Game’s fun!
I got selected to beta test Halo Infinite’s multiplayer this weekend through HaloWaypoint’s insider flighting system. I’ve been playing it all yesterday and today and really enjoying it.
Right now, you can only use the Academy mode and matchmake again teams of bots in Slayer. Being so limited is to be expected from an early preview. Halo hasn’t had bot Spartans to play against before, so I’m sure the developers want data on those to improve them.
I’m not really that good at shooters, but so far the bots have been relatively easy. I’m consistently winning games where the player teams have twice as much score as the bot team. There’s supposed to be three difficulty levels – Recruit, ODST, and Spartan, in increasingly difficult order – and the test is currently running ODST bots. The only good thing I can say about them is they are good with grenades. Sometimes it feels like they have no sense of self-preservation, and I’ve had a few literally just stand there as I was shooting them. But again, this is a test, and they’re going to improve them.
The gameplay feels good. I can’t pinpoint why, and maybe it’s just because the starting AR has the same amount of bullets, but the game feels like to Reach, but with Halo 3 aspects sprinkled everywhere. I wish I could better describe a game’s feel in general. I noticed that sprinting doesn’t actually increase your speed much at all. This is probably a good compromise for the eternal “sprinting in Halo” debate.
I like the weapons. The AR is fast, the Sidekick (pistol) is clicky, the Commando (automatic long range rifle, DMR substitute) is strong but hard to control. The new Covenant Banished weapons feel alien, but good. Either the classic Noob Combo will just take time to get used to in Infinite, or it doesn’t work at all, I’m not sure.
The AI buddy feature is pretty neat, and lets new players know where the power weapons are. The Academy mode lets you practice with individual weapons. There’s also a ton of accessibility options. They are definitely designing this game to be for everyone, and I think that’s awesome.
When I set my target FPS to 60, the game wasn’t quite able to achieve it. I have an RTX 2060 and was kind of surprised to see it struggle. Gameplay was consistently 45-55 fps. Aside from target FPS, I’ve been playing with the default video settings (target FPS is 30 by default?) I’ve heard other people say the same about their mid-to-high-range machines. I hope this will be improved for the actual release.
Unfortunately, the preview does appear to have a handful of technical issues. Perhaps the worst one is how I can’t rebind the Multiplayer Scoreboard or Push to Talk keys without the game crashing. There might be more keys that fail to rebind, which I fear might make the preview hard to play for some people. I’ve also had it crash in a match multiple times. Of course, this is to be expected, and whenever you boot up the Insider Preview it tells you to expect crashes. I’m glad these can be discovered now and fixed instead of having to deal with them when the game comes out.
While I can’t see the full customization and unlock menus in this preview, I get the impression Halo Infinite is going to follow a monetization model similar to games like Fortnite. This makes sense, as the multiplayer mode of Halo Infinite is going to be free-to-play. Fortunately, unlike Fortnite’s borderline predatory model, Halo Infinite is going to always allow you to go back and work towards previous battle passes. I do hate to see a franchise like Halo fall to a model like this, but the reality is that this a popular and extremely effective monetization strategy, and I guess I’ll take what I can get as far as companies not being … egregious money hounds.
Excited for this game’s release!