Halo 5 Reviews

Halo 5: Guardians is a masterpiece, and quite possibly the best Halo game so far. The campaign is top-notch, even as Master Chief shares the spotlight, and the multiplayer is largely a return to everything that has made the franchise so beloved to begin with.

It’s a well-crafted Halo experience with enough new bells and whistles to turn around even the most jaded Halo fan, and feels exactly like what you’d want a next-gen Halo game to be. There’s a hefty amount of content to explore here across the campaign and multiplayer modes, with a large map variety at launch and an enjoyable story to uncover. And it all looks and sounds absolutely gorgeous, with fantastic enemy and map designs on top of the excellent technical groundwork behind it all.

In short, Halo 5: Guardians is in my opinion at least, a real return to form for a franchise that felt like it had lost its way ever since Call of Duty took the multiplayer crown on Xbox Live. This is a game that now proudly wears its roots on its sleeve, and plays to its greatest strengths. The multiplayer is fresh and exciting with the new movement options and feels like a true evolution for the series. The campaign is a confident, well told, galaxy spanning adventure with a huge amount of replayability on a scale we’ve never seen.

Halo 5 is an outstanding game and one of the finest first-person shooters ever made. Its design is versatile, and it’s the best-playing entry in the series so far.

Though the story is a draw for longtime fans, most people will be stopping in to check out Halo 5's multiplayer, and it's there 343's direction really shines.

Italian Words

Everything is perfectly executed, be it Kazuma Jinnouchi’s masterful soundtrack, Sotaro Tojima’s outstanding sound design, the fun and witty banter between Locke, Tanaka, Buck, and Vale, or the fun of crushing kids in Arena multiplayer with your best friends, Halo 5 nails it all for me, making it my favorite overall Halo game to date.

The continuation of a new Master Chief saga, the refinement and additions to multiplayer for casual and pros alike, plus a gorgeous presentation made possible by current generation technology—all add up to the makings of a FPS worthy of the Halo series’ best iterations.

What language is this?

As a series, Halo has been the one triple-A shooter that has fans for the story as well as the multiplayer. Depending on where you are on the spectrum between story and gameplay, you can take my grade up or down a half point. If you’re looking for a frag-fest, plus all the enticements of the new Warzone mode, Halo 5 is a must-own.

Halo 5 feels like it knows its obligations. The campaign's narrative is likely to prove controversial, though its biggest sin may be its familiarity. Otherwise, Halo 5 excels under the pressure, providing one of the most welcoming, competitive, balanced and fun games of the year — and providing my personal favorite Halo multiplayer since the series began.

The story campaign is a mild disappointment but the multiplayer is a bold reinvention of the Halo experience, that should keep the series fresh for years to come.

"Halo 5: Guardians offers so much content that it wel even keep the most seasoned players satisfied for months. The campaign is one of the best ever and offers enormous replayability. The multiplayer is one of the biggest ever with tho completely different modes that offer a completely different experience, from classic Halo to gigantic battles. Added, Halo 5 simply plays great. The mix of classic Halo gameplay and modern spartan abilities readies Halo for another decenium at the top. Halo 5: Guardians is not perfect, but 343 proves that it can make a damn good Halo game, and thus a fantastic shooter. As an Xbox One owner, you simply must purchase Halo 5: Guardians, period!"

As it stands, Halo 5 is near perfect. With slick gameplay, a fantastic campaign, and seemingly ambitious multiplayer, it gets little wrong. If you own an Xbox One or plan to buy it, this is why you're doing so.

Italian Words

Halo 5: Guardians, is, by all accounts, the total package. The gameplay is immensely satisfying and leaps and bounds ahead of previous entries, which is saying a lot. And while I wasn’t terribly engaged by the plot and felt that the campaign was slightly more underwhelming than some of the series’ other games, I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t have a blast playing it.

Italian Words

Any worry that Halo might be in the wrong hands with 343 Industries has been wiped out by Halo 5: Guardians. The campaign has some story issues, with Halo 6 promising to really deliver the goods, but the design is impeccable, and will certainly warrant multiple playthroughs.

