Halo: Infinite

[Juxtapose]

Digital Foundry got to try out the Campaign on Xbox Series. Overall, looking very good, though apparently the Campaign's cutscenes play poorly:

Based on what they found with the Xbox Series S, I'm glad I didn't pick one up. I figure my Xbox One X will play the game similar or even better.

 

[Dankster Morgan]

Really loving the multiplayer! The battle rifle feels so good. The cinder shot is really fun to use, its super satisfying hitting someone around the corner.

 

[Juxtapose]

@Dankster Morgan Joe Staten talking about how Halo 2 was originally supposed to end:

 

[Dankster Morgan]

@Dankster Morgan Joe Staten talking about how Halo 2 was originally supposed to end:

Ryan is one of the best people at IGN. Genuinely does good work and is a really skilled interviewer. You can tell Joe appreciated Ryan engaging with him as a person before going straight to Infinite talk in the full interview. I don’t like IGN but if Ryan is doing the review I will take it seriously.

 

[Juxtapose]

Some more ads, one being live action:

And of course, the Campaign's Launch Trailer:

Less than a week to go!

 

[Dankster Morgan]

The campaign launch trailer especially was very good. Really excited to play the campaign. I think I'm gonna do it on heroic. Was debating between normal, heroic, or legendary. Legendary sounds too sweaty to enjoy the story on my first playthrough and I think normal won't be as engaging.

 

[Juxtapose]

The campaign launch trailer especially was very good. Really excited to play the campaign. I think I'm gonna do it on heroic. Was debating between normal, heroic, or legendary. Legendary sounds too sweaty to enjoy the story on my first playthrough and I think normal won't be as engaging.

I always do a first playthrough on Normal, second on Heroic.

 

[Marinjuana]

Going in blind on all of these new trailers. I did love those Halo 3 live action commercials. Can't wait for this

I do Heroic, I think that's been the most balanced difficulty. Enemies feel strong like they should and you feel good for killing them. You are less likely to get stuck on some Jackal snipers or something, allowing the spoonfeeding of the narrative to continue unabated. And if you beat Legendary first, it's like you have less content.

 

[Dankster Morgan]

Going in blind on all of these new trailers. I did love those Halo 3 live action commercials. Can't wait for this

I do Heroic, I think that's been the most balanced difficulty. Enemies feel strong like they should and you feel good for killing them. You are less likely to get stuck on some Jackal snipers or something, allowing the spoonfeeding of the narrative to continue unabated. And if you beat Legendary first, it's like you have less content.

Legendary is only even fun at all in a few of the games. Not because it's impossibly hard or anything, but it becomes more about memorization and cheesing than it does actually playing through a scenario. CE legendary is good, 2 is absolutely terrible, 3 is mostly playable except vehicles are terrible, ODST is surprisingly not the worst, Reach is good minus the elite 6 frame on hit melee one hit kill, 4 same as reach except knight bullshit and the monotony wears you down, havent done or attempted 5.

 

[Dankster Morgan]

I always do a first playthrough on Normal, second on Heroic.

I think that's a good move

 

[Juxtapose]

I think that's a good move

Yeah. I do that because on my first play through, I really want to enjoy the story above all else, and that let's me easily do so. Heroic is the "real" difficulty for Halo, that's always been the case, and that's what I play afterwards.

 

[Marinjuana]

Legendary is only even fun at all in a few of the games. Not because it's impossibly hard or anything, but it becomes more about memorization and cheesing than it does actually playing through a scenario. CE legendary is good, 2 is absolutely terrible, 3 is mostly playable except vehicles are terrible, ODST is surprisingly not the worst, Reach is good minus the elite 6 frame on hit melee one hit kill, 4 same as reach except knight bullshit and the monotony wears you down, havent done or attempted 5.

I mostly agree about the consistency of Legendary across the games, but I'm going to defend Halo 2.

Halo 2 has the frustrating yet satisfying style of a NES hard game, a Dark Souls. I'd liken it to Kaizo Mario levels. It's a lot of plasma pistoling but it's fun to figure out how to progress past certain encounters, Hunters stick out. I remember really enjoying the final level on Legendary with Arbiter, where they throw hoardes of tough enemies at you that you mostly have to fight due to the linear level design. You get those badass Elites to hang with you and they can be used to distract enemies if you protect them a bit. It's definitely masochist level difficulty in that game, but it could be surprisingly fun in my experience

 

[Dankster Morgan]

I mostly agree about the consistency of Legendary across the games, but I'm going to defend Halo 2.

Halo 2 has the frustrating yet satisfying style of a NES hard game, a Dark Souls. I'd liken it to Kaizo Mario levels. It's a lot of plasma pistoling but it's fun to figure out how to progress past certain encounters, Hunters stick out. I remember really enjoying the final level on Legendary with Arbiter, where they throw hoardes of tough enemies at you that you mostly have to fight due to the linear level design. You get those badass Elites to hang with you and they can be used to distract enemies if you protect them a bit. It's definitely masochist level difficulty in that game, but it could be surprisingly fun in my experience

Can be fun because Halo is awesome. It’s cool in that it’s a completely different game. But you have to rely entirely on hard pings. Headshot weapons, grenade sticks, needler explosions. You can die almost instantly and only are stronger than flood infection forms. Not fun to me, but is satisfying in an “I did it” sort of way

 

[Juxtapose]

Digital Foundry has posted a tech review of the Campaign. I'm halfway through the video, but overall, it's looking very nice. This is the Xbox Series X version:

 

[Marlow]

So is it out yet?

