My challenges seem to love Last Spartan Standing, but I do not. I'm finding myself repeatedly taking on the same (much higher) ranked players, perhaps because the server population is so sparse and the player base has shrunk. Progression still feels punishingly slow at best, and just plain broken at worst. I'm still jumping on console and squaring up with PC cheaters because there's no way for me to opt-out of crossplay. I detailed, at length, my frustrations with Infinite's second season earlier this year, and little has changed, which is itself a stunning indictment. And many are now so glaringly apparent and horribly impactful that even the most ardent fans find it hard to overlook them. But it's time to accept these aren't teething problems anymore they're just problems. Its patch notes and updates have been humble and candid. Yes, 343i has consistently acknowledged, apologised for, and promised to fix Infinite's issues. While it's offered entirely free-to-play for the first time in series history, players have been struggling with the same old things since it launched over six months ago - we're knee-deep in Season 2. The problem for me doesn't lie in Infinite's campaign (although I'm still missing co-op) but instead with its uneven multiplayer mode. Watch on YouTube Ian and Aoife look at the Halo Infinite Campaign. So why is it the only Halo game of the last decade that makes me want to uninstall and never come back? Its satisfying multiplayer beta was everything I expected from Halo MP. It boasts a striking open-world approach that redefines the series' single-player experience. Infinite's debut, on the other hand, was well-received by critics and fans alike. Both Halo 4 and 5 - both of which I enjoyed enormously and collectively spent thousands of hours with - did broadly well enough with critics, but player reception was mixed and a tad less forgiving. And while there's a stubborn segment of the population that refuses to believe that a murder simulator shooter like Halo could offer much in terms of storytelling, few can deny the franchise has peerlessly fused meaty gunplay with compelling characters and a detailed world that we care about.īut when series creator Bungie bowed out with the (stunning) Halo Reach and development transferred to Microsoft first-party outfit 343 Industries, things seemed to change. It's long been at the forefront of FPS innovation, and birthed many of the user experience improvements modern shooters take for granted, including matchmaking and playlists. You don't have to know much about Halo or even like it to appreciate its legacy as one of the world's most influential games. Watch on YouTube Digital Foundry check out the Halo Infinite Campaign. It is, however, perhaps a symptom of Halo Infinite's chronic malaise and indicative of an unhappy player base. And that's a problem.īefore you start drafting your angry retort in the comments: yes, I know, concurrent player counts are far from the only metric we can use to measure a game's success, especially when that game has for many, many years been a console exclusive. According to the same tracker site, Infinite's lacklustre peak concurrent count is down 50 percent compared to last month alone. It bounces up and down around the chart, of course - the highest I saw it hit yesterday was 255th, I think? - but in the last 30 days, its peak concurrent PC count hasn't even breached 8000 players, even though, at its height last November, it boasted over a quarter of a million. The singleplayer, open-world campaign is not F2P but is included in Xbox Game Pass.Īt the time of writing, Halo Infinite ranks as the 286th "top game" according to Steam Charts.
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