My how times have changed… Halo used to sit atop the proverbial hill of the First Person Shooter (FPS) genre. With its variety of game modes and plentiful social features it provided an accessible and fun gaming experience that was best enjoyed with friends. Halo Infinite potentially represented a return to form for the franchise. What about Halo moving to free to play? What does it do right, and what does it do wrong? All your questions will be answered. Let’s dive into the multiplayer of Halo Infinite!

The Leadup to Release

                Following the polarizing response to Halo 5 in both storytelling and gameplay mechanics, 343 Industries sought to change focus and deliver something more traditional. During the leadup to Infinite’s release it looked like it would be a return to form for Halo. Gone were the advanced movement abilities and loadouts with the return of Arena style action. Joseph Staten, who served as creative director for Bungie back during the height of Halo’s popularity, returned to lead the project. Combine the fact that the game was free to play and would launch across Xbox One, Series X, and PC with Cross-play enabled meant that everyone across a variety of platforms could enjoy it! With Call of Duty Vanguard and Battlefield 2042 released in broken states to universal criticism, Halo Infinite was in the perfect position to capitalize on the failures of its competitors and reclaim the top spot in the FPS genre. Unfortunately, this proved too good to be true…

Gameplay

        Now before I unload on what Infinite does wrong, let’s talk about the things that it does right. As I mentioned in my campaign review, the gunplay and core gameplay loop is very satisfying. The weapons are also a lot of fun. There are a couple of exceptions, such as the Ravager, which started very strong at release before being significantly nerfed. The VK Commando rifle started as a precision rifle with high recoil that encourages players to time and lead their shots. However, the game made it worse with every update. If you’ve never played a Halo game before, have no fear because Infinite has you covered!

                There is a tutorial that you can launch into to learn the basic gameplay and control functions whilst simultaneously setting up the context for the multiplayer narrative events. You can also engage in weapon drills to familiarize yourself with the weapons in the sandbox before playing a match. Included in the training suite is Bot bootcamp, which allows you to team up with three other players and practice your skills against AI bots in a variety of game modes.

                Much like Halo 5, Infinite very much lacked content at launch. However, unlike Halo 5 it took much longer than six months to expand the available content into something comparable to past multiplayer offerings. Infinite experimented with offering timed playlists that could only be experienced for a limited time, often only being available for a week before something else replaced it in the rotation. This did allow for players to try out new playlists, but it also meant that your favorite playlist would only be available temporarily. Infinite has adjusted this so that there is still a featured weekly playlist that doesn’t disappear from the rotation.

                Despite the content and playlists that were added in the year and a half since launch there are still some classic playlists missing. Where is Infection? Data miners found the Infection game mode within the code as early as release day in 2021. We are a third of the way through 2023 and it still hasn’t come to Infinite. The modes that are currently there are quite a bit of fun. Big team battle is where I spent most of my time, but you also have modes such as fiesta, which puts a twist on the classic team deathmatch by giving you random weapons on each spawn. Another of Infinite’s core problems is a lack of maps. 343 has drip fed us content over the last year and a half but it’s a bad sign when the community for Forge has easily contributed triple the amount of maps provided by the actual developers. The maps we currently possess aren’t bad in terms of design, but the lack of variety means you’ll become familiar with the selection rather quickly. If you desire more variety in your maps, you’ll want to stick to the community collections playlist, which will let you play on maps created by players through Forge.

                There is also the stripping of social features. Halo at its core since the very beginning was designed as an FPS party game best enjoyed with friends. Halo 2 was world famous for having the highest population on the original Xbox Live service before it shut down. And throughout the franchise it has put social features at the forefront with such features as voice chat, and post-game lobbies. How does Infinite mess this up you might ask? Well for starters; voice chat is disabled by default, and you can’t engage with the enemy team. Classic Halo had always put an emphasis on social features that allowed you to communicate with your teammates as well as the enemy team, which led to the forming of many friendships and rivalries over Xbox Live.

Progression & Customization

Similarly post-game lobbies after a match would allow you to stick together with other players if you found that you played well together, which cut down on the wait between matches as the game had to find fewer players. Yet Halo Infinite cuts this feature and boots players back to the main menu after every match. So, what we have is a social shooter that does its best to take the social component out of the game, which runs counter to how Halo’s multiplayer was intuitively designed.

        Now while the core gameplay loop is satisfying enough, I find the progression system is yet another sign of 343 mishandling this game. Halo Infinite’s progression system is a battle pass. If you’ve played games such as Overwatch 2, Fortnite or the more recent Call of Duty titles this will be very familiar to you. If you haven’t, to summarize leveling up the pass will reward you with tier-based rewards. In Infinite’s case you’ll obtain armor pieces, emblems, and challenge swaps to name a few. There are a couple of major problems with this system. First off, if you don’t pay $10 for the premium battle pass you cannot use 95% of the things you unlock.

At launch full armor suits were locked behind the paid battle pass. But given the backlash 343 got from such an action they quickly remedied this. Presently, all armor suits are given to players. However, customization of those suits with unlocked armor pieces again requires the paid battle pass. And you can’t swap armor pieces associated with those pre-built sets, which limits the overall customization in a franchise that has featured deep armor customization as far back as 2007’s Halo 3. Did I also mention that armor colors and shaders are also paid content now when changing your armor color had been a thing in Halo since 2001.

                The other core problem is the challenges. At launch Halo Infinite didn’t have match experience or performance based exp bonuses period. At launch challenges were the only way to level up the battle pass. Given that you can only do so many challenges per week this puts a strict limit on how much exp you can gain in a week. Naturally, there was a huge backlash from such a decision, so they launched a technical flight to implement match and performance exp, a feature that has been a part of Halo since 2010’s Halo Reach. Even within 343 developed Halo games, Halo 4, 5, and Master Chief Collection got this right..

                The presence of challenges to fast-track progression isn’t inherently a problem as previous Halo games had also done this. But when it is the main means of leveling your progression system it can alter how players play the game. Say you have a challenge that calls for getting 10 kills with the Energy sword, players may be trying to play the objective, but that is jeopardized by half the team going for challenge kills instead of playing the objective. It is a design choice that hinders the play style of the game and makes it inherently worse. The progression system was designed to be tedious in the hopes that you would pay real money to bypass it, which is a feature in Infinite unfortunately. It is a system specifically engineered to get you to spend real money on a game that truly doesn’t deserve it and despite all the features that have been missing from the game they continue to crank out cosmetic bundles for the shop with alarming frequency.

Conclusion

        True Halo Infinite is in a much better state than when it launched back in 2021, but many core problems still exist and what little progress has been made is not substantial enough to save the game. Infinite has lost 95% of its player base as the game averages around 3000 active players on Steam. Halo Infinite was supposed to represent a return to form for the Halo franchise, but it has been plagued by poor design choices and mismanagement at every turn.

Given that 343 was included in the mass layoffs that occurred across Microsoft and their associated studios I imagine it is all they can do to keep the lights on for Infinite right now. I wanted to like Infinite, I really did. Players shouldn’t have to wait a year for Forge and host custom games with their friends. 343 wanted a live service game but haven’t put in the work that comes with maintaining one. Infinite’s multiplayer pales in comparison to what the franchise delivered in the past. If you thought that the launch of season 3 would revitalize the game. I am sorry to disappoint you. Assuming that you are responsible with your wallet the only thing Infinite can take from you is time, but I refuse to spend any more time on it, and neither should you. I hope Halo Infinite can turn itself around, but I don’t expect it to anytime soon.