My Xbox All Access Adventure #13 – Halo From The Other Side

Halo came out! And then the rest of Halo came out! AAAAAAAAAHHHHH HALO!

Dabbles:

• Skyrim – The Anniversary Update has done nothing noticeable for the graphics besides maaaaybe better texture draw distance, if memory serves. Considered upgrading for creation club content, browsed mods instead, didn’t really play the game.
• Oblivion – Wow, look, it’s 60fps now! Didn’t really play the game…
• Immortals: Fenyx Rising – I should love this game but it’s not sucking me in lately.
• Unpacking – I played the first two levels! Unique storytelling, meditative gameplay.
• Quake – Oh right, it’s still not good on a controller.
• Halo: Spartan Assault – It just doesn’t scratch the itch. Decent game in itself, though.
• Just Cause 3 – Bought with Reward Points! My PC could not run this thing.

Continued adventures:

• Halo: The Master Chief Collection – Even with Halo Infinite out, it’s still fun to go back and play earlier multiplayer Halo. Plus, attempted Halo 1 on Heroic. It gets very tough in level two.
• Minecraft Dungeons – Hopped in to grab an achievement for Microsoft Rewards, stayed for a few levels after. It’s fun, but surprisingly tough on controller.
• Forza Horizon 5 – I’ve spent a lot of time this month focusing on seasonal content, and collecting achievements for stuff like roads driven and PR stunt stars. Still need to do most Stories content.
• Apex Legends – Played some before Halo Infinite released and had some of my most fun games so far with a friend!

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – The Definitive Edition

It’s… fine, I guess.

Despite playing this for a decent amount of hours, I find there’s really very little to say about GTA:SA-DE, besides that the name is so absurdly long that I can’t even be bothered to write it out in full beyond its heading. The graphical updates are pretty in some areas and a downgrade in others; whilst on foot, the city may be a shinier rendition of its low polygon urban sprawl, but by sky, the same graphical changes make the game seem an unfinished tech demo.

The best thing I can say about this game is that it’s a classic and it’s on Game Pass. I’d happily have taken the original version over this one, but I’m not particularly fussed about having to play the modern version, either. The only thing I have to say about the state of its release is that Rockstar really should have done better by its die-hard fans, especially after delisting the original versions and killing the modding community, including graphical overhaul mods which made the game look far better than these remakes.

Exo One

Exo One reminds me of Donut County. Well, okay, so one’s about piloting a gravity-based starship and slingshotting your way across mountains to get to your destination, whereas the other is about playing as a raccoon with access to a donut hole that it vacuums up entire villages with for cheeky hijinks. Very different games. What they share in common, though, is that they’re both on Game Pass and both take about two hours to complete. Oh, and I enjoyed both games immensely and would never have considered buying them otherwise, due to my inability to value games based on experience rather than time. It’s the same reason I’ve only ever bought two DVDs.

My point is: Exo One is unassuming, but before you know it you’ll be caught up in the story and atmosphere, getting the hang of the game’s physics and grinning when you break the sound barrier through sheer sleight of gravity. It’s well worth an evening of your time.

Minecraft: Caves and Cliffs Part II

I underestimated this update in the best possible way! I mean, don’t get me wrong, when they first announced the update and I saw screenshots of the new cave generation my mouth was practically watering, but after the subsequent split in the update and the meagre offerings of the first half – goats and lightning rods… yay? – I practically forgot that the second half was worth waiting for. With trepidation, I dug beneath my previous world floor and was met with Caves, But With Darker Rocks. I was not impressed.

It wasn’t until I nether-portalled to the newer chunks that I stopped grumbling. I immediately found a mountain with a hole in it, a small tunnel which soon gave way to a massive cavern – or so it felt at the time. I resolved to set up base here, and when digging a stairway up to the top of the mountain stumbled across a tiny rivet outside the main cavern’s room. This tiny rivet, no wider than two or three blocks at its roomiest, led slowly into the depths of the earth until eventually it opened up into a low cavern as wide as the eye could see, the horizon interspliced with the shadows of hundreds of stalactites and stalagmites. I followed it out until it opened up a bit, and found that for all my travels, I’d arrived at the as-yet-unexplored bottom half of my base cavern!

