Halo Infinite

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When planning to launch its gaming system at the beginning of the new century, Microsoft fully understands that they have fallen behind Sony with the PlayStation 2 system quite a lot, both in terms of time and the support of the studios that make a well-known game, so they were looking for a potential game to invest in as an exclusive game for their new and powerful generation of consoles.

As a result, after a lot of refinement, Microsoft extended a hand to Bungie, a financially struggling studio for an ambitious first-person shooter project, so that the product was later approved for development the game Halo Combat Evolved released with XBOX at the end of 2001, becoming the first exclusive game for this system and also a “successful guide” for the XBOX series released later, causing many fans to drop out of school, take time off from work, or even report sick to be able to… stay up all night waiting in line when this series comes out!

As the “homegrown” of Microsoft on the console, the Halo series is always properly invested to be able to fully exploit the hardware power from the XBOX console generations to be able to “companion” with the next generation of Microsoft’s game console.

If the relationship “not good” led to Bungie’s departure after Halo 3 version marked the great success of the XBOX 360 system, Microsoft continued to “transfer” ” this brand for 343 Industries to develop the next version of the series. Although somewhat disparaged by the fan community as “lost”, the next versions still fulfill their tasks well.

Typically, Halo 5 can be seen as an exclusive game in the form of “senior” on the XBOX One platform, breaking a series of release records and creating a strong push for this system in the game competition is somewhat lost to rival PlayStation 4.

More than a year ago, following the same old motifs when using the Halo series to “pave the way” for its new gaming system, Microsoft delighted fans when it announced that the Halo Infinite game would be released with the all-new XBOX Series X, but after many difficulties due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation, this game is late to the gaming community.

It was not until early December that this game officially “landed” in the world market with warm praise from the media, becoming a “great salvation” for the shooter genre first-person perspective this year after the humiliating failures of two “hard” games in this genre, Call of Duty Vanguard and Battlefield 2042.

The success of the Halo series comes from many different factors, but 20 years have passed since the first version of the series was released, and there have been many advancements in terms of technology as well as the tastes of players. Gamers have made many changes, making the “original formula” about a hero savior and a sweeping journey, “slap” all the enemies on the road, not necessarily attracting the attention of gamers as before initial.

So since the hand of 343 Industries, the Halo series has received a lot of experimentation and changes in terms of gameplay and scenario compared to the three versions undertaken by Bungie.

But those changes, despite being bold enough with many unexpected plot twists, even … destroying the main plot line offered by Bungie, but overall, they still follow the traditional patterns of the game series.

Until this version of Halo Infinite, both XBOX Game Studio and 343 Industries had to sit together to innovate the game series in a completely new direction, breathing life into the world of Halo as soon as they stepped into the new era.

It is also thanks to this deep cooperation that the game development team received help and advice from one of the “seniors” of the series, Joseph Staten, who greatly contributed to the compilation process. Mission scenarios and edited cutscenes in the first three versions, to be able to shape and integrate the game’s scenario into a gameplay “unmatched” by previous versions.

Waking up aboard a lifeboat after a six-month drift in space, Master Chief, the hero, and protagonist of the series realizes that the Banished and Covenant alliance has defeated the forces of Union Command. United Nations Space Command (UNSC) of humanity aboard UNSC Infinity and take over areas of the world Zeta Halo (Installation 7).

Since then, the “resistance” that gives hope to humanity officially begins with only two survivors: the deserter Echo-216 and our all-too-familiar hero Master Chief. A “hero saves the world” motif could not be more familiar with dozens of popular games on the market so far.

It sounds a bit disappointing, but Halo Infinite’s development team has developed a game circuit that blends perfectly with the gameplay, bringing a new experience that is completely different from previous versions. That way breathes new life into the 20-year-old veteran series in a way that easily satisfies old players and attracts new players to the series.

About 20% of the time in the early game, you will be “warmed up” with classic gameplay when Master Chief tries to destroy a Banished Dreadnought when it captures our rescue ship.

In this game, everything happens just like in a traditional action shooter game. Players only need to go from A to B, “clean up” the opponents on the game screen and duel with powerful mini-bosses to destroy the entire ship.

Almost all of this gameplay helps players, both new and old, familiarize themselves with opponents, weapons and consoles, and even the game’s battle rhythm before “throwing” you into the Zeta Halo’s open world (sandbox) for its resistance journey with completely new gameplay.

It must be said that the great success of Grand Theft Auto V in 2013, followed by The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in 2015 has turned the “open world” into a “fashionable” element in the modern game, but not all games successfully apply this gameplay.

From the very beginning, when 343 Industries “hidden” open-world gameplay was completely different from previous versions, the writer felt extremely concerned for many reasons.

