Newest Halo installment surprises with quality

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Anybody who knows me knows that I love the Halo series. I have been playing the games since my childhood and Halo 2 is one of my favorite games. If you read my last post, it should come has no surprise that I didn’t like Halo 4.

I thought that the story was bad and the gameplay was flawed. Given 343‘s current track record with the series I wasn’t expecting much from the newest game, Halo 5: Guardians and, I have to admit, I am pleasantly surprised.

I will first talk about the thing that is most important personally to me, the story. Halo 5 starts of a few months after the events of Halo 4. I apologize, but I will be spoiling Halo 4. Cortana is dead and Master Chief has rejoined his original team, Blue Team.

In the first mission that you play as Chief (For those of you who don’t know, this game works like Halo 2 as in you constantly switch between 2 characters, Master Chief and Spartan Locke), he ends up getting a message from Cortana who is apparently not dead. Chiefs search for Cortana and what he finds she’s been doing is the overall crux of the entire games story.

This is one of my major problems as I’m a little annoyed that we can’t get passed her character; however, the story does go in some interesting directions.

Next we have to take a minute and discuss Halo 5’s marketing campaign. Yeah, it straight up lies to you. The marketing stresses the battle between Master Chief and Locke, going as far as to show opposing commercials with Master Chief killing Locke and vice versa. This is almost never really shown in the game nor is it a major part of the story. This really bothers me but the game we got is pretty good so oh well.

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Now on to the gameplay and multiplayer. Personally I’ve never been a huge fan of multiplayer. I tend to prefer a good story and design to online functionality but I do have to admit that Halo 5’s multiplayer is fantastic. It plays well and feels smooth. I wasn’t a fan of the new spartan abilities when they were first announced but I have to admit that I was wrong about them. Same can be said about the single player.

The new abilities feel like a welcome addition to a already fantastic series. I am a little annoyed with the team system, there were several times when I went down and my team failed to revive me but I think that is mostly just because of my play style. I tend to like to run as quickly as I can through levels and that doesn’t play to well in a game that is based around teams.

All in all, Halo 5 is a solid game. It plays well. The graphics are wonderful and the story is surprisingly good. It should be noted though, the ending is a massive cliff hanger that probably won’t be resolved until Halo 6.

To read more Checkpoint blog posts, check out Leading up to Halo 5.