But that’s not even the half of it. When playing on a server with my friends, we quickly found a cave that went so far down it beggars belief. I’ve included my own personal screenshot for this entry to give you an idea of how vast this underground space was. Here sprawled a cavern almost as vast as the open sky itself, with shelves of underground lakes and baths of lava. Mineshafts jutted out of caverns-within-caverns, the rocky plains below teemed with monsters, and when they were all cleared out, you could actually look up through a gap from cave floor to surface and see the night sky. I now think this is the single most instrumental update to the game since the Adventure Update way back in 2011, when the game was finally leaving beta.

There’s still a lot I’d like to see added to this game, primarily a creative update featuring new blocks and furniture. But for now, I think this has reinvigorated the game for me for a decent time to come.

Halo Infinite – Single Player (No Spoilers)

As of the time of writing, I estimate myself to be two-thirds of the way through the main campaign, although I’ve hardly touched my overworld objectives. Having recently played through the entire series of campaigns for the first time, I’m privileged in that I’ve not put much time between my initial experiences of older games and my initial experience of the newest. I’ve seen the series at its best and worst, practically within days of each other, and weighing this game’s campaign against the rest – so far – I feel fairly safe in placing it towards the top of the list. It’s fantastic, and the only reason I’m writing this instead of playing it is because I’ve played for what must be six hours straight, two days in a row. Even the Chief needs a breather now and then.

I was surprised to find that, after finishing Halo 5, I developed an itch in my gaming cycle that only a Halo game could scratch. There’s a certain rhythm to clearing out areas of different enemy archetypes, discarding empty weapons for full ones like recycling hasn’t been invented yet. I expected to like Halo’s campaign gameplay, but I didn’t expect to crave it. Well, luckily for me, Halo Infinite fulfils that craving and then some. The combat is Halo through and through, with new gameplay elements fitting in so naturally that had I started with Infinite, I may well have believed they’d been there all along. For instance, I’m not sure how I’ll deal without my grappling hook or throwable barrels when returning to previous entries in the series! Which reminds me of one small gripe: I don’t love how switching grenades and equipment feels on controller, to the point where I almost never swap out of my grappling hook, and have died to stealthy elites when fumbling for the recon dart.

Without spoiling anything in regards to story, I’ll say this; when I finished Halo 5, I was at a loss as to how they could pivot away from the current ill-considered story direction, but they appear to have done so with finesse. Better, they’ve written certain story elements in a way that I’m almost convinced was intended from the start, and makes previous moments in Halo 4 and 5 more forgivable for knowing… at least, if my theory for what’s happening turns out to be true. And on a more fundamental level, this game tells a tighter, more relationship focused story between three characters which is far more easy to identify and empathise with than the galactic-scale events of prior games. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Halo series doesn’t end up being an example in how and how not to use a universe’s lore within the main narrative of a story. To put it bluntly – Prometheans and Forerunners are more fascinating when you’re not beating us over the head with them and leaving us to catch up after lightspeed exposition. But again, I’m not done yet.

Free to Play

Halo Infinite – Multiplayer

The fact that you’re probably tired of hearing “Halo is back!” means I probably don’t need to convince you by now that the multiplayer is good. That it’s really good. That it’s actually pretty bloomin’ fantastic and everything that I hoped it would be. With some well documented flies in the ointment.

There aren’t many multiplayer games I’ve played enough to develop survival instincts in, or learn the maps of. Especially that last part. With games like Overwatch and Destiny 2, there aren’t any weapon or equipment pickups to memorise, and the way I play older Halo games through the Master Chief Collection, there are so many maps in rotation that it’s impossible to get to know any better than acquaintances. But Halo Infinite currently has a fairly lean map rotation, and so I’m finally experiencing the learning experience of knowing where the best weapon pickups are, when to rush them, and when to hang back and lob grenades at the two different entrances. Speaking of which, my favourite gamemode besides Slayer is easily Strongholds. It’s a king-of-the-hills mode similar to Destiny 2’s Control, with the main difference being in score aggregating over time rather than per-kill per-hill.

