Halo Infinite Flighting Experience
Credit to: 343 Industries, Xbox Game Studios, and MicrosoftHow’s It Looking?
Welcome back, y’all! This time around, we’re going to dive deep into my experience with Halo Infinite, or at least the flighting program that just launched this Friday. After staying up late, and waking up early, I finally got my hands on the test, and it’s confirmed that it can be shared to talk about and even show. I tested out all available weapons, got a good look at all available armors, and explored the only map available. I took some good notes on sound design, weapon and armor design, and the map’s design, so this’ll be a detailed article. I’ll have sections for weapons and equipment, customization, and gameplay. Afterwards, I’ll give my final thoughts and rate my experience. Keep in mind, this isn’t like a public beta. In fact, this technically isn’t a beta at all. This is a flighting program where chosen Halo Insider program members are given access to a certain build of the game that provides a limited amount of things available, so that you can give constructive feedback after the flight is over. I did suffer a few crashes, a few glitches, and some long loading times, but that won’t impact the score, because this is just a test, so that wouldn’t be fair. With that out of the way, let’s just jump straight into it.
Weapons and Equipment
For this flight, we’ve been given access to a pretty lengthy amount of weapons. I’ll do a bullet pointed list for each weapon.
MA40 Assault Rifle
Pulse Carbine
BR75 Battle Rifle
VK78 Commando
MK50 Sidekick
Plasma Pistol
CQS48 Bulldog
Heatwave
Needler
S7 Sniper
Skewer
Ravager
M41 SPNKR
As you can see, it’s a really fair amount of weapons. In terms of the new weapons, which include the Pulse Carbine, Commando, Sidekick, Bulldog, Heatwave, Skewer, and the Ravager, they’re all extremely enjoyable weapons. The Pulse Carbine is a nice burst-firing plasma weapon used by the alien forces of The Banished. This is basically all I would’ve wanted as a Covenant equivalent to the human UNSC’s Battle Rifle. Now, it’s nowhere near as accurate as the Battle Rifle, but it packs a pretty solid punch at mid-range. The plasma projectiles even track targets, but from what I noticed, the tracking isn’t that great on any of the weapons with tracking capabilities. The next new weapon is the Commando. This seems to be the replacement of the DMR from Halo: Reach, Halo 4, and Halo 5: Guardians. This a mid to long-range weapon with some seriously heavy recoil. It fires slower than the usual Assault Rifle, but that’s fine since it’s more powerful. I would say that it’s just okay. I mean, once you get the recoil down, it’s a really solid weapon, but with something like the Pulse Carbine and the Battle Rifle in the game, I personally don’t find it to be necessary. I guess it gives you what you would’ve wanted for the Assault Rifle, so I suppose it’s nice to have a repeating weapon that works better at longer distances. Next is the Sidekick. I gotta say, I love this weapon. This reminds me of that beautiful pistol from Halo 3: ODST. This is a super accurate weapon that fires its rounds pretty quickly, though it doesn’t packs the same punch as the old school Magnum. Personally, I don’t find this weapon necessary. At least, this should’ve been available alongside the standard Magnum, because the Magnum is usually a shorter ranged weapon with a pretty slow fire rate, but it packs a pretty good punch. The Magnum definitely should’ve been here as its heavier counterpart.
Next up is the Bulldog, and um… eh? Like, it’s pretty good since it’s a semi-automatic shotgun, but at the same time, I really would’ve preferred the old school shotgun. The old shotgun was a super powerful short-range weapon that killed in just one shot if the person was close enough. Here, you need two up close headshots. I would understand its presence if it was released as the weaker, longer range counterpart to the old shotty, but this is just kinda here. It annoys me that these weapons are replacing the old ones instead of being counterparts that are available alongside them, so that definitely made me lower the grade for this game. Next is the Heatwave. I really don’t care for this weapon at all. It’s a grenade launcher that shoots hard light either vertically or horizontally, and it fires kind of like a shotgun. It sounds more powerful than it really is, because this thing is honestly garbage. It’s a weak weapon that is outclassed even by the Bulldog. I don’t get why this weapon is here, because it’s truly pointless, and I’ve even noticed players avoiding it for other power weapons. It really was no fun. Next up is the Skewer, and man this weapon is CRAZY. This thing is basically the Brute or Banished equivalent to the human SPNKR rocket launcher. It doesn’t shoot out an explosive, but instead, it shoots out a high powered spike at the target, killing them instantly. You need to be accurate with this weapon because it shoots like it’s a sniper rifle. Even when you get the kill, it’s actually treated like a snipe kill. Absolutely love this weapon. The last new weapon is the Ravager. This is a really interesting weapon, because it’s almost like the Brute or Banished equivalent to the Battle Rifle, but it provides an interesting spin. This weapon fires in bursts, but the projectiles basically lob out like it’s a grenade launcher. It also has an alternative form of fire, where you hold down the trigger and release it to let out one projectile that leaves behind a pool of acid. It’s really powerful too, but you do need to be pretty close to someone. Really cool weapon.
