you can pretty much just button mash your way through fights. It’ll look cool, no doubt, thanks to the flashy animations, but it’s not much of a challenge.

On hard though, that’s when you really do need to think about how to approach each fight – which character will be most effective to control, who to switch to as the fight progresses, the timing of boost attacks and ensuring you have the right artes equipped based on the enemy’s elemental weakness. It’s also more important to set up your party tactics – specifically when to use certain items or healing spells based on the percentage of damage you’ve taken. You have a limited pool of ‘CP’ points in a fight you can draw from for healing spells, so you need to use them carefully.

Oh, I almost forgot! There’s also a perfect dodge mechanic in Arise which, if performed correctly, can trigger a damaging counter-attack. I knew I was forgetting something.

Party AI, when you’re not controlling them, is . . . okay. It’s not amazing, but it does the job. They don’t tend to prioritise artes with an elemental focus against an enemy weak to that type of damage, so that’s why it’s important to manually turn artes on and off for them when you’re not controlling them directly. They can also be really bad at the aforementioned dodging.

And this is why, even though I’d recommend playing on Hard, don’t be ashamed to knock it back down to Normal if a fight feels like too much of a grind. I had to for a couple of the Lord fights when they kept unleashing devastating AoE attacks that would totally wipe the other members of my party because rather than dodging, they’d just stand there and . . . die. You can only babysit them so much before it gets kind of annoying.

Overall, the combat has a lot of components, and it might sound kind of confusing, but the game does ease you into things, one step at a time, and by the time you reach the end of the game, you’ll be managing all of this stuff without any trouble. There’s a ‘flow’ to combat, a groove that you just kind of slip into – switching between characters, chaining together a combo, activating boost attacks, triggering a counter before finishing an enemy with a special before switching targets and moving onto the next. It’s great.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Tales of Arise. I liked the world, the story, the characters, the visuals, the music and – most importantly – the combat. My only real issues are the lack of cosmetic armour options and those few hours of what feel like endless cut-scenes following the fifth realm that totally kills the pace. Oh, and don’t be put off by all the DLC shit. The level boosts and gold packs really aren’t necessary at all so don’t worry about that. I can’t say if Tales of Arise is a good Tales game or not compared to others in the series, but I can say I really enjoyed it and would recommend it.

8/10