Game On: Halo Infinite’s popularity is already fading

I happily gave high marks to Halo Infinite – both the campaign and multiplayer modes – when they launched late last year. The gunplay was solid as ever, the graphics were full of life and character, and the campaign was meaningfully different from its predecessors in terms of story and exploration.

But as the months dragged on, I slowly found myself dropping Halo Infinite altogether. What started off as a fun stroll in a game world that felt simultaneously new and old got stale in a hurry. I’m not alone in this, either – this month, Halo Infinite’s active player count (7,800) momentarily dipped below that of Halo: Master Chief Collection (9,100) on PC.

The “MCC” is a package including every Halo game prior to Halo 5: Guardians – this statistic doesn’t bode well for a series desperately attempting to live up to the hype it once held 10 to 20 years ago. I can’t speak for everyone, but my current dissatisfaction with Halo Infinite is owed primarily to its dreadful lack of variety.

Developer 343 Industries made it clear that despite the game’s yearlong delay, it was still pushing it out in an incomplete state – launching with just 10 multiplayer maps, locking the vast majority of its good cosmetics behind paywalls and, worst of all, completely bereft of a level editor (the “Forge”) and custom games mode.

It’s not unheard of for game sequels to launch with fewer features than its predecessors, but there’s usually a good reason for it. In this case, it was a simple matter of 343i running out of time. It’s a dealbreaker for me since I spent the majority of my time in Halo 3 and Halo: Reach playing all sorts of wacky custom matches.

Most people consider those titles to represent the golden era of the franchise. But that was more than a decade ago, when there weren’t nearly as many multiplayer sandbox games around. Gamers these days have plenty more to choose from – Fortnite, Roblox, Grand Theft Auto V, Minecraft – the list goes on.

Perhaps for that reason, the development team didn’t think it was top priority. They made the same mistake with Halo 5: Guardians in 2015, but managed to add Forge less than two months after its launch. Meanwhile, Halo Infinite’s multiplayer kicked off in November, and the current estimate for Forge to be added is August. Yikes.

That fact isn’t the only thing making me remember Halo 5 with odd fondness. The campaign was a mess, and the multiplayer didn’t hook me for long. But, I do remember having an absolute blast with the Breakout mode. Taking notes from other first-person shooters like Counter-Strike, Breakout was an ingenious elimination-style game mode where players faced off in tense 4 vs. 4 shootouts with no respawns.

Despite being derivative of other shooters, it implemented some unique ideas, and I recall being taken aback by how well it fit into the existing Halo formula. Its round-based approach cleverly mitigated the series’ propensity for matches becoming a one-sided steamroll. But in yet another strange bid to apparently homogenize the Halo experience by removing any semblance of variety, Breakout is completely missing from Halo Infinite – gone as quick as it came.

While the latest Halo has remarkably poor gameplay variety, there’s plenty of diversity in cosmetic choices – if you pay for the battle pass. It’s no surprise given 343i made Halo Infinite’s multiplayer portion free-to-play, but it’s disappointing nonetheless.

The default armor is conveniently hideous, and even color options are painfully limited. But plop down $10 each season, play the same modes on the same arenas over and over for hours on end, and you might just be able to make your Spartan look less ugly!

Halo Infinite is far from dead, and its failures pale in comparison to the 2021 garbage fires that were Call of Duty: Vanguard and especially Battlefield 2042. But even as an Xbox fan, I’ll admit that Microsoft is making it difficult to defend its flagship series.

Halo Infinite’s season 2, “Lone Wolves,” will be released May 3, promising more cosmetics and two new multiplayer arenas. That’s not a lot after almost half a year – the level editor can’t come soon enough.

Riordan Zentler can be reached at riordanzentler@gmail.com.