This month (April) was Halo Infinite, a game in a series we had a lot to talk about. The open world and other elements felt divisive for us, and mainly, in a way, somewhat ironically (given its name), but also in terms of the development of the game and its road map, fittingly empty.

There just wasn’t as much to do that was meaningful as we had hoped there would be. Balance issues also seemed to abound in terms of how the narrative wants you to feel about the Chief and his abilities, versus the game scenarios that seemed most challenging to us.

Building out the tech tree wasn’t super satisfying (we both went for grapple hook and then really didn’t bother with much), and the world-building had its own missed opportunities; for example, Infinite would basically be much improved by its own Nemesis-type system, as the named enemies felt after a while to just be another way-point on a map full of not-so-meaningful way-points (unfortunately).

Nonetheless, there is a lot to like here; a lot of work went into the presentation (music, visuals, sky boxes, etc.), the way the Chief controls (how it feels to embody his perspective), the 30 seconds of fun loop that was so compelling in other games is still mainly intact as well.

Check out the usual links and ephemera in the liner notes here. And watch out for end of May’s discussion of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

*Apologies for the dropped connection about halfway through; skip ahead two minutes or so to skip us talking separately (and not to each other).

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