I was planning on picking this game up pretty soon but it suddenly hit me that not only did it not make many Top 10 lists, I hear the multiplayer has dropped off remarkably (according to some charts I've seen on Neogaf...can't find them now).

How has your experience been? Why the huge drop off? Is matchmaking slow?

Thanks!

This may have something to do with it -

http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/october-2015-poll-what-is-your-primary-gaming-plat-1783925/

I've not played it in over a month, but the multiplayer experience has been a bit mixed. A lot of the weapons from Halo 4 that felt like new versions of existing guns have been reworked to be a bit more unique, and the game scraps a bunch of the old systems like the REQ system and loadouts to make it feel a little less like it's trying to lean into being another Call of Duty. You once again get all your power weapons by stealing them from other players or picking them up from the map, but it's much better signalled where those weapons are and when they're going to spawn. All that stuff is great.

On the other hand though, when the game launched when there were fewer modes and features than had been in Halo for a long time. They finally have a Forge mode in there now but as I understand it some classic gametypes like Flood and Oddball are still missing from the game. The big new gametype Warzone could also be better, especially with the microtransaction stuff, many of the Commendations are too quick to finish, and I was pretty unhappy with the way the game was matching people. Don't get me wrong, it's still Halo, and the weapons feel and function great, the map design is solid, and the whole thing looks gorgeous. It's also cool to see some of the ways they've changed things up, but some of the stuff that was fine in previous Halo multiplayers is a bit janky or even completely missing from this one.

So I was in a group of maybe a dozen people who regularly played Halo games. Of that group, all but four don't own XBox Ones. Of those four, three got it. I can speak for myself and those three.

• One has barely touched it due to his backlog.
• One played the campaign, hated it, and got rid of it without trying the multiplayer.

Now as for myself, I played the campaign and came away really disappointed with it. I thought the story was pretty bad, playing as Locke wasn't that interesting, and screw The Warden. I played a bit of the multiplayer, didn't like the Req system, missed some of the modes that weren't there, and ended up deciding there was just too much other good stuff coming out in the Fall for me to want to stick with it. So I traded it in.

Others who stuck with it can probably speak to it a little more, but I think if you did the research, you'd find a couple of other things as well. Some players moved onto Destiny (the two friends noted above are hardcore Destiny players now) and other games at some point. Also, some of the most popular modes such as Big Team Battle weren't available at launch.

I don't agree with him a lot of the time, but Angry Joe had a pretty good in depth take on why the game felt like a bit of a misstep. Now, I know some people have stuck with it and love it, so I'm not going to dismiss their opinions. I'm just relaying my experience. I didn't play enough multiplayer in the end to say I could write a review.

I played through the campaign after playing through the MCC 1-4 all in a row for the very first time. I thought it was totally fine, but I was suffering from such bad fatigue by the time I got halfway through 5 that it was a chore to finish it. That's without any multiplayer at all.

The campaign was totally ok, it ran good and played well. But all 5 of those games were basically the same damn thing, over and over and over. I'm not saying that's bad at all, each game had at least one or two moments that made me say "NOW I see why people love this," especially the remastered 2. But 5 had a lot less of those by comparison. When I finished it and turned it off, I also never wanted to speak of Halo 5 again. But again, that's where I was at the time and again, I have no experience or interest in ever playing Halo multiplayer so I can't speak to that.

Seemed like it was pretty wack and full of micro-transactions that didn't need to be there.

@drekly: The campaign is lack-luster compared to previous games, and the multiplayer has numerous very disappointing design aspects (the most damning being Warzone, the micro-transaction gametype).
I'm not sure I would call it a "bad" game, it just doesn't hold up compared to the best games in the series.

Halo 5 was my number 3 game, it was fantastic.

The campaign did a lot of good but wasn't what it could've been. So I enjoyed it a hell of a lot but there was some disappointment. The combat scenarios were very fun and I enjoyed the mysterious slow-burn of the story. There's a boss guy you fight way too many times, which is the biggest misstep, but just dash into him for a stun and unload on the weakpoint. It's actually a fun and intense fight once you figure out the best way to approach it.

Anyway, the multiplayer may be the best in the series. Some of these early maps could be better, sure, but the gameplay is top notch. I like every weapon, the movement feels even better than the beta, there's a wide variety game types, and it feels like everyone is on an even playing field.

