Halo 5: Guardians

With Microsoft bringing us their biggest Exclusive line up, their star player is leading the march this holiday season. Halo 5: Guardians is finally here and there’s plenty riding on its shoulders to impress the masses and more so to push the sales of the Xbox One. 343 Industries did a great job with Halo 4, bringing a stronger more tactical emphasised FPS with the familiar elements of previous instalments from Bungie.

343 Industries’ has been hard at work over the last three years to develop yet another award winning game that will appease a new generation and loyal Halo fans. With great effort, 343 have indeed implemented new features and dynamic elements for a well-deserved upgrade to the tactical and action packed gameplay we’ve grown to love. New abilities include the Spartan Dash and brutalising Ground Pound, giving players a major performance boost while making you feel like an actual Spartan Warrior. These tactics can be used for agile combat manoeuvres to avoid overwhelming enemy numbers or push forward with brute force.

The biggest addition, being the simplest yet most innovated for the series is the traversing methods. Spartan Dash can also be used for traversal methods such as smashing through weak structures to reveal concealed paths and hidden locations. But players can now thankfully climb up multiple surfaces including ledges and various platforms, adding more of a tactical advantage for players, opening new ways to deal with various combat scenarios. All these features, and including the means of looking down the signs of multiple weapons gives us a refreshing and profoundly engaging Halo experience. Something that is close to the likes of Call of Duty and Battlefield, which might anger some fans as it moves away from the more simplistic nature of a truly captivating FPS. But in many respects it’s still the same Halo, and this is also a problem. But there’s more on that later.

Halo 5 certainly doesn’t disappoint when it comes to its display of spectacular action and eye melting visuals, with beautifully crafted cut scenes, great attention to detail and hugely engrossing in game battles. You explore a range of different worlds with high levels of organic substance such as wild life and impressively rendered particle effects. Yet with this said, the majority of the campaign is shallow, repetitive and quite frankly, short lived. The game overall will last between 6 – 7 hours and experience players will be recommended to go straight for the harder difficulties, even if you’re playing alone. The four player co-op is a great experience but overall add no dynamics to the gameplay, other than helping out a fallen player. Players are again recommended to play with friends as the A.I team mates aren’t very helpful. On the same level as Dom from Gears I might add.

There is little else for other innovations, with the gun play being pretty much the same as before, becoming quite repetitive after the early stages and never making certain set pieces feel as spectacular as they should. The one moment I did feel Halo 5 managed to become grand in scale, was when Locke and his team are jumping down the front of a massive robotic guardian. But otherwise, 95% of the time, it’s shooting galore with no effort on set pieces or new ideas for the series. It's all the same weapons and enemies from before with very little different from the previous 4 games. Other things which made the game feel as though it had run out of steam was the fact you’ll come across the same boss battle 8 times and in one segment you fight three versions of him, all the same. Halo 5 also finishes on an extremely weak note that doesn't have the impact of so many other AAA titles have. These factors along with linear and dull vehicle sections make sure you’re not given much variation in gameplay. But with three other friends and on the hardest difficulty, you can enjoy some of the few impressive battles, even if you play it once.

Story is again sadly flawed, with a lot of narrative context missing between here and Halo 4. You’ll become lost with the plot unless you’ve followed the multiple TV series, read a number of the novels and comics. You’ll end up asking why certain characters don’t have an arm, or who the hell other characters are. 80% of the game focuses on Spartan Locke, who is not a perfect replacement for Master Chief. He seems noble but too much a polite goodie two shoes to respect or admire compare to Master Chief, who himself has become reckless and dried out. His quest to find Cortana gets old before the end of his first mission. He also doesn’t have a lot of missions in Halo 5, for 80% of the game; you’ll play as the charmless Locke.

So the campaign is a mix bag of good innovations yet uninspired and repetitive gameplay. But Halo’s multiplayer is what made it recognised and loved for over three generations of consoles. So what does 343 Industries and Microsoft do with Halo 5’s most beloved and played feature.

Remove Split Screen.

I’m not even joking (well you’ll know by now I’m not!). No split screen at all. The whole purpose of no split screen was to help with the 60fps. But now this eliminates beloved co-op couch fun you’d have with friends when they come over. I and my brother have played Halo when it first came out and now, we can’t relive that joy unless he buys an Xbox One, copy of Halo 5 and gets a gold member. One of the core aspects that made Halo such a great multiplayer experience has been placed aside and forgotten.

This is a bad start, along with some classic game modes such as Big team battle, odd ball, Forge mode and King of the hill being removed too (however Big team battle will be coming back soon in a free update). We are given some new and interesting additions such as Break Out and a 24 player game called Warzone. Although the multiplayer is strong for the competitive aspect, many modes have been removed in favour of a new micro-transactions system. It wasn’t needed and shouldn’t be here at all in my opinion, but it’s a system that’s not truly evasive. But this new micro-transaction system can be an issue for those who aren't billing to spend hundreds of pounds on new gear unlike those who have their mother's credit card at hand. Yet the remainder of multiplayer is still very strong and highly engaging for new players and older fans. Break out is a superb game mode that greatly reminded me of Gears of War's very own Warzone. Due to the fact, players have only one life and in order to complete objectives and score points, you need to work effectively as a team. There’s an extremely competitive nature to the game now more than there ever, with thanks to some Call of Duty style features such as kill cam and the classic fan favourite tea bagging motion. The new manoeuvres and tactics from single player again bring new dynamics into multiplayer, granting you an edge over the competition when needed and the transition is fairly easy to get into.

Halo 5 Guardians is sadly not the ground breaking return I had in mind. It was Halo 4 that really made me appreciate the series and 5 just pushed me away. It’s designed beautifully with great attention to detail and filled with stunning visuals. But sadly this venture is shallow, lacking in a gripping story, any real innovations other than some new Spartan manoeuvres and of course, the biggest loss, removing the split screen experience along with other classic multiplayer modes. It’s still fun, but not a legendary as the series once was.