 

[Juxtapose]

So is it out yet?

Multiplayer is out (and technically in beta). The Campaign releases on Wednesday.

 

[Marlow]

Thanks. I think I downloaded the multiplayer, but then I packed up my xbox because I'm moving in a month.

 

[Juxtapose]

Thanks. I think I downloaded the multiplayer, but then I packed up my xbox because I'm moving in a month.

Ah. The Multiplayer is free to play, so anyone can try it.

Having said that, I hope your move goes well!

 

[Juxtapose]

For those planning to play on PC, Digital Foundry released a video showing their recommended optimal settings for the game:

They also compare it to the Xbox Series X version, determining what settings that top console version uses (mostly High).

 

[Dankster Morgan]

For those planning to play on PC, Digital Foundry released a video showing their recommended optimal settings for the game:

They also compare it to the Xbox Series X version, determining what settings that top console version uses (mostly High).

Really happy with my XSX for the $500 price tag especially. I like it better than the PS5, which is saying a lot because I think they are both huge improvements on last gen (in every way, not just the obvious advantage of power), and I thought ps4 was better than xb1. XSX really is the better choice in late 2021 to me, with game pass, deeper backwards comparability, marginally more power, more consumer friendly practices, just as good of exclusives as of this date, and all that. However that may change when Sony releases the new Spider-Man, Wolverine, God of War Ragnarok, the presumed sequence to Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon, and whatever Naughty Dog is doing, as well as how good their upcoming version of game pass compares to Xbox. Depends how intelligently MS uses their newly acquired studios.

 

[Juxtapose]

Nice. You still can't find Xbox Series X's here, only Xbox Series S'. I'm waiting for the Digital Foundry video that compares the other three consoles' (Xbox Series S, Xbox One X, and Xbox One S/Xbox One) versions of the game, as I expect to mostly play on Xbox One X.

For the consoles themselves, both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series continue to have "poor exclusives," simply because said exclusives are typically on last generation platforms as well. Once the consoles are more available and PlayStation 4 and Xbox One gets phased out, we'll see what happens.

Overall though, I truly think this generation is Microsoft's for many of the reasons you listed. When Spencer took over Xbox after the disaster launch of the Xbox One, I think he knew the generation was lost and they focused instead on building themselves up for the next gen.

They used last gen to develop and test out Game Pass, backwards compatibility, cross-platform (especially with PC), and also 4K gaming consoles. There's just so much value to the Xbox brand now, whether you're gaming on their consoles or not.

 

[Dankster Morgan]

I think the horrendous launch of XB1 was a blessing in disguise.
With XB1 being underpowered and not having exclusives, MCC launch being horrible, and Halo 5 being a disappointment for fans and for their expectations, they were forced to be creative. If the XB1 wasn’t lacking in all those areas, I doubt Microsoft would have came up with game pass, the first major pro the Xbox has over PS, or that they would have aggressively bought so many game studios, or that they would have made such a point to be sure that the XB1X destroyed PS4 pro, or that XSX overpowered the PS5, or to delay halo infinite to make sure it is the game it was supposed to be. I really do trust them now.

 

[Juxtapose]

I think the horrendous launch of XB1 was a blessing in disguise.
With XB1 being underpowered and not having exclusives, MCC launch being horrible, and Halo 5 being a disappointment for fans and for their expectations, they were forced to be creative. If the XB1 wasn’t lacking in all those areas, I doubt Microsoft would have came up with game pass, the first major pro the Xbox has over PS, or that they would have aggressively bought so many game studios, or that they would have made such a point to be sure that the XB1X destroyed PS4 pro, or that XSX overpowered the PS5, or to delay halo infinite to make sure it is the game it was supposed to be. I really do trust them now.

All good observations.

The big shift I saw was with the management; I truly believe that Matrick was the negative element, who's business model was horribly flawed. He simply did not understand his customer base and what they wanted from the product and brand.

Spencer, on the other hand, has that together, and while both PlayStation and Xbox have great things to offer, Xbox now has lots of pros over PlayStation as you noted.

I've mentioned before I'm not a fan of Sony as a whole, I find their company and customer relations to be vary arrogant, and I find they don't learn much from their mistakes.

The PlayStation 3 was a disaster, and it took them years to change their business practices to even begin recovering. But instead of learning fully, they took advantage of Matrick's poor and insulting communication and capitalized on that to dominate last gen. And of course it worked, but they didn't learn, they haven't innovated, and now we have the PlayStation 5 which I can see struggling this gen, certainly not being dominate like last gen.

Time will tell, of course.

 

[Juxtapose]

Here's Digital Foundry's video comparing all four Xbox console versions:

I must say, it's pretty impressive that it runs as well as it does on the Xbox One S. Performance on the Xbox Series S looks disappointing, especially on Quality Mode.

For me on my Xbox One X, I'll be playing on Performance Mode. Looking forward to installing and playing tonight!

 

[Marlow]

Ok, so like, now it's out, right? Finally?