Warzone rules. It really does, and I'll address the microtransaction stuff again: it only seems significant for an hour or two. Early on you're constantly leveling up or hitting simple challenges, so there's a flow of cards coming your way. I haven't spent a single cent, and after about 5 games I had more stuff than I'll ever need (but it's still balanced enough to keep you from rolling out a dozen tanks). And if you don't like Warzone, Big Team Battle is still there. This isn't "Battlefied + Halo" due to the smaller player count, but I think their solutions to balance and keeping you active were expertly done.

If my electricity would stop going out every day, I'd be playing Halo every day. In fact, I did for close to two months. It's a great game.

I think the issue is a crowded marketplace. The game itself is pretty good (at least the multiplayer, have not yet done the singleplayer) and the Req system gets kind of a bad rap, considering the microtransaction aspect is restricted to one mode, and you earn plenty of Req just by playing to be able to afford to 'buy' plenty of packs.

However, the game doesn't really 'stand out' in a very meaningful way. It's halo, so it takes longer to kill people than in, say, COD, and it has the Halo weapons, but the map designs can be kind of boring and it launched without big team battle (for example.)

There's a ton of shooters out there, not just from this year but in general, and people are getting kind of tired of them. The only 'shooter' I saw get much attention around GOTY time was Splatoon, and that's because it's a Nintendo shooter(!) and has very different mechanics from the rest of the pack. Just being a good shooter is not enough anymore.

Fine game, not particularly great though and fighting the same boss 7-8 times with little variance doesn't help. I'm sure the multiplayer doesn't hold a candle to MGO.

@drekly: Probably because it's just another Halo game, and honestly I don't think there is substantial demographic penetration there beyond the core audience. People that like Halo will get another one of those again. It doesn't appear like 343 are actively trying to court non-Halo fans to join the fray, especially when it's a game whose story is 5 releases deep and at time going as far as referencing the books. At the end of the day Call of Duty is available on all major platforms, has self contained stories and more easily accessible online that moves at a much faster pace. In comparison Halo appears to be a game made solely for existing fans, which isn't going to win them any new ones any time soon.

After they released the BTM mode and I saw what those maps looked like, that was the final straw for me and I sold it along with the XB1 I bought to try it (net loss of only $20 ... and time). I really wanted to find out what happens in the story and I didn't even feel compelled to finish that. I'd much rather just watch a cinematic supercut. It just didn't feel fun to me. The map design in particular was atrocious compared to what I had come to expect from Halo. The maps felt like square COD maps that had corridors going every which way on multiple levels. It all just felt like it had no proper structure.

I swore I wasn't even going to play it but my nostalgia still got the best of me. The campaign was whatever and the multiplayer, while totally serviceable, held my attention for only a couple weeks. My expectations for warzone were too high and my interest in Halo's flagship gametype (for me and friends) Big Team Battle came a little too late after the initial release - my interest was all but gone. I'm sort of surprised I haven't heard more about how the shortcuts 343 took to hit the constant 60 fps doesn't bother anyone else. Frankly, Halo 5 really doesn't look that great. Maps aren't as memorable as games past because there's no personality - they're all just forge maps.

Just seems like the Halo thing isn't sticking with people as much anymore.

Because the first trilogy was truly great and everything else has been "pretty good" at best

Here's the secret.

You know that big gaming population explosion a few years back? When gaming went from the thing "nerds" did to something everyone did thanks to the 360's marketing team/a bevy of great High School/College focused games? Yeah, a lot of that was when Halo 1 came out, and Halo had a lot to do with getting those people into gaming. Halo's "market" was teenagers/college kids, and it's entire Campaign/Co-op/Multiplayer was built around that ideal as well.

Halo 2 came out while those people were still in school. So did Halo 3. By ODST and Reach, the people in College at Halo 1 were now leaving, but they still had time for some Halo.

By Halo 4 and 5, that entire demographic has left High School and College. They've started careers, started families, and either got further into gaming ( and thus diversified their interests past Halo ), or left gaming ( as it was just a fun thing to do back in College ). Halo is now only the "core" game of a very, very small subset of gamers. Microsoft didn't get that memo though.

That's why both games seem to have had a nonexistent community. The people that still care loaded it up to see what Chief was up to, and then went back to Call of Duty.

Halo is Halo.

@nickhead: What do you mean by Forge maps? The BTB additions were fairly generic, but the rest of the maps had their own unique art. I honestly felt they had too much unique crap crammed in, to the point that players were hard to see in these overly-busy, overly-designed maps.

