Source: Amazon.com

Considering the major misteps of Halo 4 were fresh in my mind, going into Halo 5 I had limited to no expectations that 343 was going to be able to get their heads around how to do a well structured campaign story, and for the most part my expectations were correct.  There were a few moments that the story made sense and progressed logically, but they were few and far in between.  Luckily there were no random new villains (the didact? the librarian?), but the story really felt like a stepping stone from halo 4 to halo 6, with less story progression than the throw away Spartan Ops missions from Halo 4.

Another major problem that 343 has is adding new game mechanics, then never explaining them or showing them in use at all in the single player portion of the game.  In Halo 4, it was the run mechanic, where it was added, but no one in the game ever actually said “hey, you can run now, just hold down this button right here”.  In Halo 5, they have a thrust/dodge and a “ground pound” set of mechanics, but never properly introduce them in the game.  They do show off a running wall smash thing, but that’s about it.  It was until I was about 10 games into the multiplayer that I realized that everyone else was using these things and I had to look it up to see 1 – what it was called and 2 – how to do it.  Terrible implementation and makes me bitter towards 343 for such a stupid misstep.

Speaking of multiplayer, I find their plans for it to be laudable, but I’m already bored with the 3 maps you get in the various game types.  The REQ cards are interesting and may keep me coming back for a while, but once I have the achievements for the MP stuff, I doubt I’m going to stick around for very long.

All in all, it’s an interesting game, certainly not work the cover price of $60, but you can already find it for $40 out on the internet.