Now, there are wrinkles, but not with the gameplay. The progression system was apparently designed to eliminate FOMO, but it’s actually one of the most FOMO-inducing progression systems I’ve ever seen, especially with regard to their Limited Time Events. The lack of XP per medal as seen within the Master Chief Collection means that players are more likely to ignore objectives chasing their own personal challenges than they are to contribute meaningfully to the game. The timed double XP system means you’re often trying to cram in a stressful last-minute match for XP efficiency, especially back when you got a meagre 50xp per game for not completing any challenges; often none, before the first patch. All in all there are a plethora of design decisions here, some of which seem downright obvious, but having heard tales of the many conflicting design philosophies through Halo Infinite’s development it’s perhaps not surprising, and certainly not unfixable.

As for the complaints regarding the free to play nature of the game… I can’t bring myself to care all that much. It can be frustrating to see fun cosmetics appear on the store, I’m sure, but I myself just grabbed the Battle Pass and felt happy to focus on working through that rather than worry about other Spartans looking like Power Rangers with their flawless eSports armour coatings. I wouldn’t say there’s nothing to address here on 343’s part, but most complaints I’ve seen in this direction have seemed far less reasonable than complaints regarding the progression systems.

Warframe

I’m still in the very early stages of grasping this game, but here’s the high and low of it. The gameplay is fun, and not entirely what I expected. It focuses less on the challenge of clearing out waves of enemies, and more about the expedience and grace at which you do so. You are not facing down hordes of terrifying aliens thrice your size with nothing but a pistol and a packet of crisps; you are, instead, an angel of death, a whisper of murder on the wind, emptying rooms of enemies with barely three strides between you and the door. There’s a certain satisfaction to this which I can only imagine will compound as you get further through the game, earning more abilities and gaining more Warframes. It is also an excuse to keep players grinding regurgitated locations; or at least, that’s my impression of how the game is going to shape up as I run out of story.

Speaking of story, the low of it: For all that Tennos hate it when you compare this game to Destiny, it does share Destiny 2’s cardinal sin of caring more about the latest gameplay experience than the story preceding it. After finishing the first main storyline on Earth, the game practically chucked me at the Solar System and said, “go do your thing!” Meanwhile, I’m still looking at the various systems dotted around my spaceship wondering: “what thing?!” The story felt like it was wrapping up the first chapter, with me barely getting to grips with the universe, and suddenly it’s trying to sweep the rest of that story under the rug and point me at one of the later content patches. No! I don’t want to do that! And luckily, I don’t have to. But there’s absolutely nothing in-game to indicate that I can find a continuation of the main story; I’m going by a guide. It feels like I’m doing a quest chain in WoW, but take out all the breadcrumb quests pointing to the next area in the zone to complete. Is… is this okay? Are the devs going to tell me off for doing this?

In Summary

From Halo Infinite’s surprise early multiplayer release to the Minecraft Caves and Cliffs update to… well, Halo Infinite’s campaign, it’s been another solid month! Now that Halo and Forza are out, it won’t be long before I inevitably finish up in those games and turn to the future to see what’s next out on the horizon. I’m sure The Game Awards will help me in that department – it’s airing an hour from the time of writing.

With the massive AAA blockbuster titles out of the way, I’m sure I’ll have some time for some of the smaller indie titles I’ve been lacking in recent months. I still have moments where I browse through the Game Pass catalogue and find myself surprised by what’s on there, either because I forgot or because I genuinely somehow missed their addition. Either way, there’s as much to play as ever!

Gamerscore as of November 12th: 23,234

Gamerscore as of December 9th: 25,019