I will agree that they lack personality, but that's more on the level design. Hang em High, Prisoner, and Battle Creek had their own playstyles. But I don't even remember a Halo 5 map name, just the different ways they look. They all seem to play similarly.

i liked the campaign A LOT but i played like one match of slayer before i put it away

I got it on release and don't regret it, but truly I haven't played much since completing the game (I dabbled in multiplayer and had a swell enough time with it). But, like seemingly everyone else, I got other games quickly thereafter that distracted me from H5. So that may be saying something too.

Unlike some posters, I thought it looked pretty great and the core of the game (the shooty-shooty bang bang) was really good. The campaign, tho, left a lot to be desired.

I play MP still, couple games a week. 343 has been great at releasing content and keeping things fresh, already released 2 map packs for free and tons of new reqs.

The campaign was okay, a lot of verticality in the open areas, but most of the coolest parts of the campaign were shown in cut scenes and not performed by the player, lame. Looking back, the first thing I think about the campaign was how much I hated the boss battles, how dumb Cortana is (cartoon villain) and how lame most of the characters are. They weren't developed nearly enough, and Locke was a freaking delivery boy with no stake in story, expect for being a good soldier and following orders, yawn.

Multiplayer is okay, I think 343 got too cute trying to dole out features that players expected. Instead of keeping players coming back, I think a lot of people saw the sparse multiplayer mode, that was not pushing, but quite insistent on people trying out War Zone mode and microtransaction hole. Going off of what Jeff had to say about it, I mostly only played break out, which can be really frustrating or vanilla 4v4 team mode. I was playing Halo 5 and Battlefront both through the Thanksgiving break but have started gravitating more towards Battlefront since then. Honestly, while Battlefront is too basic and has a lot of room to improve in future releases, I just enjoy the more casual and

Going off of what Jeff had to say about it, I mostly only played break out, which can be really frustrating or vanilla 4v4 team mode. I was playing Halo 5 and Battlefront both through the Thanksgiving break but have started gravitating more towards Battlefront since then. Honestly, while Battlefront is too basic and has a lot of room to improve in future releases, I just enjoy the more casual and straight forward feel of the combat. I've been thinking of playing some Halo 5 mp recently, since on PS4 I'm working on Witcher 3, and wouldn't be able to use the suspend feature to jump right back into it every time if I wanted to play some Star Wars.

It started with with a lackluster list of multiplayer modes and they are slowly added back in what people want.

I've been playing more since team doubles came back

One of my co-workers is a huge Halo fan and his take away was pretty much yeah it's okay but it just lacks that certain something.

Haven't touched it since that first month. Multi-player just didn't grab me and the campaign just didn't leave on a great note.

I did enjoy it, but compared to other games this year I just don't find myself thinking about it.

I'm lovin it.

It's a great game for me to play in the morning with coffee.

It did, however, take me awhiiiiiile to get used too.

I finished the campaign twice and enjoyed most of it. Haven't played much multiplayer yet.

The campaign is pretty mediocre. And the multiplayer is good but not great. The req packs that you get unlocks from are a bummer as they are completely random drops, so you can;t work towards a piece of armor you want; you can only hope it drops from a pack.

I think all the armor abilities they added work great in a multiplayer context, and the lack of loadouts make it feel more like Halo.

I don't have problems finding matches in multiplayer.

I play the 4v4 multiplayer every day, and like other people have said never have trouble finding matches. It took me a bit to get into it, though, and I can see why some people wouldn't stick with it. A few of the 4v4 maps feel like slight variants of each other and it took a bit before I figured them out. But, like some have commented above, I think the guns are as good or better than previous Halos, and I like the new movement stuff. I played a lot of 2 and 3 online, and I like this at least as much and maybe more.

As someone who loves Halo, has not played anything else on the Xbone, and traded in my launch one for the Halo 5 edition one, I have to say, Halo 5 would have been my biggest disappointment if Fallout 4 had not come out this year.

It looks beautiful, which actually pains me more, thinking about what could have been. The story is a complete hunk of junk, even knowing the extended universe lore. The fact they just decided to up and not fill anything in for a player who just played the games and didn't wanna wade through the extended universe, a lot of which is bad, is insane. The squad system is 100% pointless other then being a "down but not out" system. The fact they dive into no backgrounds or personalities of any of either squad, many of which are great characters in the novels, just hurts the game and those said characters.

