Halo Infinite was one of the most anticipated games of 2021. A lack of content and bugs made that excitement disappear fast. They did recently put out a roadmap for the next few months, so it seems like a decent amount of content is coming. Future content is great and all, but how does season 2 stack up?
Battle Pass
For starters there is a new Battle Pass available. You may be groaning, but this one is different from others. Battle Passes in games like Dead by Daylight and Fortnite expire once a season is over and any unclaimed rewards are lost. Halo Infinite allows you to go back and forth between old ones and the current one, this way you won’t have lost rewards. You can switch between Battle Passes in the season 2 menu. This season’s Battle Pass costs 1000 Halo Credits or $10 for the premium tier.
Improved Bots
In season 1, the bots in Halo Infinite were pretty bad. They could aim, but they were pretty useless when it came to objective game modes. The bots are greatly improved in season 2. Now they are actually useful in objective modes. The game says that they have been improved to marine AI in the campaign and it really shows. It would be great to have bots be as smart as the campaign enemies, but marines are still an improvement.
Game Modes
One noticeable game mode that was missing in Halo Infinite was King of the Hill, but that is no more. King of the Hill is back in both unranked and ranked game modes (and it feels heavily weighted in ranked). Two teams of four race to gain control of a zone on the map that changes positions. Unlike previous games where the hill changes positions and the team with the most time in the hill wins, this time’s a little different. Each spot on the map gets the hill once and it doesn’t change until a team fills up their capture meter. The classic scoring for King of the Hill can be enabled in custom games, so don’t be surprised if we have King of the Hill Classic as a game variant at some point.
I didn’t understand the new scoring at first, I thought you just had to be in it when it moved, but eventually I noticed the bar. You wouldn’t think the bar would change the game that much, but it felt different. When you fight it out to get control and the hill didn’t fill up for over a minute, it makes you see just how good the other team is.
Last Spartan Standing is a free for all game mode where 12 players each with 5 lives spawn in and has to be the last one alive. You get points for each kill or you can pick up extra points on the map when someone has a permadeath. These points allow you to upgrade your guns. By default everyone starts with a pistol and a Disrupter. With enough points you can upgrade your pistol to stronger and better weapons. Last Spartan Standing feels like a bit like a battle royale, so if that’s your type of game, you will probably love this mode, I know I did. It’s available on all Big Team Battle maps.
Maps
The first map is Breaker. Breaker is a Banished ship breaking yard that has two bases on either end. In what is a break from Halo’s standard long death drop, it’s replaced with hot lava. The concept is the same, but visually it is much cooler to see lava under you knowing you can die, instead of seeing just a long drop. It never felt right that a fall would kill you in Halo games, Master Chief fell from space and lived. He was a little disoriented, but in 2 minutes he was fine, so a drop on the same planet shouldn’t be an issue for Spartans. Another interesting visual is a giant laser that moves across a pit. Breaker is available in Big Team Battle and Last Spartan Standing game modes.
The second map is Catalyst. Catalyst is a Forerunner structure. Two sides are separated by a light bridge and a long fall below it. The light bridge provides a short, but dangerous trip when playing capture the flag. Players on either side of the bridge can make you their target. There’s no cover until you get across. The map feels like a combination of Halo 2’s Lockout map mixed with Halo 3’s Narrows map. Catalyst is available in most Arena matchmaking playlists, including Ranked Arena, and Tactical Slayer.
Other Changes
Along with the new content, the game has a long list of fixes for both multiplayer and campaign. It also features some new features. In Arena, the Motion Tracker will have outer edge detection now that shows you where someone is shooting or sprinting from. It’s a nice change in a game without a kill cam, this way you at least have an idea of where you were shot from.
Still to Come
Season 2 still has a few things that will be launching before it closes, including the return of Halo’s map/game editor Forge and a new game mode. Land Grab is an upcoming event mode which mixes King of the Hill and Territories. In it you’ll have to control five plots of land, once they are captured, you own them. Obviously these aren’t released so I cannot comment on how they are, but I hope they are worth the wait.
The Wait
Everything they added was pretty great. I had a lot of fun with the new maps and modes. I also somehow missed the variants on Tactical Slayer and played pistols only for the first time. The maps are great and King of the Hill is a welcomed return, but was it worth the wait? I don’t think so. King of the Hill was a staple of Halo since at least Halo 2 and one map for Big Team Battles and one map for everything else just doesn’t feel like enough. When games like Call of Duty can put out four map packs a year after launch each with three to four maps in the pack, two maps and two modes five months after launch doesn’t seem like enough.
Maybe once Forge launches, 343i will use the community to make maps, at least I hope they do. They said in the past that they were avoiding remakes of maps. If the community remakes Lockout or Midship, I could see them taking them and adding them to the rotation. Honestly, that is my hope anyway. 343i could focus on perfecting the maps they are working on, meanwhile the community makes their own content.
It wouldn’t be the first time that Halo took community made content and made it official. Rooster Teeth’s Burnie Burns created a map and mode in Halo 3 for Grifball. Grifball is a bomb mode variant where you are in a large room and all you have are hammers and swords. The goal is to get passed the other team to plant the bomb. It became popular enough that it was added as core game modes in other Halo games. I guess time will tell if that’s the plan though, since they haven’t made any mention of it.
It’s certainly worth checking out, especially if you played early in season 1 and then fell off, since some stuff was added later in the season. If you have played a lot in season 1 though and were hoping for a new experience, you may want to hold off until later in the season or during the first event.
