Halo 5
Reviewed on Xbox One
Developer: 343 Industries
Three stars
It's not quite Star Wars: The Force Awakens but in certain households Halo 5: Guardians will have been awaited with the same tense anxiety, hope and mania familiar to teenage (and not-so-teenage) devotees of serialised science fiction stories.
Halo 5: Guardians sees characterless death-machine Jameson Locke lead a team of Spartans to track down the Master Chief, who has gone AWOL after receiving a vision in which Cortana, presumed dead, calls him to visit a distant human colony. You play as Locke hunting the Chief, and as the Chief hunting Cortana.
That's the first few missions. Thereafter the story makes little sense unless you have invested heavily in buying Halo novels, Halo comic books, and wrestled with Halo videos on YouTube. Only at the end do we have any real idea what is happening. The story then crystallises into, basically, the plot of I, Robot. Except it doesn't make as much sense.
The biggest change to Halo's gameplay is the introduction of a squad. Locke and the Master Chief have their own teams of supersoldiers. Of these, only Buck (voiced by Firefly's Nathan Fillion) can claim to be even slightly entertaining, and stilted, soulless writing makes their presence a drag on the story.
The squad’s net contribution to the gameplay is mostly as an irritant.
In combat, the friendly AI is uninspired at best. But the squad's presence removes some of the fun of Halo's solo campaign, part of which is that you are forced to come up with a way to outflank or beat every enemy yourself — you have to use the entire environment and all the tools it offers you. But with allies roaming around, doing some of the work for you, the problem is no longer yours to solve. Instead you mostly wander vaguely forwards. Squad controls exist, but are sufficiently primitive to serve as an annoyance, rather than an aid.
Another new feature is that allies can now revive you. Mostly, this makes your allies behave suicidal, rushing towards your paralysed body, and, usually, dying with the arms outstretched towards you.
In previous Halos, reloading the game gave you another chance to attempt tactical variation. It made combat situations a learning experience — and so encouraged the level designers to really test you. Here, even bad tactics can be rewarded if you can just cling to life.
It is during the boss fights that the squad mechanic becomes most frustrating. There is one boss. He is vulnerable only on his back, so it requires teamwork to defeat him. But your allies are singularly incapable of helping you during these sections. If this had been noticed by the game designers, they didn’t act on it — you are forced to fight the same boss three times.
In short, the campaign is a disappointment and probably the worst in the Halo series. Predecessors Halo: Reach showed how to fashion a narrative around gorgeous and fun set pieces; while Halo 4 attempted, somewhat clumsily, some character development in the Chief-and-Cortana quasi-romance — they did recreate the Death Star trench run in the Halo universe, which suggests that the developers had a sense of humour. But Halo 5's campaign seems to have forgotten how to have fun.
Players differ, however — and in multiplayer, there is plenty to like.
War zone, a new mode that fuses Halo and Battlefield, sees 40 players fight over massive maps to claim territory and kill enemy NPCs. This is accompanied by the introduction of the 'Req' system — essentially, good weapons and vehicles are now rationed, instead of spawning randomly around the map. The rationing is very generous. You must collect cards that allow you to use specific vehicles and weapons, and then also unlock those vehicles and weapons by scoring enough of two different kinds of points during a match. You can also pay money to collect more cards — because the US$60 (Dh220) or $90 sticker prices aren't high enough. It's a long way from camping out at the Scorpion spawn point on Blood Gulch. But it's not more fun.
Multiplayer’s other staples are as strong as ever. SWAT, a mode in which headshots kill instantly and all players start with the same weapon, is especially tense. A new feature in which you can jetpack, pause in the air, and change direction, is a real improvement to multiplayer combat. A staple of Halo’s multiplayer is the one-on-one duel — and who moves where in the few seconds each duel lasts has a big role to play in deciding the victor.
Halo 5: Guardians isn't bad. If you care about playing through a Halo campaign solo, it will disappoint. If you're more interested in the multiplayer, there's plenty here to keep you busy.
• Standard Edition, digital download is Dh216. Digital Deluxe Edition, digital download is Dh326.
abouyamourn@thenational.ae
