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.