Halo 5: Guardians is an action-shooter that released as an Xbox One exclusive in October of 2015. It is the second Halo game created by the franchise’s new developers 343 Industries, who brought a lot of change to the table. Just be warned, there are some SPOILERS AHEAD, some critiques on what the game includes and does not include, and challenges I faced the most in my playthrough. So sit back, grab your Doritos and Mountain Dew, and let’s jump into Halo 5. Since there is a lot to talk about, I have split the review into two parts, the Campaign, and Multiplayer. This is part 1, and my final thoughts will accompany the multiplayer in part 2!
Campaign – The Battle Against Artificial Intelligence
In a campaign mode you can finish within 12 hours of starting the game, you alternate taking control of Spartan Jameson Locke of Fireteam Osiris and Master Chief of Blue Team as you progress through the story. The Master Chief and Blue Team, his three friends of the same Spartan-II program, who mysteriously surface now when the Earth could have used them in the previous games, follow a lead that Chief gets of Cortana, his supposed ‘dead’ Artificial Intelligence, as of Halo 4, from the entire series. This pulls him and his squad away from their given orders as they begin to pursue the traces of her. On the other side, Fireteam Osiris, led by Locke, chase Blue Team because of a suspicion from Cortana’s creator, Dr. Katherine Halsey, that they are traitors and working with Cortana. You are given control of one of the two teams as the missions change, uncovering the plot behind Cortana’s reappearance; activate the Guardians and make all Artificial Intelligence immortal, while causing destruction on a planetary scale.
Fireteam Osiris (left half, right to left): Locke, Buck, Vale, Tanaka. Blue Team (right half, left to right): Master Chief, Frederic, Linda, Kelly.
GAMEPLAY & STORY
A big new addition to the gameplay is ordering your squad of Spartans by choosing movements, engagements, and vehicle/weapon usage all with one button while your reticle is aimed at whatever you want your team to do. It is a nice little feature, and I often sent my team ahead to check for snipers or an ambush, usually ending in their deaths. But I did not care much, I thought, as I note my lack of empathy, because they just came back like an Elvis impersonator in Las Vegas. You take one away, another is there to take their place. If these super-soldiers come back from the dead then humanity should not be in danger, yeah? I often found myself sticking to the longer-ranged weaponry to deal with adversaries, especially on Legendary difficulty, because even though you are this hyped-up super-soldier, your armor can only take a few hits before you are knocked to the ground Down-But-Not-Out style like the first Gears of War. Oh, and good luck trying to be revived by your computer-controlled squad-mates if you take to the campaign with friends, as you’ll have them running back and forth if you and your other friends are down mashing the order button, saying “Revive me!”
Taking off the doo-rag, as to unleash my thoughts of the story, it was more interesting and involving than Halo 4, for certain. Shifting your experience from being the hunters, Fireteam Osiris, and the prey, Blue Team, you get an impression that your every action could influence the outcome of the game. For example, taking all the ammo in a combat zone playing as Blue Team would leave none for the Osiris to pick up later in the game. While it would have been a cool feature, it was never put in unfortunately. What was put in however, was intel that you could collect in almost every mission. They would be scattered across the level, hidden, or not hidden, that don’t influence your gameplay, but affect your total completion of the campaign and achievement progress. They just contain lore, if you are into that sort of thing. I was more for going to battle and watching flashy cutscenes over listening to someone else’s audiobook, personally. Playing as Fireteam Osiris has what they call an Artemis system that can locate the intel if you are within a certain range of it, whereas the old-timers Blue Team have no such system, forcing players to look on every hill and in every corner. Maybe 343 wanted it to be nostalgic, like searching for terminals as Chief in Halo 3?
Aside from that, there are some gaps in the story that made me ask, “what happened here?” or “why could I not play up until this point?” One instance, in particular, is when Blue Team is flying to Meridian Station and finding the Guardian there—you don’t get to play as them, even through their interaction with the planet’s AI, Governor Sloan who turns out to ally with Cortana. Instead you are left to imagine what happened and pursue Blue Team as Osiris, and eventually cross paths roughly around the same time both teams discover the Guardian. 343, I thought, had skipped this opportunity for another mission to progress the story.
As with every Halo game, there are obligatory vehicle-oriented missions, which become much easier if you use vehicles over walking. But I found that much of the combat can easily be bypassed if you chose a faster vehicle, such as a Warthog or a Banshee. There are some parts of the game which you must kill the baddies to progress in the vehicle segments, but even then, it gets to be simple. Enemies stand out in the open to just absorb your shots, making for easy kills.
CHALLENGES
The only challenges I felt I had, because of the reviving system, was with the Warden Eternal. Sure, common enemies could kill you instantly with a direct-impact Fuel Rod or Scattershot, but more often than not you end up just going down and getting picked up by your team. With the capability of knocking down your entire team in seconds, and the getup from a Gundam, Warden Eternal proved to be the boss of this game, with a glowing black weak spot on his back. After many tried and failed attempts, because he likes to cheat and call in help of the Prometheans, I triumphed over the first few encounters with him by sacrificing my allies and running around to the back and shooting the clichéd weak spot. It came to be that I made a discovery, that when his armor breaks apart for the third time, he is susceptible to an assassination for a few seconds. It is a nice feeling stuffing all of his pointy body parts into his own black hole.
Warden Eternal being harassed by a blue player in multiplayer.
I started to believe that I got a hold of taking down all of the enemies with ease after the fight with two Wardens Eternal in the mission “Genesis”. All you had to do was focus on one and the other stayed to their side like roommates after an argument. By the time I reached the mission called “The Breaking,” it was all fun and relaxing. But then, once in a big, open room, my team and I was quickly dispatched by the triple-tag team of Wardens Eternal. It took me at least an hour to hit a checkpoint after defeating the first Warden, since one or two usually rush the team and the other one or two shoot orange Cyclops beams from a distance. Needless to say, it took me a few hours spread across two days to finally take them down, and shortly after end the game on a different level. I thought that would have been the climactic end, a heroic boss fight against three of the hardest enemy in the game! Instead, the game has players fight waves of Prometheans in a symmetrical room. Then have a boring quick-time event-like ending that only changes dialogue depending on who touches the shiny object to destroy Cortana forever (we hope). Besides, at the end, Master Chief did not reveal his face as usual. In fact, none of Blue Team did. They are just as stubborn as he is. Did I mention you see all of Fireteam Osiris’ faces many times throughout the game, not just at the end? Watch and learn Blue Team, these new Spartans have personality… And a face to put to them.