Overall, Halo 5: Guardians is a good Halo game that has the best gameplay in the series, and that is a bold thing to say for a franchise that’s been running for 14 straight years now. However, the technical sacrifices and image quality losses are a little too much this time around. It hurts me to say that Halo 5: Guardians is not a game of the year material because I know many people expected it to be.

Multiplayer is really where 343 needed to prove themselves and regain some of that goodwill from Halo fans, which is fortunate, because multiplayer is where Halo 5 shines brightest. Forget everything you knew about Halo 4's multiplayer. 343 wisely went back to the drawing board and scrapped nearly everything about Halo 4's widely criticized multiplayer offerings.

There will certainly be some players who find that the specific omissions in Halo 5 are extremely disappointing, and you'll see a rough edge or two, but all in all there's a fantastic big-budget shooter in Halo 5 with lots to see and enough multiplayer options to keep you going for quite some time.

As a package, Halo 5: Guardians is a very solid offering. While the campaign mode has its ups and downs – and to be blunt, doesn't take particularly long to complete – it's nevertheless enjoyable, even if it can get a little relentless and repetitive at times. But its highs definitely outweigh its lows, and if you play it on the more challenging levels – and especially if you play it in co-op mode – it's entertaining enough.

Halo 5: Guardians is a fine-tuned machine. It has a robust and highly addictive competitive multiplayer component, a large variety of aesthetically pleasing customizations and some of the tightest controls to ever grace a Halo title. Unfortunately, the campaign leaves much to be desired. While it features four player cooperative play through the entirety of the experience, the plot is both poorly structured and awkwardly paced.

While the story of Halo 5 – Guardians may not be as solid as hardcore fans would like to see, the gameplay covers for it with impressive captivation and usage throughout the entire campaign. For the first standalone Halo title for the Xbox One, it’s certainly a worthy addition to the franchise with a long multiplayer life ahead of itself.

Halo 5 Guardians is a beautiful, challenging and entertaining step forward for the series both on the multiplayer and campaign front, even despite the decreased role of Master Chief. Trust in 343 Industries, Halo fans.

A short, disappointing tale makes nearly no progress in 343’s trilogy, and offers nothing that lives up to the billing of a tense showdown between Halo 5’s two protagonists. Thankfully the improved gameplay and consistently great multiplayer shine in Halo's uneven debut on the Xbox One. The multiplayer is fantastic, and the co-op is magical. Bring friends.

Halo 5 Guardians is a fantastic game brimming with content, though some parts feel better than others. The story fails to live up to the franchise’s standards, due to an underdeveloped narrative, samey level design and an unnecessary focus on Locke. Nevertheless, polished gameplay, challenging AI, the superb portal of Blue Team and a mesmerising soundtrack redeem the campaign.

Halo 5: Guardians isn’t the perfect chapter in the franchise when it comes to the story, as it’s one that doesn’t always keep its priorities where it should. But even then, it only stumbles rather than fall. When it comes to gameplay and presentation, Guardians is an excellent continuation that not only builds on the strengths of its predecessors, but isn’t afraid to throw in new and balanced features into the mix that renew the tried and tested formula, providing returning fans and newcomers alike some new things to play with.

Return to form.

A Mediocre Story With Terrific Multiplayer

If it weren't for Warzone, Halo 5: Guardians would probably be somewhere on the lower end of the franchise's spectrum for me. It's still a fantastic and well-oiled machine, but the story falls flat, and the shift in gameplay mechanics result in the loss of some elements that made the series so unique in the first place. Still, if you're looking to shoot some dudes online, Guardians is your huckleberry.

But at the end of the day, there just isn’t that much here for me, even as a casual-sometimes-hardcore Halo fan. If you think Destiny could scratch the itch you have for Halo, pick it up over this game. If not, buckle in for an underwhelming mechanical retread with a so-so story framing the whole experience.

