Halo 5: Guardians

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In some ways, Halo 3 was the high point of the series feature-wise – with dual-wielding, items, vehicle hijacking and a level selection that offered both the large battlefields of Halo 1 and the staged but engagingĀ corridor fighting of Halo 2. ODST then made some cutbacks which at the time felt okay since it was a different kind of game, but some of the features never really came back. On the one hand, this takes away from the “combat evolved” tagline, the earlier Halo games felt more like sandboxes allowing you to play around with different systems. On the other hand, Bungie and 343 were clamping down on the core gameplay, always a strength in the series.

Halo Reach introduced the concept of classes that made gameplay more interesting without adding much complexity or otherwise slowing it down, and in a similar way Halo 5 has expanded on the basic moveset of the spartans to allow for some really nice close quarters combat. It still feels more staged and restricted than the earlier Halo games, but the second-to-second combat offers more complexity – I’m wondering if this is not a good thing in the end since the larger scope only really concerns the campaign.

The story still doesn’t quite agree with me – the dual-perspective storyline feels like it prevents it from going deep enough andĀ it glosses over important character development by bringing up too many subjects. But that may be just me. In the end, I find most of the game to be okay to good but the shooting to be really enjoyable, not at all a bad place to be for a shooting game – even one with as much legacy as Halo.

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Posted on Nov 27/15 by Saint and filed under Reflections | No Comments »