Partly because this game developer himself has never had a precedent to launch any successful product using this mechanism, another part is that the world setting in Halo is quite monotonous, without the intermediate race, there are no peaceful settlements for the player to communicate and unlock the quest system like with the legendary Mass Effect series.

Nearly all Halo games so far are endless battles of “muscle” guys with hands bigger than brains, it is difficult to create a true “open world” enough to attract players to discover interesting things.

In fact, with my long-term experience, Halo Infinite has succeeded… half with this new “Sandbox” mechanism.

The only reason to say this success is half achieved, the main reason lies in the fact that it depends very deeply on the difficulty that the player experiences.

In easy mode, suitable for experiencing the main plot content of the game, the open world missions become true “chicken tendons”.

They are the tedious, repetitive set of a process of capturing a Forward Operating Base (FOB), rescuing besieged troops, “clearing” a few wanted sub-boss want to earn money to upgrade weapons and recruit soldiers, to find the core upgrade features for the armor (Upgrade Core) are … marked on the map.

All of these elements are pretty boring at easy and medium levels as if you were playing Just Case 4, an open-world game of mediocre quality, in the first person.

But if you are a “hard fan” of this series and want to try the hardest mode “Legendary”, the story will be completely different.

At this point, you will realize that the superhero Master Chief will own the same level of health and armor as a… piece of paper. Even though just a few shots of a monster or two are enough to force you to reload the game screen, the side quests on the map become extremely meaningful.

You need Marine units to support “sharing firepower”, need more money and equipment to be able to “crush” crowded opponents everywhere, to get precious upgrade parts, or help you rush to the main quest areas that contain hordes of “majority” opponents, and above all help, you have enough health to fight the bosses of the clan. The kind that never ends without a drop of blood.

In this respect, Halo Infinite in Legendary mode is somewhat similar to the cult sandbox game Horizon Zero Dawn from the PlayStation house, which requires a lot of player skills in fiery battles.

You will have to see the weaknesses of the opponents, use the right weapons and tactics, and accurately shoot with the ability to predict the alignment of the bullet’s path to be able to quickly defeat the opponent in the game when you have to constantly move, dodge the dense bullets of all kinds of weapons from the enemy.

Each battle, even if it is a side mission, is always a real challenge to the player’s ability, bringing a certain excitement throughout the game.

The main missions are arranged in separate areas that are built extremely elaborately, both in terms of plot and graphic mechanism, with a large number of enemies and aggressive bosses who always find ways to stop player steps.

Through each mission with extremely meticulous cutscenes with background music that can elevate the player’s emotions, the main plot of Halo Infinite is gradually exposed naturally with the most dramatic elements determined, revealing many of the mysteries of Cortana’s betrayal and the UNSC’s defeat against the Banished invaders, as well as their purpose in capturing Zeta Halo.

This natural and ingenious way of leading the story is attractive enough to entice players to go through arduous battles with many different emotions, to find answers to hidden mysteries, as well as the real ending of the game, which is only available to gamers who can go through the game on “Legendary” difficulty.

Finally, with technical help from AMD to ensure the game can work stably on the XBOX Series X consoles, the game can work extremely smoothly on the latest graphics cards from the “red team” even though I only use an outdated graphics card model at mid-range settings, providing an extremely smooth experience for players even in fast action scenes that require all to be played display quickly and accurately.

In addition to the tight and skillful combination of plot and gameplay, Halo Infinite also attracts gamers, especially veteran fans of the series with “hard” bosses.

In the “Legendary” mode, each boss is a real challenge in many aspects for the player with the power to bring Master Chief to die with just one attack, while possessing a large amount of health and energy armor, pushing the fighting environment to the climax.

To defeat these bosses, players must show a high degree of environmental observation and the ability to accurately control each move with lightning time, making even veteran gamers of the series always feel stressed during the battle.

Each boss is designed with a unique appearance, and skill that is not repeated, enough to “kill” the player, such as the first boss, Tremonius, which can fly and “bounce” on your head, or the second boss – Chak ‘Lok, possess the ability to stealthily attack the player from any angle with a fatal energy sword stab.

All bosses are arranged in separate areas in the style of the Arena with different properties that benefit them, but the developer also always arranges many elements that players can take advantage of used to support his arduous “boss fight”.

Almost every boss fight is a “hard” match from the first contact, through which, gamers gradually learn the environmental advantages and strategic weaknesses of the bosses, to from there exploiting into separate “boss battle scenarios”, but also extremely strict to be able to defeat their opponents in the style of Dark Soul games.