Halo 5 is beautiful, at times a lot of fun, and at times disappointing. It’s also not yet officially released and is dependent on its multiplayer working well on a large scale. So we’re holding off on a review until well after the game’s October 27 launch. For now, some impressions of one of the Xbox One’s big fall exclusives.

Besides being a great game, Halo 5 is a great Halo, quite simply. 343 industries has finally found the right formula to dust off the serie, while preserving the fundamentals that make Halo a cult series.

Developer 343 Industries has engineered the strongest combat Halo has ever seen, with tons of excellent weapons, varied maps, an expansive and intense new multiplayer mode joining a host of returning greats, and some game-changing new mobility. At the same time, Guardians repeats Halo 4’s mistake of telling a story that can’t stand on its own without Halo’s expanded universe. This hurts, but doesn’t ruin, its otherwise impressive cooperative campaign.

Halo 5 changes just enough of the Halo formula to feel fresh while not feeling like it's morphed into something else entirely. Its final moments may frustrate those who want to "finish the fight" immediately and see this story's conclusion, but the plot puts a lot of exciting pieces in motion, and it's a blast to play through from beginning to end.

Halo 5 boasts the best campaign since Reach, mixing enormous, beautifully detailed environments with fast-paced, exciting combat across some of the most interesting and colourful locales 343 has ever produced. While the multiplayer needs to ferment a little to bring out its true flavours and the necessities of storytelling rob the campaign of some potentially stand-out set-pieces, this is still a huge, satisfying package that ticks every box on the list.

Don’t play Halo 5 for its story, then. Play Halo 5 because it’s bursting with invention, an absolute masterclass in how to craft a first-person shooter, and the best reason yet to own an Xbox One. For all its technical quirks and plot deficiencies, Halo is once again the best time you can have shooting aliens in the face.

Halo 5: Guardians is both the true descendant of its predecessors and a major step forward in terms of change in that 343 Industries managed to make Halo gameplay much more dynamic than it's ever been before. Everything the fans love about the series has been included: the vehicles (with a new one in the package), the more open environments (though not all of them are), the intense combat against multiple enemies (and English-speaking Grunts), the fantastic soundtrack, etc.

Unfortunately, the campaign doesn’t earn the same level of praise. On one hand, it’s fantastic. There were roughly a dozen or so times we completely stopped whatever it was we were doing to take in a scene. Sometimes that meant gazing upward, where ships would be dogfighting all around us. During other moments, we were hesitant to push forward because of towering entities known as guardians.

343 will always have their work compared to the very best of Halo, and the very best of Bungie. The campaign in Halo 5: Guardians is proof that they are more than capable of matching the very best that the series has to offer. It took them the damp squib of Halo 4 and messy launch of The Master Chief Collection to get there – but it was worth it.

343 Industries heeft al een lange weg afgelegd sinds het in 2010 de sleutels van de Halo-reeks kreeg. Na enkele misstappen bewijst de studio nu dat het een echte Halo-campaign kan leveren. De ontwikkelaar laat af en toe nog eens een steek vallen, maar het resultaat spreekt voor zich. Halo 5: Guardians voelt fris aan, maar respecteert alles wat de reeks heeft groot gemaakt. Hail to the Chief.

Perhaps the most important thing to say about Halo 5's campaign is it's a substantial improvement on Halo 4's campaign, which I've always maintained was a decent first effort from a new developer still finding its feet. Halo 5's missions do not revolutionise the FPS genre, or even the Halo series, but they are a welcome return to form. For me, that's good enough.

neto_btu escreveu:Sonysta-mor da comunidade fazendo o tópico pra dar risadinha sendo que os maiores sites ainda não publicaram nenhuma nota, a galera nem testou direito o multiplayer e etc. Foda-se.

Fabio. escreveu:

Fabio. escreveu:quando a "zuera" cai pra cima deles não demora muito pra começar o choro kkkkkkk

neto_btu escreveu:Olha, mas sinceramente? Eu vi um site aí que deu 7 pro Halo 5, mas deu 9 pro KZ Shadow Fall...