Cortana's arch was 100% predictable since the end of Halo 4 and the fact they didn't even try to throw story curve balls or something unexpected is awful, and the Warden is a piss poor boss, copy + pasting him 8 more times doesn't help.

It's the biggest bummer, because even though Halo 4's story had some rough spots, the potential they had to build something new was there, and I feel like they squandered it. It's more then Halo 2's middle chapter system, in that Halo 2 was a good game and just ended too early, making people upset. Halo 5's story isn't even good, and it ends without anything even close to resolution happening. The only reason I might even care about whatever the hell Halo 6 is going to be, is because based on how 5 ends, getting to a conclusion in 6 SHOULD involve a lot of crazy, new stuff.

But fuck, with this track record, Halo 6 will start with Cortana being good again and you sent on some stupid pointless mission for the military, except now you have 3 Cortanas as teammates.

Multiplayer is fine but the modes suck. I liked the load out system in 4 way more then the REQ package of Warzone, and Arena doesn't feel unique enough from other shooters anymore.

I continue to have no reason for an Xbone, which is kind of sad, since I was 100% 360 last gen.

@csl316 said:

I agree. I haven't really touched the campaign, but the gunplay and movement in the multiplayer is the best its ever been. There is a certain lack of maps and modes in there, but the fundamentals are super, super fun.

Fuck the people saying warzone is pay-to-win or microtransaction heavy. The REQ system has problems, sure, but balance isn't one of them. The real problem with warzone is that there's only 4 maps and the boss spawns are all predetermined so it can get samey.

Got it a couple of weeks ago and I like it so far. I thought the campaign alright (all those spartans coming outta nowhere is kinda confusing). Multiplayer is good, too, although I basically run around aimlessly because I don't know what I'm doing.

There's plenty in Warzone they can expand on, for sure. At launch I thought the multiplayer was in a pretty good state, but it can always get better.

Hopefully the add-ons are more significant map packs than just the player-made stuff they liked. I want new environments and more varied types of level design. In my head I keep comparing it to Halo 3, which had years of additions, so I'm trying to give 5 some leeway since I think it'll continue to see support til Halo 6.

The last update was all 343 made maps including a new Warzone map. I think the only player made map pack update was the BTB update.

I really enjoy the MP but I can't get into many games online, something to do with living in Australia.

Alright, here is my opinion of this game after close to 150 hours of this game ( Mostly multiplayer ). The campaign is good...not something to remember in ten years good, but good. Their main fault is having you playing as Locke 70% of the time. The story is far from good, but where they end up at the end is really interesting though. That said, the level design, the action in the missions and the gameplay is incredibly fun in the campaign. It's just that if you're not that much of a fan of FPS stories...there ain't much there to hook you and making you want to know how the story unfolds.

Now MP. In my experience, Halo 5 multiplayer is the best in the series. It came out at launch a little more barebones than usual, but they keep adding modes and maps. And yeah...it's free sooo... you can't really argue with that. In my opinion, the microtransaction in this game are perfect. They are not necessary at all if you actually play the game (Brad played exactly 2 games of Warzone and less than 10 multiplayer games...yeah...apparently it was enough for him to make a fully articulated judgement on the multiplayer aspect of this game) and they allow 343 to release all the add-ons to the game for free.

The maps are harder to feel and be good at them than before though... The newly released Overgrowth especially..man I played probably 20 matches in this map and I still can't tell where the hell I'm going.

Anyway, if you pick up the game, my gamertag is Lynx67. Many people have added me on their friend list on GiantBomb but we seem to be alittle shy :) So don't hesitate to invite me to your fireteam or a party.

cheers

I would very strongly agree and add that it was the best competitive shooter multiplayer experience of 2015 by some distance. I think the reasons that it hasn't received an awful lot of chatter/praise here are largely due to primary gaming system preference being PC/PS4. There's always likely to be an element of franchise fatigue and even mild snobbery involved with some people also.

I love multiplayer, but part of me hopes we see community forge maps in matchmaking.

I don't really see the point of Forge at the moment, unless the maps will eventually be added to MM.

@zombie2011: Good to know, I've been away from the game for a few weeks (not by choice) so looking forward to seeing that.