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Halo Infinite: Standard Edition – Xbox Series X & Xbox One: Buy it now

Since then, the atmosphere of these boss battles has always been pushed to the climax with the weak phases of the boss’s blood, forcing them to “show off” more, making it much easier to die when success is near narrowly so that when the goal is reached, all emotions are “broken”, bringing excitement and joy to gamers when overcoming challenges.

In general, the inclusion of characters in boss battles with a closed environment belongs to the classic game design school, usually only found in traditional “scenery” action games like God of War or Bloodborne, rather than being in an open-world game with Sandbox-style free-space combat.

But Halo Infinite shows a smooth combination of classic elements into a modern game mechanism, bringing climax scenes both in the story and in the player’s emotions.

Also following the trend of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Halo Infinite is a free multiplayer mode for gamers with a modern yet classic fighting style, suitable for eSports e-sports matches.

It must be known that Halo Combat Evolved kicked off a new e-sports movement at the time the game was released in 2001, with a series of professional tournaments attracting many of the system’s top gamers console joins.

There was a time when this console-based shooter competed “closely” with the legendary Counter-Strike in North America with a large audience, even a few professional tournaments for this game still exist until recently when the Anniversary version was released.

Inheriting such a huge “eSports fortune”, the multiplayer part of the game is enough to attract gamers who love the fighting shooter series with many different game modes, with designed careful, meticulous weapons set up with a high level of balance.

Unlike modern war games that try to cram as many players as possible with all kinds of heavy technology military equipment, Halo Infinite’s multiplayer has a much more “classic” style.

It is a battle of small groups with members working closely together with individual weapons to win through achieving the goal of the level.

With the amount of “strong armor”, and “cheap guns”, often duels are non-stop archery battles between two players in a style that is easy to see in traditional eSports games, so they Coordinate with teammates to be able to quickly take down the opponent becomes more necessary than ever, giving the team an advantage so that they can move towards the ultimate goal of victory.

There will never be a strong gamer who can “carry the team” with super weapons or divine skills to defeat a whole group of opponents like with many modern war games today, even if it’s professional players unless you’re fighting a bunch of strong, one-on-one opponents.

Thanks to that, each online game screen between teams is extremely tense and attractive, more e-sports than for entertainment purposes.

Currently, Microsoft also has plans to organize an e-sports tournament with the game Halo Infinite, but Microsoft itself is struggling with the lack of XBOX Series X machines to host this tournament.

As a game developed to be a “pump” for the new generation of XBOX Series X consoles with a strong appeal for gamers from start to finish, Halo Infinite still has a lot of “problems” to become a monument like the previous versions.

First, it can be said that the graphics quality of this game is not commensurate with the impressive processing power of the new generation of gaming consoles.

Although introduced mainly for the new generation of consoles, this game is still only built on the graphics platform of the previous generation of consoles to serve a large group of gamers who are still struggling is using XBOX One, without trendy effects such as Ray Tracing effects, graphics card reduction effects like DLSS or AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution.

The quality of the model and the surface texture are also not excellent, giving gamers a feeling of being overwhelmed by the way that the Halo Combat Evolved version does on the XBOX platform, the Halo 3 version on the XBOX 360, or Halo 5 with the previous XBOX One system.

Besides, with Far Cry 6, the “dull” performance of the computer opponent comes from the too complicated creating behavioral scenarios, with Halo Infinite, the “dullness” of AI comes from scripts that are created in a very “primitive” way, almost not much different from the competitors launched in the first version 20 years ago.

They just move along the pre-arranged routes, run around and shoot at the player with all their firepower, without knowing how to hide behind obstacles or show suspicion when attacking and reveal the corpse of a teammate if the player is in stealth mode.

Even the “boss” only acts according to a fixed scenario with certain routed moves around the player, or a few combos that strike invariably into the air in the way that you can easily “guess” after a few tests that are often found on classic action games like Mega Man or Contra, rather than the “situational” and subtle behaviors like bosses in titles like Ghost of Tsushima or Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

That makes boss fights difficult, mainly because of the massive amount of damage they do per hit rather than the way they fight you.

In addition, Halo Infinite also has an auto-save mechanism that is too arbitrary without allowing users to manually save the game.

Even in the writer’s experience, there was a time when the game backed up even during the boss fight when there was a change in the upgrade stats, right before a boss’ killer attack, causing the player to lose control only way… restarting the game screen from the beginning, very time consuming and extremely inhibiting for players.

Finally, the game also has a few minor technical issues that can be fixed through a few updates.

For example, during the duration of the game, it is easy for players to see surface texture loss with objects or distant opponents, especially when you look through the viewfinder of sniper rifles.

Or machine opponents can sometimes get “stuck” when moving through complex terrain and still stand, even if the player runs close to the side.

Even so, these technical factors are quite small, having very little impact on the player’s experience.