André ► ❻ ◄ escreveu:Vários reviews nem deram nota pq estão esperando o MP ser completamente liberado, me pergunto como outros sites já saíram dando notas. Mas as maiores reclamações da campanha parece que foi pq deixaram muita coisa pro Halo 6
 
Também fizeram vários comprometimentos técnicos pra deixar os 60fps sólidos.

What works

• Frame-rate: Without a doubt, the defining technical feature of Halo 5 is its frame-rate. Delivering a stable 60 frames per second across the board, Halo 5 feels marvellous to play. During normal gameplay, only the occasional duplicate frames manifesting at checkpoints have any impact on fluidity. The only question mark hanging over the game is the upcoming Forge mode - which allows users to craft map variants from a huge selection of objects. This feature has yet to be released and, as a result, it's impossible to say how performance will look here. In previous Halo games, no other mode could drop the frame-rate quite like Forge so we're eager to see how it turns out in Halo 5.
  
  

• Dynamic resolution: It's clear that hitting 1080p while maintaining 60fps would not have been possible in Halo 5 but rather than simply opting to render at a low resolution across the board, 343 has implemented one of the most impressive dynamic resolution scaling systems we've seen to date. In Halo 5, X and Y values are adjusted independently enabling a wide range of values designed to maximize performance. The lowest recorded value we find is 1152x810 but we see arbitrary values such as 1168x810, 1440x840, 1344x972, and 1536x1080 as well. Halo 5 is able to make these adjustments on the fly while avoiding over budget frames throughout, ensuring silky-smooth performance.
  
  
• Menu system: It may seem trivial, but the quality of the menu experience is a hallmark of the franchise under Bungie. Typically combining smart typeface choices with beautiful, animated backdrops, the Halo menu systems are traditionally functional yet beautiful. Halo 5 manages to update this tradition expertly. The Halo 5 menu system is both beautifully designed and well performing. Transitions between each section of the menu happen smoothly with simple transitions, backed by an excellent soundtrack worthy of the series. We feel this is a significant upgrade over the somewhat inconsistent user interface present in the Master Chief Collection.
  
  
• Cut-scenes: Storytelling has always been a key element to the Halo experience and Halo 5 delivers the most technically impressive cut-scenes in series history. While the intro and outro sequences are pre-rendered videos, the overwhelming majority of cinematic sequences in the game are rendered completely in real-time. With high quality shader and materials work in effect along with excellent bokeh depth of field, performance captured animations, and impressive lighting, Halo 5 looks its best during these 30fps sequences.
  
  
• Audio: Halo 5 delivers an expertly constructed 7.1 audio mix that envelopes the player in a convincing sound-field. While weapon effects and general carnage all sound excellent, it's the smaller details that really stand out. Spartan charge into a wall and listen carefully as the resulting debris produces convincing metallic sounds as they collide with the floor. On top of this, we have the excellent soundtrack which weaves in themes from Halo's past with its own unique flavour. Halo 5's audio experience is certainly one of the best of the year.
  
  
• Loading times: Getting into and out of multiplayer matches requires quick swift loading times and thankfully, that's exactly what Halo 5 provides. Both the campaign and multiplayer matches require no more than a few seconds to load keeping wait times to a minimum. While the loading screens themselves are not as lavish as Bungie's, the wait times are fast enough that this never sticks out.
  
  
• Physically-based materials: Halo 5 adopts a physically based approach to rendering which takes into account the roughness of the material and how it interacts with light. Materials now exhibit more realistic diffusion and reflection properties, among other things, and the game benefits greatly from this. Metallic surfaces appear more realistic while highly diffuse materials, such as sand and stone, behave as you would expect. However, it's not completely successful across the board, with many materials exhibiting an overly plastic or polymer-like appearance.
  
