2022 Games of the Year: Halo Infinite

By -

Halo Infinite is both a hard game to assess and an easy game to assess.  It's essentially just more Halo.

But... it's a good Halo.  I've felt like the Halo games have been more "miss" than "hit" ever since Halo 3 and this is the first time I've latched onto one and truly enjoyed it since then.  I did play and finish Halo 4 and Halo 5 but I didn't think they were very good.  Plus, they felt less and less like the classic Halo I enjoyed.

Halo Infinite is a return to form.  It allows you to finally live out the fantasy that the box art from Halo 1 promised all those years ago.  "Here's an open world on a Halo ring.  Go nuts.  Have fun!"  Kind of.  The hedging here is because Halo Infinite also has more traditional Halo levels and they're just not that good.

I enjoyed most of my time in the open world but I struggled to stay engaged through the scripted corridors of the more traditional level structure.  The worst part was that the game was backloaded with those types of levels.

It's safe to say I feel mixed on the main campaign.  Although, the biggest highlight there was the grappling hook.  It alone is amazingly fun.

Multiplayer got its hooks in me for a few solid weeks when this game launched.  I was playing multiplayer and getting progress on the battle pass daily from the time I started playing Halo in December until sometime in the first half of January.  It was a pretty good run.  I could definitely see a future where I go back for more Halo Infinite multiplayer as they develop that over time.  Maybe a certain season will have something interesting that resonates with me and pulls me back in kind of like my current relationship with Fortnite.

Halo Infinite is the best Halo game I've played in years and the multiplayer bumps it up a notch too.  I feel like this one might hang out in the top ten for awhile but I'm interested to see where it lands by the end of the year.

That means our running ranking currently looks like this:

  1. FFXIV Endwalker
  2. Halo Infinite
  3. Unpacking
Congrats Halo Infinite on being the best Halo game I've touched since Halo 3!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Latest Board Gaming

By -
Image
Besides video games I also regularly play board games when I'm hanging out with people face to face.  My brother, my wife, and I end up playing a lot of 3 player board games, but sometimes we get other players involved too. I realized I haven't talked much about what I've been playing in the world of board games, so here goes: Ticket to Ride - We own 3 different base versions of Ticket to Ride, 2 expansion sets, and an extra map set.  We love this game.  This is the game that gets the most overall table time when I'm playing board games with friends.  It's super accessible but still holds fun for people who have been playing the game for a long time.  I recommend this as a great beginner board game for anyone. Masquerade - A hidden role game where roles are constantly switching hands.  You're limited in actions on your turn and can only take one action.  This means that a lot of the time you're not entirely sure what role you currently have.
Read more

S2E22 - E3 2017 - “Who doesn’t want to be a dinosaur?!”

By -
E3 Hype! E3 2017. Not comprehensive. Not VGNN.  Only talking about things we think are interesting enough to talk about.  You have video game news sites for the rest :) We’re talking about Press Conferences, if more news comes out throughout the rest of the week it won’t be here because we’re recording on Tuesday night! http://e3recap.com/ has been my friend Overall trends Esports being forced onto games that aren’t even out yet “Influencers” being put front and center BJ: torn on the current “influencer” boom. Feels like a bubble that’s totally disingenuous Shorter press conferences with less big game announcements Really hard to tell what is actually exclusive Microsoft “Console Launch Exclusive” Most of these press conferences would have been better pre-recorded as just a series of trailers instead of having a stage show, honestly. Updates on games we already knew existed.  This is what we get for so many years of announcing games way ahead
Read more

Games of the Year 2022: In Conclusion

By -
This running Games of the Year list has been an interesting experiment.  I decided to start this series right as we were shutting down the Geek to Geek podcast as a way to keep creatively broadcasting some gaming thoughts out into the world.  I learned a few things from sticking with it this year. The main thing I learned is... I just don't have as much desire to broadcast my thoughts out in public as I used to when I started this blog or when I started podcasting.  I still love to have in-depth discussions about current games and general geekery, but I feel less and less need to broadcast those thoughts widely.  Honestly, it's been over a decade of blogging and podcasting at this point.  It would be more surprising if my relationship with the media landscape hadn't  changed. Around mid-year I started trying to use Twitter as more of a microblogging platform to do very short quick-hit thoughts about games but didn't get much traction or conversation going which was wha
Read more