Halo Infinite (XB/PC/Cloud/Game Pass) - Big Update out now.

Pretty good fun, eh?

At first I was like "yeah, bots, this'll be easy", then they got harder, but by the end of the weekend they were becoming quite predictable.

Bulldog seems very weak. Is it just straight up the replacement for the old shotgun?

Gravity Hammer was disgustingly good.

Plasma Carbine doesn't feel tuned enough.

Sidekick is lots of fun. More like a Destiny 2 sidearm than a Hand Cannon - not a bad thing.

Radar needs to be a bit bigger and/or clearer.

Not very stable, I broke the menus a few times.

Battlepass system looks ok, customisation options nice and clear, hoping for a lot of options when it comes to posing in the match intro and outro.

Maps were good, encourages lots of sprinting, jumping and clambering. I miss the sprinting tackle, divebomb, thrusters and assassinations though.

Dooooood, Toxic’s back!

rinks wrote:

Monkey Man wrote:

twitter.com/TheReachWay/status/1421719360574398471

While that is very cool, when experienced players all learn to do stuff like that, it’s going to make the game gooseberry fool for newcomers and the less accomplished, being unexpectedly annihilated from the sky.

There is Ranked and Social playlists, the try hards will mostly stick to ranked plus it has a firing range with all weapons against unarmed bots and you can play against bots (3 levels of difficulty) in the MP if you want and stick with them forever. The options to learn the ropes in this (and not be annihilated) is far beyond most other FPS games.

The Halo Tech Test had 13 tracks from the game if left main menu on, they've absolutely nailed the soundtrack.

Summary -

Visuals/audio seem significantly refined vs last year's showing
Multiplayer maps have excellent indirect lighting, but probably won't be what we see in the campaign since they're static and don't need to account for time a day
Materials look a lot better due to screen space reflections
Managed to create very nice looking materials/structures, while retaining great readability
New weapon models look great
Very encouraged by what they're seeing
AI may be something very special, going by how bots behave in the flight
Uses dynamic resolution scaling
1800p-2160p in 60fps mode on Series X
1080p-1440p in 120fps mode on Series X
1080p in 60fps mode on Series S, but can drop below it a bit
720p in 120fps mode on Series S, with drops to 540p
720p at 30fps on One S, with drops to 540p
One S has muddier ground textures and lacks screen space reflections, and generally has less detail all around
2160p at 30fps on One X, with drops to 1800p
60fps mode on Series S|X is near-locked
120fps mode on Series S|X varies between ~100-120fps. Great with VRR
Series S actually gets closer to 120fps lock than Series X
One X runs at a pretty solid 30fps
One S has many frame pacing issues at 30fps
PC version doesn't appear to utilize the GPU to full extent in this state.
PC version has performance issues in current state; difficulty retaining 60fps at 4K with a GTX 3090.
PC version framerate cap doesn't function correctly. Caps at 1-2 frames less than 60hz/120hz, causing stutter.
They're confident these PC issues will be corrected by launch

Article -

We talk about this more in the DF Direct, but while direct comparisons with last year's gameplay reveal are difficult owing to the lack of commonality in content (campaign vs multiplayer), there are clear signs of substantial improvements in terms of material response and lighting - key reasons why the game's first showing in real-time looked rather flat. Just the improvement in lighting, shadowing and materials on the view weapon is significant, hinting that the time spent on the game since its delay has been well spent. Of course we should expect some technical issues with early code but ultimately, we can chalk this up as a highly promising, successful and well-received hands-on gameplay debut. Halo Infinite looks to be back on track and we can't wait to see more.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digi ... ats-tested

Xbox Unveils Life-Size Warthog at 20th Century Studios’ “Free Guy” World Premiere

Xbox unveiled a life-sized, scale replica of a Warthog — an all-terrain vehicle designed to transport troops and materials through dangerous battlefields — from Halo Infinite at the world premiere of 20th Century Studios’ “Free Guy” in New York. Keep a close eye out during “Free Guy” and you might even catch a glimpse of certain all-terrain vehicles and tanks from the Halo universe!

