My Thoughts on the Halo Infinite MP Beta

When I first found out that Halo Infinite was releasing early, I thought that it was the whole game, and my extreme excitment was only surpassed by the feeling of sadness I had when I could only access multiplayer (I only found out about it because a friend who only has a PS4 mentioned that it was already out and being a parent working full-time I didn't both trying to check before testing it out on my Xbox).

Despite that initial disappointment, the thrill of playing Halo multiplayer came back to me quite quickly.

At the time of writing my first draft for this post (Nov-22), my only lingering disappointment is from the battle pass and how lackluster it is (but I will get to that later).

Returning to Halo, My First Gaming Love <3

Almost immediately I was brought back to my first experience with the Halo series - a series that would become a key interest of mine for more than a decade now. My gaming setup has come a long way from having to share a single old tube TV (using 1/4 of a screen smaller than most TVs you can find today was its own fun challenge).

It was winter 2007, a few years after my parent's divorce, and around the time they had started competing to be the cool parent. Our dad had gotten us an Xbox360 for Christmas in 2006. So far the only games we had played were Kameo and a variety of racing games. We were visiting our dad for the weekend, and because it was cold out he decided that we could rent a game from Blockbuster instead of just a movie like usual. As fate would have it, Halo 3 was the only game there that my brothers and I could agree on, so we rented it Friday night and played it all weekend.

We didn't have any sort of Xbox Live at this point, so we mostly goofed around in custom games, and struggled through the campaign, since none of us had ever played a shooter before. We were bummed that we couldn't try the online multiplayer, because that definitely seemed fun.

Sunday morning we were getting ready to drive back to my mom's house (which was Xbox free). With little more than an hour left before we were leaving I remembered that we had a couple of 2-day free trials in our other games. I plugged in a code and got online for the first time.

14 years later I still remember my first game was on Snowbound, and I got absolutely obliterated. I don't think I got a single kill, but I was hooked.

I think we got the game for Christmas a month/a month and a half later, but we used the last of our free Xbox Live free trials and convincing our dad to rent Halo 3 from Blockbuster again to play as much as we could. When we weren't at my dad's house I would watch Halo 3 videos on YouTube, whether it was trailers, The Halo Hoedown, MLG content, and pretty much anything else I could find.

I never got to play sports when I was growing up, but I got hooked on Halo 3 and turned it into my competitive outlet. I studied maps, played ranked matches, and once my friend got an Xbox we played together. We signed up for all the local library tournaments and any online ones as well. We never did very well (although not bad considering we were 11-15 years old when we were deep in Halo).

Halo in the 2020s: My Initial Toughts on Halo Infinite

When I logged in to Halo Infinite for the first time all these memories hit me full force, and unfortunately, so did the realization that I was probably a better Halo player 10 years ago than I am now.

Honestly, I don't even care how bad I am, it's taken over as my free time hobby now.

Whenever I'm in the game I love it, even when I'm getting my ass absolutely caved in by the beating I get whenever I go PvP. Back on the menu though, that is where I feel disgruntled, because I can't help but think of the battlepass.

I never unlocked all of the armour in Halo 3, but I was never that upset that I couldn't get it. I knew if I improved or really tried hard I could, but with this battlepass so much of the cool armour is locked behind the premium pass.

I've contemplated buying the battlepass for Infinite, especially since I have access through the Xbox Game Pass so I didn't have to pay anything up front, but I am so put off by the idea of having to spend my real life money to get access to the armour I want.

As far as I can tell you can't even work hard enough to get the points to pay for premium like the COD battle pass, and there is so very little available in terms of free content in the battlepass. Maybe this will change post-launch, but for the time being it is more than a bummer.

While writing this blog post, I decided to take a visit over to the Master Chief Collection. I haven't played much multiplayer on the MCC, and usually only hop on for my campaign playthrough I do every 6-12 months.

I decided to get back into multiplayer for a bit though, only to realize that I'm not as bad at Halo as I thought I was.

My first game on the MCC had me feeling like Thor

I'm not entirely sure what the difference was. I thought maybe it was that the movement is much faster in Infinite, but I still did much better on Halo 4 than I did on Infinite... I was putting in games with a 2 KD, which is pretty darn impressive for me.

The other thing that struck me was how quickly I was able to unlock content on the MCC battlepass. I know that 343 won't ever see this, but I seriously hope they decide to put more changes into the Infinite battlepass to make it more like the one in the MCC.

Conclusion

My feelings on Halo Infinite are positive, but slightly mixed. One thing is for certain though, the creative team behind the game absolutely reignited my love of Halo multiplayer - even if I end up going back to the MCC to play the legacy Halos more than the newest entry into the series. Only time will tell.

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