In terms of the legacy weapons like the Assault Rifle, Battle Rifle, Plasma Pistol, Needler, Sniper, and the SPNKR, they’re all great. I love the fact that you can zoom with basically every weapon, but this time around, the zoom looks waaay better. I absolutely hated the holographic zoom in Halo 5, and that’s gone here, thankfully. The Assault Rifle is nice and strong here, and it doesn’t have a bad bullet spread at all. It feels powerful too, just like the last two Halo games, so that’s good. The design is nice and classic, designed to look like the Halo: Reach AR, which is so aesthetically pleasing. The Battle Rifle is amazing as always, and it’s back with it’s old school design thankfully, instead of that ugly design it had in the last two Halo games. It’s nice and accurate, and the sound of it still sounds powerful. Love this weapon. The Plasma Pistol actually surprised me with how good it was. This thing seems to be a bit stronger than the Sidekick, while shooting a bit slower than it. The alternate fire is here of course, and that’s where you hold the trigger and let go when it’s fully charged, to release a ball of energy that takes out all shields, making it easier to kill someone almost instantly. The alternate fire feels really weird here, because as I said before, the tracking in this game really isn’t good. I don’t want the tracking to be overpowered or anything, but here, it’s genuinely not that good. The design of it is nice and sleek too, I really love the look. The Needler is pretty good here too, but not at long distances. The tracking seems to be a bit better on this weapon, but something that threw me off was the overall sound design to it. It didn’t sound like a Needler to me, instead, it sounded like a cheap knockoff. The design of the Needler is great too, as it kind of combines the designs from both Halo 3 and Halo 4 and 5. Pretty much the usual Needler that we’re used to. The sniper here is amazing. One thing I noticed is that there seems to be a mechanic that prevents you from spam firing the weapon, which I actually like, because it forces the player to really try aiming for a headshot to confirm a kill. The design is phenomenal, it really reminds me of the Halo: Reach sniper. Lastly, the SPNKR. Nothing much to say here besides the design, since the rocket launcher basically performs the same here. The design is gorgeous of course, because they clearly took heavy inspiration from Reach.
Overall, I had a good time with the weapons. Heatwave sucks though. I didn’t include anything from the vehicles since you can’t actually use any vehicles here, or maybe not yet. The grenades are the usual grenades, but this time, the spike grenade is back, so that’s really cool. The equipment here was limited, but I did get to tinker around with the mines, the drop shield, and the good old overshield. Honestly, mines didn’t work here. Not one time did a mine kill someone, they really are just meant to take out vehicles, because they stick out like a sore thumb. The drop shield was pretty good. It’s basically the bubble shield from Halo 3, but it prevents campers from hiding in them to get their health back. Overshield is just the usual overshield, but it doesn’t seem to be as powerful as before, and I actually like that. Overall, my experience with the equipment wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything great. I did have a good time with the things I had the opportunity to play with though, it definitely was a good experience.
Customization
For customization, I was actually quite pleased. We were given some helmets (two or three of them having an attachment), a few chest pieces, some knees, shoulders, visors, and plenty of armor coatings. Starting with the helmets, I gotta say, I’m not impressed. I feel that they really haven’t learned their lesson with Halo 4 and especially Halo 5. I did think the Aviator helmet looked great, and the Zvezda helmet was cool (even though I personally hate EVA knockoffs), but the other three were so ugly. The attachments weren’t much to look at, and the Zvezda helmet attachment was this stupid attachment that covers almost the entire visor, and it honestly looked pointless instead of practical. I think the overall look of the GEN 3 armors definitely look better than GEN 2, but the helmets provided were almost all terrible. The chest pieces though, were very good. I love the Reach look to them, it definitely looks better than the silly looking Iron Man knockoff armors that they’ve been designing for the past two games. The shoulder armors all look nice and sleek, and they look very practical rather than silly. The knees aren’t much to talk about, but they have been designed well so far. As far as the armor coatings, I gotta say, I enjoyed almost all of them, but I still think it’s honestly a terrible idea. We should have been able to customize our colors however we want, instead of needing to unlock and equip skins for our Spartans. That really is it as far as armor, but we do have something else to talk about.