@csl316: I painted with too broad a brush - I meant the BTB maps being generic, yeah. They look like they were made using Forge, with no texture on anything. That in itself isn't a problem, they've incorporated fan-made forge maps into multi in the past, it just feels like 343 is saying "hey here's some maps be happy because they're free!" instead of putting in real effort to make interesting stuff.

@nickhead: Agreed, when they delayed BTB I at least hoped they had some specialized maps tucked away. They mentioned some maps inspired by the past were coming, so the expectation comes with "oh nice, a remake like Lockout to Blackout." And nah.

I really liked it, my main reason for not keeping up on the multiplayer is I really wanted some old maps, the map rotation just felt small with how they handled it for different round types.

Really? I thought it looked pretty damn good, and I remember a lot of other people saying that it looked pretty good when it came out as well. Actually, the fact that it runs so smoothly and still looks so good is my favorite thing about the game. I want to see more developers making console games that run at such smooth framerates, and I will take a dip in graphics quality with a big grin on my face if it means it happens.

As for the campaign, I outright said that it sucks in my GOTY blog. It plays fine, but the story is easily the worst the franchise has ever seen. People keep comparing it to Halo 2, but that game made up for a lacking finale with some of the best and most concise world-building I've seen in any shooter. Gameplay-wise, it looks like Halo and it mostly plays like Halo, but it kinda doesn't feel like Halo. All of the firefights here felt really same-y, whereas I can specifically remember a lot of different areas in the Bungie Halo games. Many of those firefights played out differently every time I played through the games.

I'd imagine this also has something to do with the lack of talk about Halo 5. The series's popularity seems to have been waning since 3 came out, and even 3 felt like it had a little less buzz than 2.

There's definitely some of this. Halo is supposed to have a certain "feel" to it. Change it too much, and the legacy players hate it. Don't change it enough, and newcomers gravitate toward more modern shooters. 343 is in a pretty tough situation in that regard. That said, it's kind of harder to evaluate this time because Halo 5 has a lot of genuine issues people have outside of the feel of it changing.

Halo 4 did well, but it was on a console with a much larger install base, made less drastic changes, and was better received critically. It didn't come out in nearly as crowded a release window. It also had Destiny to go against this time. A lot of old-school Bungie fans are playing Destiny now, and it's hard to say if that took sales/interest away from it as well. I can tell you with my old Halo group, the three of us bought the game, but we all ended up going back to Destiny. And both Battlefront and Black Ops 3 sold incredibly well.

Bungie was pretty smart to get out when they did.

Yeah, as far as "old school Halo feel" goes, Destiny scratches that itch way better than Halo 4 and 5 ever have.

i'm having a good bit of fun with the multiplayer, as for the campaign, it's probably the most boring halo campaign i've seen so far. There's just nothing that's special about it and i can only assume it's due to the way it's been designed for 4 player co-op. Don't get me wrong, if you're still someone who loves the halo multiplayer arena combat, this is the best it's been in years. if you like halo for the singleplayer, this one is very forgettable and you're not missing much.

@believer258: Yeah maybe I'm crazy, I dunno. I also remember the visuals getting talked up so maybe I had higher expectations going into it. I really noticed the frame-y animations on enemies as you got further away from them, which they did obviously to keep the 60fps.

Don't get me wrong, there were some nice looking aspects to the game. I thought the Elite homeworld was especially nice. But overall I wasn't impressed.

I mainly play the halo games for the singleplayer portion. Halo 5 has some problems with its singleplayer campaign. I wont go into a detailed explanation since i dont want to spoil the story for you but lets just say that the boss fights are a tad repetitive and the campaign has been clearly designed for co-op.

Killing some of the bosses on heroic difficulty (which is the difficulty i always choose for halo games) its at times a very frustrating experience since the AI controlled companions tend to die pretty quickly in boss fights which makes it hard to do certain stuff in order to kill the bosses. With a human partner those boss fights would have been much easier since they dont just rush at the boss who then kills them with one hit.

Take it as it is but there 10 000 people watching the North American qualifiers right now on twitch. In my opinion it's a gamers game with a specific fanbase. Not a journalist type of game. It reminds me alot of 3 years ago when nobody in the journalist community was talking or playing gam3s like lol or dota.

I don't know. This game is great. I would recommend it anytime to people who are interested in great and unique multiplayer and willing to put lots of time into it cause yeah even low level players are real savages at the game.

Haha this is basically me now since I got the game.