I expect the Halo Infinite guns to feel good, but they also sound incredible as they send satisfying clicks, booms, and pewpews careening around my headset every match. Halo made a name for itself as an airtight arena shooter with physics that allow for gravity-defying plays and hilarious ragdoll moments, and Halo Infinite supplies that in spades. There's a reason Halo Infinite quickly became the most-played Xbox game on Steam in less than 24 hours on from its launch – it feels bloody fantastic. When I respawn, I take two steps forward and am immediately splattered by a Warthog – it's beautiful carnage, which is exactly what we sign up for with a Halo game. As I try to retrieve a battery and bring it back to our base, I'm shot in the back by a mounted turret, and watch a Mongoose explode on my lifeless body. Behemoth and Fragmentation are familiar, but a Stockpile match on High Power offers an entirely new experience in both mode and map. The larger Big Team Battle maps are as excellent as the small and mid-sized maps, with ample space for chaotic vehicle battles and sniper stand-offs.
A well-placed M41 SPNKR rocket launcher round makes for a fun little mid-map firefight, as getting your hands on just two rockets can wreak some serious havoc here. You will be in almost constant firefights on Streets, which gives you a chance to get a feel for the gunplay and movement-based skills you'll need if you want to succeed in Halo Infinite. The super-condensed, hyper-vibrant map is a rarity in Halo games, and it's lovely to see a new version of it that's not a complete remake of its predecessor. Streets is a neon-soaked cityscape set in New Mombasa that feels a lot like Plaza, one of the best maps in Halo 5.
#Halo 1 multiplayer maps free
But it's when I play my first Oddball match on the incredibly small Streets map that the realization dawns on me: this game is going to eat up all of my free time for the foreseeable future. Vehicle spawns help add some chaos to the indoor map, allowing players to close spaces quickly across the more open combat areas. During one game, I round a corner and promptly walk into a trio of enemies, do a quick 180, drop down off a ledge, scramble up a metal crate, and am sliding into a different room before any of them can finish me off.Īfter Recharge, I then play three rounds in a row on Launch Site, and it's a testament to the power of 343 Industries' map design that I don't grow tired of it. But it's the mantle spots that really elevate map movement, giving players a chance to scramble away from tough situations in ways that previous Halo games haven't really tapped into. It has the same feel as other classic indoor Halo arena maps, with connected rooms and ramps allowing the fight to flow easily between spaces. Recharge is the perfect example of how Halo Infinite successfully straddles a nostalgia for Halo 3 multiplayer and a more modern take on the arena shooter.