  

What doesn't

• Image quality: While the dynamic resolution system is impressive, the reality is that the game spends the overwhelming majority of its time well under full 1080p. When combined with sparse anti-aliasing coverage this often results in scenes exhibiting aliasing and blurring artefacts simultaneously. This is further impacted by limited texture filtering, smearing surface textures at oblique angles. In fact, the selected texture filtering has a stronger impact on overall presentation than resolution.
  
  
• Half-rate animation: While the game operates at 60fps, active entities within the world will actually animate at half-rate when they reach a set distance from the player. We're basically seeing 30 frames of animation per second while the game continues to operate at 60 in these situations. Halo 5 often places huge numbers of entities within each scene. You can have multiple Spartans fighting alongside locals against a huge hoard of enemy forces. In the busiest of scenarios, we see more active on-screen enemies than in any other Halo game. Yet, managing so many actors in a scene places additional strain on the CPU which could drop performance. It would appear that this system was implemented to prevent such a load from tanking the frame-rate. It's successful but, more than any other sacrifice made, it looks rather jarring during normal gameplay. The distance in which enemies begin to animate at half-rate is just a bit too close to the player for our liking.
  
  
• Lighting and shadows: Halo 5 makes heavy use of pre-calculated lighting in order to improve rendering speed with more dynamic shadows and light sources limited to active elements within the scene. In order to improve rendering speed, a number of tricks are employed here that have an impact on visual quality. For instance, dynamic shadows are regularly culled from view near the player, while shadow maps exhibit noticeable jagged artefacts. The greater issue is the way in which the game swaps between the different levels of quality. The constant adjustments being made ultimately create a sense of instability across the world.
  
  
• Alpha effects: Smoke, fire and other alpha blended operations require more from the GPU and can drop the frame-rate in close proximity to the viewport. 343 has taken two different approaches to this problem. Firstly, alpha effects used during gameplay are rendered at a lower resolution much of the time. This requires less from the GPU and as a result, performance remains smoother. Environmental effects use a different approach - when the player's view is in close proximity to any sort of constant alpha effects, the effects in question are culled from view.
  
  
• Texture quality: Despite the move to a more realistic materials system, the actual resolution of many assets leaves a lot to be desired. Throughout the game we stumbled across low resolution textures and normal maps applied to key surfaces. The prevalence of these textures contrasts with otherwise high resolution assets leading to an inconsistent appearance. The surface of Meridian in particular stands out as an area that needs additional work with chunky, low resolution tyre tracks impacting an otherwise beautiful scene.
  
  
• Level of detail: As in many games, object detail is adjusted based on proximity. This means that models use lower quality assets from a distance with higher quality models swapped in as players moves closer. The issue here is that these LODs often appear too close to the player and lack any sort of transition. Debris is also used liberally throughout the game to add extra detail to the terrain. As in previous games, a type of dithering is used to transition these elements into view. In Halo 5, many of these elements continue to exhibiting dithering patterns even when the player is standing right on top.
  
  
• AI: The Halo franchise has been known for its impressive artificial intelligence since the beginning and while the enemies in Halo 5 fare pretty well, there is a sense that enemies can't quite stand toe to toe with Bungie's best. Enemies feel less dynamic overall with a focus placed more on dealing with large numbers of them rather than individual, intelligent units. Friendly AI is generally pretty good but it does struggle with pathfinding while driving the player around in a Warthog. Ultimately, it's only when comparing to Bungie's work that we feel a bit of disappointment in this area.
  
  
• Multiplayer map selection: The maps included in Halo 5's multiplayer mode left us a little disappointed as well. Visually speaking, the maps tend to focus on 'facility' type areas rather than the greater variety we were used to seeing in classic Halo. Crucially, the maps still play well, though sight lines feel a bit limited at times, but our initial take is that they lack the personality and visual panache we've come to expect in the series. From our perspective, even the selection of maps in Halo 4 feel more exciting from a visual perspective.
  
  

Cat Sensei escreveu:Joguei aqui...muito melhor que o Halo 4, a I.A melhorou bastante e o ritmo de jogo agora é mais rápido.Nem em mil anos KZ SF é melhor!