u/Comkill117

So I've been on a huge Halo kick recently after seeing a bunch of stuff about various mods. Specifically I've seen some stuff for Ruby's Rebalanced Halo 2 which made me realize that mod was not what I thought it was and looked insanely cool. Got back to MCC and Wars and played them with mods (tons of which ruled and I could go on all day about), reread some of the books and got a few others I haven't read yet so that'll be fun, but I also thought recently about maybe replaying the 343 Halo games as I really don't go back to them. They all found unique ways to disappoint me before, 4 I replayed the campaign and it still sucks, 5 I made it through like 3 missions before dropping, but I was aware that Infinite specifically got a lot of updates in the 4 years since I stopped playing it and wondered how it would be after all that time. Frankly, I should have known better than to expect anything good out of 343 because honestly it's just as much of a mess as before only now there's at least stuff to play, not that you;ll really want to.

I'll start with multiplayer since I just played it a little while ago. Firstly the menus in the game are kind of a mess to navigate but that's most live service games from my limited experience. Actually getting in was fine, my first match was a weird curbstomp because I don't think the ranking system existed when I last played so it had nothing to go off I guess but after that things were about normal. The biggest things I noticed are twofold. Firstly I played 1 actual maps and the rest were all Forge maps so I guess they just couldn't be asked to make any proper maps for the game in that time. Secondly the ranking system actually did allow you to finally unlock the currency you needed to buy actual armor and battlepass stuff... OR SO I THOUGHT. As it turns out, there are TWO currencies in the game now, one which can get you maybe a single kinda shitty looking armor part or a color (because this is the game that decided to make it so you had to buy colors, yay) for way too much of the 'Spartan Points' earned from gameplay. The actual currency you need to get anything of actual worth is still paid and just as expensive as before. I assume they figured they'd just nickel and dime the few sad saps left playing the game, which is irritating to see as always. I understand it's just visual but in all previous games you could unlock this stuff just by playing the game up until 5 where it was possible still but randomized to incentivize paying for microtranslations. Honestly realizing that was kinda enough to piss me off into dropping it again.

Then there's the campaign. Now I should start by saying there have been a handful of new weapons added to the game like the DMR (whatever they're calling it now), the Avenger, and this weird Covenant Carbine gun that looks kinda whack. I thought given how limited and honestly just kinda bad Infinite's sandbox was that maybe those would be added into the whole game, as the Campaign straight up runs out of weapons to give the Banished and has to resort to them using human weapons. I understand that there's precedent for Brutes to use human weapons, but given they have their own arsenal (a lot of which is missing from Infinite) it feels more like the game just doesn't have enough in it to support the bloated runtime of the Campaign, and the minuscule Marine presence means there were less natural excuses for the player to be able to get their weapons so they just threw a bunch to the enemies. So anyway those new weapons would be a great way to alleviate the issue of how tiny the sandbox is... Only to realize none of them were added to Campaign, instead being multiplayer exclusive. Aside from being able to replay missions and co-op (which I can't play as no one I know has the campaign and I wouldn't tell them to waste money on it), the campaign is actually virtually unchanged from when I played it in 2021. Returning to it was a quick reminder of why I was so put off by it as the game feels blatantly unfinished, the story sucks (which granted, Halo 4 and 5 kinda poisoned that well, especially 5), and you're still running through the same 3 environments for the whole game. I would call it the second level of Halo 1 for 20 hours, but honestly I feel like that single 20 minute mission had more variety in that time.

This long-winded venting has lead me to a question: have you ever returned to a game years later after tons of updates to see what it's like only to walk away just as let down as the first time? What was that like if so?

Reposted because I think used the wrong tag and that set off auto-mod. If it happens again idk.