Better late than never, but I haven't been able to review the game simply because I haven't been able to make the time to play it, fucking Tuesday releases, but now I finally have, so lets look at Halo 5.
Halo 5 picks up a few months after Halo 4, in the midst of a series of devastating attacks on human colonies. The game opens with an insane opening cinematic,and then just throws you into battle right away, now that is really cool, since I don't think a Halo game has ever just thrown you into the madness as quickly as Halo 5 has. Not to mention that during the awesome opening cinematic we have some absolutely awesome music, more on that later. Now, this game does a Halo 2 and features multiple playable characters; Master Chief, and introducing Spartan Locke, who we first saw in the Halo Nightfall web series, as well as blue team and Osiris. The rest of blue team are pretty cool, it's cool to finally see them in a game, and they have a great relationship with the Chief. The same can be said of Locke and Osiris, first up is Buck, who returns from Halo 3 ODST, this time as a Spartan, and he is absolutely awesome, easily my favourite besides Locke, just with some of the shit he says, easily my favourite line of his comes just before a mission where you attack a Covenant stronghold, and he's just funny. No spoilers, but when it comes to Osiris, there's a scene near the end when the game's villain is taunting them, and it's a fantastic piece of character development. Master Chief is still a badass, and he's still grieving from the events of Halo 4, which makes the dynamic between him and the Villain very interesting, as you don't really know where his loyalty lies. Locke is, surprise surprise, also a badass, and something I love about him is actually something I was scared about before the game's release, the game never treats either of these heroes as the bad guy, and I was worried that one of them would be vilified, but they're not, which is great. On the subject of being vilified, someone from Halo 4 who's identity I won't spoil comes back in this game, and my thoughts on them is something I'll go more into in my spoiler review, but I kind of have mixed feelings on A the fact they're back and B now the game's main villain. There's also a few cool AI characters, the Warden, who is about as menacing as the Didact, but with added freakiness when you fight him and he charges at you with his enormous sword, and then there's Exuberant Witness, who, while not a patch on Guilty Spark, is still awesome, and kind of cute, it's hard to explain, she's a bit dumb, and it's pretty funny with some of the things she says. The Arbiter returns here too, kind of, if anything I was a bit disappointed by how little he's in the game, he's only in a few missions, and his story is really cool with the Swords of Sanghelios, but I wish there was more Arbiter. The game's story, while heavily mismarketed, is still really cool, I won't say what the Guardians are, because I didn't actually know what they were myself with how blind I was going into this game, but they're really cool, and the villain's plan is pretty villainous, and cool, so overall I was pretty happy with the game's story. What I'm not happy with is the game's ending, because what the fuck, this game pulls a Halo 2 in another, more infuriating way that I can't stand, at least it's an interesting cliff hanger, but it's still a frustrating cliff hanger. Is this what it was like when Halo 2 came out, because I don't like it.
Halo 5 is an extremely fun to play game, I'm going out on a limb and saying Halo 5 is the most fun game to play in the entire series. Let's address the elephant in the room, the 'smart scope' system, at least that's what I think it's called. It's something I personally rarely ever used, only with guns like the Sniper or binary rifle, and medium range weapons like the Carbine and DMR, while some of the sights look really cool, other's kind of look silly, like most of the Forerunner weapons, all of which return from Halo 4, and scopeless weapons like the Assault rifle or storm rifle, weapons you'd rarely use it on anyway, like I said, it feels a lot better with scoped weapons. The grenade button has been moved, now, the sights are LT, and grenades are thrown with LB, really I'm fine with this switch up, I've thrown countless grenades with LB in Call of Duty, more than I ever have in Halo, so it feels more natural to me. You can still sprint, Halo 5 is a bit different from Halo 4, in that the movement system is now completely changed. Now when sprinting you can hit mêlée and ram enemies for added damage, or hold mêlée in the air for a devastating ground pound, you can also dash in any direction. While this system felt a bit Alien to me at first, I got used to it pretty quick, and I grew to really enjoy using the ground pound, and the ram, it's a lot of fun, and I like it. Armour abilities are gone, so no jet pack or Promethean vision, which is sad, but it's not a big deal to me with how fun the new movement system is. There are a few new weapons here and there, as well as returning guns from Halo 4 and series staples like the battle rifle and assault rifle. But for the most part I didn't really use the new guns. The plasma caster was a gun I used once, and I didn't enjoy using it, the Hydra launcher had it's moments, but I rarely used it. A new toy that was completely awesome was the new Phaeton gunship, a vehicle so awesome I went out and bought the toy of it because fuck it, it's a blast to fly and I loved it. The mantis is back, as is staples like the ghost, hog, scorpion and wraith, though the wraith looks a little weird, not a huge fan of it's redesign. Halo 5 also adds a new Promethean enemy, which is really a replacement, the soldier is a more standard soldier class, similar to the elites, but with the added annoyance of teleports, meanwhile the Knights have been upgraded, and now they're more like Hunters, massive mini tanks that are pretty hard to take down, this is pretty cool because I think now my massive Halo 4 knight figure's size can be justified due to how damn tough they are in Halo 5. Halo 5, like Halo 4, looks and sounds stunning, the guns all sound great, and it really adds to the feel of them, they feel great, far better than the typewriter from Halo 3. While the music is good, I didn't like it as much as Halo 4's soundtrack, sure it has some jems like Blue Team and Light is Green, but for the most part, while it's completely fine, I remember being a lot more in love with the music in past Halo games. But now for what's really stunning about this game's presentation, the graphics, this game is gorgeous, it is absolutely gorgeous, everything, the gameplay, the cutscenes, the pre rendered cutscenes, they all look amazing, this is by far the best looking game in the Halo series, maybe the best looking game on Xbox One, though that may be a stretch.
Halo 5 is incredible, it looks amazing, sounds amazing, has the most fun game play in the Halo series in my opinion. The game tells a story that I really liked, and with characters that I either really liked or loved, my only real fault with the single player is it's absolutely crap cliff hanger ending that I can't stand, but until then I was loving Halo 5. The ending brings it down, as well as a few other nit picks I have, but they won't stop me from calling Halo 5 an absolute must play.
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