You can also change the body type of your Spartan, which isn’t saying much, but you can change the overall build of your body instead of selecting a gender. Not only this, but you have access to prosthetic limbs. They even go as far as letting you choose how much of your body is replaced with prosthetics. What I mean by this, is that instead of being limited to only opting to have your arms and legs be prosthetic, you can have just a robotic hand, or a robotic hand and forearm instead of only the entire arm (which you can also do of course). As I noted before, you can actually have robotic legs as well, but the same thing applies. You can choose to have the entire leg be robotic, or just from the knee and down. I really enjoy that attention to detail, so that definitely earned a point from me. Something that’s kind of pointless but still cool regardless, is that you can have your own custom AI companion. The AI comes in different shapes and sizes, such as a sphere, a rhombus, a pyramid, and some sort of long spherical AI. You can also change their colors, which is really cool. I didn’t find myself using my AI companion much, but I did hear them speaking in the background randomly, so that was interesting.
Overall, customization was pretty good. I am severely disappointed with most of the helmets, but everything else seemed good to me. I have to say it though, I genuinely find it inexcusable that there are no playable Elites. I know it has nothing to do with the flight, and this won’t impact the score at all, but it needs to be said. Fans have asked for years to reintroduce them into multiplayer, only for these pleas to fall on deaf ears. It’s ignorant and honestly annoying, so that absolutely needs to be worked on. Again, the score isn’t impacted here, but 343 Industries needs to understand how gross it is to clearly see this common request, and do nothing about it. For this flight though, the customization was pretty good. Good job… on your Spartan customization.
Gameplay
I am so pleased with this game. Unlike a few Halo players, I am glad to see sprint, slide, and climbing back. These are basic functions that should have always been implemented, but that’s just my opinion. Sprint functioned just fine, but sliding was a bit buggy. I won’t knock off points for the bugginess because of course there’'ll be bugs, but the overall mechanic of it was a bit weird. After sliding, you can’t immediately sprint, you have to wait until the slide is over, so that’s a shame. You instead have to jump and then run when you land to immediately stop sliding, so there’s that. The sprint isn’t too fast, which is just fine, because I can’t stand a player who runs away from combat. I love how the weapons feel, and I love that the recoil feels different for every weapon you use. As far as the enemy and friendly target differentiation, I’m actually totally fine with the outlines. I like being able to see everyone’s (not so) unique color customization, and personally, it’s easy to see the red and blue outlines to detect who’s who. More than that, you can actually change the colors of the outline to whatever color you want, but it’s probably less confusing to keep friendlies as blue, and enemies as red. The equipment (minus the useless mine) all felt good. Overshield wasn’t too overpowered, and the dropshield is a lot more balanced than the old school bubble shield since you can’t camp as much with it. The damage output for each weapon felt pretty fair, but I still think that the Heatwave weapon is absolutely useless and really shouldn’t be in the game. Thankfully, the stupid spartan charge ability isn’t in this game, and the evasion thrusters aren’t here either. No running away now. Basically, no silly Iron Man jets on your Spartan… which makes Elites a great fit for multiplayer. Get it together, 343. I can’t comment on how the vehicles function, because they aren’t available, at least not yet. I was also able to invite and play with a friend of mine who was also allowed flight access, so that was great. Overall, this game feels very good, but sliding was kind of annoying.
Final Thoughts
This flight was a pretty good one. I faced some crashes, I faced some bugs, and I faced long loading screens, but beyond that, my experience was mostly positive. Many bad helmets, hate the coating system, and slide definitely needs to be addressed, but overall, I had a very good experience. Super fun to play, super good looking weapons and a fun map, and it was definitely a great time. Keep this up, iron out the bugs, and we have a good Halo game. Let me know what you all think! Were you able to play this flight? Did you enjoy my experience? Let know on my Instagram and Twitter, and make sure you follow both accounts to get updates on all things entertainment! This has been The Wolf Den!
