Halo Infinite Multiplayer Beta

Straight up I must confess that I’ve not played a Halo game since the days of the OG Xbox in good old fashioned 4 player split-screen, screen cheating action. The first things I noticed were “damn that 343 intro looks cool”, and wow the title screen is beautiful. Halos all-too-familiar music also kicks in and adds tone to the atmosphere. The game loads up and wow the reflections on the Master Chief’s visor look phenomenal! Needless to say, the graphics on this game are great. I feel that the campaign is likely to show these graphics off a lot more. I’m certainly looking forward to playing the campaign and seeing what they come up with there!

Game modes

Bot Bootcamp

I initially started playing vs bots to get a feel for the game. They didn’t present much of a challenge at all. I did not realise one could dig down and customise the game. This can be done if you click on the mode of your choice > click a game > custom game. I presume the difficulty I played on was recruit (the lowest) needless to say on that setting they’re pretty much target practise but shoot back a little. This mode is essentially quick play with bots on the opposing team.

Quick Play

Quick play consists of various 4v4 game modes such as:

• CTF (single flag or one flag per team)
• Strongholds (zone control)
• Oddball (Hold the ball to earn points)
• Slayer (Team deathmatch)

The default weapon in quick play modes is the MA40 AR, which is an automatic assault rifle. It’s reasonably effective at close to moderate range, however, I found the secondary default weapon the MR50 Sidekick (pistol) to be MUCH more useful as it’s quite capable at moderate to long-range and almost as good as the MA40 AR up close.

One pet hate which I have with Quick Play is the radar, whilst I appreciate it is a staple of Halo games it’s one component I find detracts from multiplayer as it ends up being a game of “watch the radar” as much as watching the screen and reduces the ability for sneaky or cheeky plays to turn the tide or gain an advantage in a fight.

When playing against players in non-ranked modes I found the skill level varied quite a bit. Pretty much it’s what you’ve no doubt come to expect from matchmaking on games – a mixed bag.

For most weapons ammo tends to be quite limited. This means that you have to be actively taking your enemies weapons/ammo or picking up different weapons which encourages more dynamic gameplay and prevents those who have picked up particularly strong weapons from gaining too much of an advantage from a singular item.

Big Team Battle

Now, this mode is a lot of fun! I laughed maniacally when wiped out by an enemy vehicle rocketing over a crest more than once. There’s also something about the highly dynamic nature of larger scale (12v12) battles, I certainly hope in future we see a big team battle ranked mode as that would be truly awesome! Vehicles, turrets, supply and vehicle drops, secret rooms full of weapons! This mode is cool and I’d love to see it go have a ranked variant!

Ranked

Ranked play has a limited subset of the quick play modes with different default weapons as of course, some modes which may be fun in a casual mode would be difficult or impossible to balance for fair competitive play.

I found the gameplay in ranked mode much more enjoyable. The BR75 is a substantial improvement over quick plays MA40 AR. The BR75 is a 3 shot burst rifle, it’s quite capable at mid to long-range but still decent at close range. I think I’m average-good at FPS games not exceptional and placed in Gold V and quickly progressed upwards to Platinum II which seems about on par with my self-assessment and consistent with my ranking in other similar games, so for me the initial ranking after 10 games was as expected. The other aspect as expected with competitive modes is that teamwork of course stepped up a notch with much more objective focused gameplay.

For me, one major plus was that radar is disabled. This means in ranked mode you’re relying on your senses as opposed to a radar. This opens up the possibility for some great flanking fun.

Weapon Drills

Weapon Drills are an invaluable training tool for learning the ropes with various weapons, some things are too awkward to learn in battle like with the Pulse Carbine two groupings of shots one anywhere and the second around neck/head height will get a kill (vs 3 in the body) and how it seems to shoot a touch higher than the crosshair suggests (at least at the range in the drills) but has a larger than you’d expect hit radius. 3 starring some of them is quite the pain but at least playing the first challenge once on each weapon or the 2nd/3rd with weapons where you need to lead the target will no doubt be of great benefit to your game.

Issues I ran into during beta

On my second day playing I ran into hiccups which is perfectly ok as this is a Beta after all and honestly the game is more polished than most are at release. I ran into multiple errors concerning multiplayer being completely unable to connect. I ruled out as many local causes as possible and even tried the “have you tried turning it off and then on again” for good measure with no success. Thankfully after a few hours, it resolved itself. Another quirk I ran into was that my graphics settings at one point wanted to revert to low, for a GTX 3070 running on an i7 10700 that was a little bit odd, needless to say, the game runs perfectly with settings all maxed out @ 1080p/144Hz. I had more than one instance of players dropping on either team.

The weapons

I won’t go into detail on every weapon in Halo Infinite as there’s quite a few but as expected there is quite a diverse and unique range with a good mix of conventional and covenant weapons, there are also some new energy weapons that I’m genuinely not sure which category they fall into! Some of the old favourites have evolved or devolved over the years. I was excited to find a needler then rapidly disappointed as it is a shadow of its former glory. Not useless but lacklustre in comparison.

I thought the Hydara was a very cool weapon. I found leading a target you could kill reasonably quickly. The lock-on mode however was borderline useless.

Playing Capture the flag and oddball modes one thing was a touch painful. When carrying these items melee hits are not one-hit kills. When I played Splitgate I found that to be quite the entertaining and challenging “feature”.

Conclusion

I found Halo Infinite to be a very polished and enjoyable game. Even as someone who has not played any Halo games since the first I can see how this game would be quite exciting for lovers of the series. If you’re a lover of the FPS genre who doesn’t require absolute realism then you really can’t go wrong with Halo Infinite, it’s currently available on Xbox Game Pass which is a great way to give it a try with minimal expense! It’s genuinely nice to see a game that is in beta this polished of course however I can only comment concerning the multiplayer component but am looking forward to trying the campaign once that’s released!