Freview - Halo 5
For nearly fifteen years, the Halo franchise has exerted its influence across one of the most popular genres in gaming. Fifteen years is a long time in the gaming industry and a lot has changed in the shooter landscape since the early days of the original Xbox. Guardians is an attempt to reconcile all the changes and evolutions that the FPS genre has embraced since 2001.
The bones of Halo are still there. The staccato of an assault rifle, the satisfying smacking of Covenant Grunts, and the power-armored power trip that Halo has always provided look and sound better than ever. When the Master Chief Collection came out, it was strange to push a button and compare the classic look of the old games with the high definition remakes. It seemed like the HD graphics often matched the pictures I had in my fond memories, only to push that button and become bewildered by what captured my imagination so many years ago. Guardians takes that a step further and renders the Halo universe in stunning fidelity. 1080p at sixty frames a second makes the Chief and his companions jump off the screen against some of the lushest backdrops you’ll see in a game today. Even when skulking about the dusty, martial interiors of a UNSC battleship, this game finds ways to splash vibrant color across your screen in ways you wouldn’t expect.
Microsoft Studios
The sound design soars along with the visuals. While most thoughts of Halo’s sound design revolve around chanting monks in one of the most recognized theme songs in videogame history, Guardians sets itself apart. The sniper rifle immediately comes to mind as one of the most perfect gunshot sounds in a game today. There is just enough of a genuine shot ringing through a science fiction filter that perfectly trails off with just the right amount of echo. The heavy footfalls of power-armored Spartans mixes perfectly with the sleek swish of the new maneuverability jets. With the addition of your enemy’s battlefield chatter, or ominous lack thereof, players find themselves amidst a cacophonous orchestra of sci-fi chaos.
With all the love and attention 343 paid to every aspect of this game’s presentation, the campaign serves as something of a head scratcher. After the tour de force that was Halo 4, there was a lot of expectations to build on that success. Halo 4 had the wonderful audacity to question the one relationship that Chief has in his war-torn life. Cortana also carried a wonderful air of humanity about her as an AI on the verge of rampancy. The game was able to take the simple story of a new enemy emerging on the galactic stage and inject it with some genuine, emotional moments between a rampant AI and a genetically enhanced super soldier.
Halo 5 lacks that depth of narrative, partially, because it relegates Master Chief to the role of supporting character, but mostly because it shies away from those same emotional moments that grounded the space opera that was its predecessor. The story in Guardians either does too much or too little at crucial points in the narrative. For all the buildup Microsoft threw into the marketing campaign about this big confrontation between the newcomer Locke and the Chief, all the questions raised by the Hunt the Truth podcast whether humanity’s hero was a traitor, and for all the intrigue of exploring the psyche of John 117 without Cortana in the back of his head Halo 5 does a damn fine job of sidestepping the toughest, most interesting pieces of its own puzzle.
Microsoft Studios
That’s not to say that the campaign is devoid of its share of fine moments. Locke, the controversial replacement of the franchise’s protagonist, has a shining character moment with the simple line, “I’m here because of him too.” It’s a line full of complex motivations and competing ideas that the rest of the game lacks. The structure of the storytelling goes a long way towards extinguishing its own potential. The player either knows too much or too little about what Locke’s team of Spartan 4s is doing or what Master Chief’s Blue Team is going through. There is never any true sense that Blue Team has betrayed humanity. There isn’t even the inkling that Locke and his team believe that the Chief is a traitor. Instead, the Spartan 4s are compelled to action in a planet hopping adventure because they’re not quite sure what that Master Chief guy is up to.
Thankfully, the campaign is dazzling in the mechanical sense. Environments are cleverly constructed around enemy abilities while still feeling natural. Old sandstone temples have crumbled in ways that challenge players to make the most of the new mobility options while dodging gunfire and blowing up tanks. Aside from a few patches of the campaign where I found it more efficient to shoulder charge everything in sight and some repeated boss fights against one of the more annoying enemies in the game, the game strikes a wonderful balance between claustrophobic corridor fights, wide open shooting galleries, and vehicle sequences that don’t feel like Halo 4’s tacked on arcade games.
There is one place where all that fantastic production value is put to good use. The arenas, with a few exceptions, maintain the same level design quality that previous games in the series have enjoyed. Fighting it out in a big, glass, undersea station while a blue whale circles the map is something not found in any Halo game previously. Like Starcraft’s tradition of impeccable balance in the real time strategy genre, Guardians reaffirms the franchise’s commitment to first person shooter quality. Longtime fans of the series might find their favorite weapons shifted a bit on the power axis with the additional focus on the forerunner weapons. The DMR, for example, feels very different in this incarnation.
Microsoft Studios
But familiar and different is an ongoing theme with Guardians. So dropping into the latest remake of Midship and being able to dodge in any direction, boost a jump to heights previously unreachable, or slam your power armored fists into the ground from said heights creating a shockwave rivaling any grenade in the game. This is a watershed game in the series where the influence of its contemporaries shines brightest. There can be no misunderstanding, there will be moments in this game that feel strangely like playing Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. The action flows faster than the classic methodical pace Halo is known for and skews towards the frantic wreck, reload, respawn tempo that most modern shooters aim for.
For fans of those shooters that don’t aim for that pace, Guardians has the new Warzone game type. Warzone plays out as a simultaneous nod towards DICE’s Battlefield games and MOBA games. In many ways, Warzone is the highlight of the Guardians experience. It strips away the lackluster story while creating set piece battles amidst the constant attack and defense of objectives. There’s nothing quite like having an enemy Warthog circle in, ready for the kill, only to be blown up by a teammate’s Spartan slam. Being overrun when defending an objective leads to the satisfying moment of summoning a tank and returning to wreak furious vengeance on the enemy team. Maps are big, without being too big. The action is furious without feeling like it was designed for an audience with a short attention span. The most experimental game mode in Guardian’s multiplayer arsenal is the one that feels most like classic Halo.
Microsoft Studios
In an era where companies are charging full game price for multiplayer only experiences, Warzone alone would seem to be worth the price of admission. Instead, fans of the series will get some of the best Halo multiplayer action since Halo 2 as long as they understand that it this isn’t the Halo they might expect or be used to. 343 Studios poured a lot of love into this game and it shows. Even the new features that might feel borrowed from other games have been crafted into something that feels like a piece of the Halo universe. It feels strange to say that one of the most beautiful features of previous games in the franchise is the ugliest part of this game. The campaign, for all its grand scope and aesthetic beauty, just cannot live up to the production value on display in every other aspect of this game.