To bring the iconic transport vehicle to our universe, Hoonigan Industries, the leading lifestyle motorsport brand, worked closely with the team at Halo and 343 Industries to develop this special project-built Warthog, solely using hi-res images and renders from Halo Infinite, launching this holiday season. The vehicle features a body, interior, switchgear, and accessories that were all hand-crafted and fabricated with intricate detail at Hoonigan Industries. Not only does it look like it could carry the Master Chief into battle, but it also runs like it! Standing tall on 43-inch tires and custom 20-inch wheels, the Warthog is fully functional and off-road tested featuring a 1000+ horsepower, twin turbo small block Ford V8, the same engine that powers Ken Block’s Ford Mustang Hoonicorn V2.

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2021/08/04/ ... e-warthog/

I've been looking forward to this for a while now. I finally got around to playing the campaign for Halo 5 recently and really enjoyed it. I know it got some backlash from hardcore fans but I didn't see what the fuss was about. I get how they basically ripped the melee and dodge abilities from Destiny but I quite like that game so it made sense. Aim down sights made sense because every other shooter has it.

The story seemed a bit short on anything groundbreaking but I did like the squad mechanics.

No new gameplay but new info.

Still coming out holiday 2021.
PCs to get a 20%+ performance boost
Next test to have BTB & 4v4 PVP
Split-screen MP at launch on all consoles but post-launch on PCs next year.
Campaign footage etc before launch
Craig's hair looks great

Halo Infinite will no longer launch with a cooperative campaign and the Forge level editor, Microsoft announced on Friday.

The modes, once expected to launch alongside the title this fall, will be introduced via free updates at a later date.

https://www.windowscentral.com/halo-inf ... rge-launch

Co-op in Season 2 which is 3 months after launch & Forge coming in Season 3 which is 6 months after launch.


I'm personally hoping for some info on the test and/or launch date at the Gamescom event on Tuesday. But the vibe from that vid is that neither will be there.

strawberry floating hell. No co-op at launch and it's been delayed for how long? The more they announce the less interested I get.

Wonder if they'll quietly go back on the "of course it'll be split-screen co-op from now on" too

Basically a delay in all but name. What on Earth is going on with this project.

PC next year. What the strawberry float?

This is classic MS while offering gamepass on PC they do gimp it and stuff comes late.

No campaign co-op at launch is pretty disappointing

I’ll get on with the MP until Forge provides customs and I was always gonna play the campaign alone at first.

jiggles wrote:Basically a delay in all but name. What on Earth is going on with this project.

A delay of co-op and Forge is a delay of the entire game in all but name? Really?

This from the guy who had a melt down when I reckon Returnal needed saves…which the dev patched in (you guessed it) months later.

I’d be pretty sceptical about what we get in 2021 on consoles now. Seems they are balls out on making the campaign and MP work and be optimised on consoles only. But will it be… I reckon there will be some issues.

Can’t be as bad as MCC right? Right….

Can't say I'm bothered by the missing stuff. Solo Campaign & MP are all I'm interested in. Feb will probably be perfect for a team up in Campaign.

I wonder what the price will be with the MP being F2P. Other devs are charging £70 for a shorter campaign than I expect Halo to be so who knows.

Small gif - https://gfycat.com/biodegradablespiritedangora

Bertie wrote:I’d be pretty sceptical about what we get in 2021 on consoles now. Seems they are balls out on making the campaign and MP work and be optimised on consoles only. But will it be… I reckon there will be some issues.

Can’t be as bad as MCC right? Right….

I think the MP will be great, it was ready to launch last year unlike the campaign.

Photek wrote:

Bertie wrote:I’d be pretty sceptical about what we get in 2021 on consoles now. Seems they are balls out on making the campaign and MP work and be optimised on consoles only. But will it be… I reckon there will be some issues.

Can’t be as bad as MCC right? Right….

I think the MP will be great, it was ready to launch last year unlike the campaign.

I hope you are right.

I have to say I am very annoyed by the PC delay. DF clearly picked up the issues and it seems they can’t fix it quickly, or the team is flat out on consoles. Which would make me worry for what state they ship it in, whether they can get done what they want. As they have clearly cut back in some areas.

It’s not delayed on PC at all?

Bertie wrote:I’d be pretty sceptical about what we get in 2021 on consoles now. Seems they are balls out on making the campaign and MP work and be optimised on consoles only. But will it be… I reckon there will be some issues.

Can’t be as bad as MCC right? Right….

Is split-screen Halo MP popular on PCs? I've no idea. That's the only difference between all the versions. The test ran well on PCs other than the easily fixed judder and that was before the 20% performance boost and whatever 6 months of dev time does in the final stretch.