After nearly 30 years at Microsoft, during which she earned credits on dozens of games ranging from Monster Truck Madness 2 to Fable, Mass Effect, Forza Motorsport, and Halo, Kiki Wolfkill has left the company. In a farewell message posted to LinkedIn (via GamesRadar), Wolfkill revealed that she'd concluded her career at Microsoft on April 17, saying the decision to leave was "difficult but exhilarating."

"I'm so grateful for the opportunities that Microsoft has given me and the career that it let me build in an industry that I love," Wolfkill wrote.

"At the same time, there is a version of me outside of Microsoft that I'm excited to grow and evolve. I have so many learnings to carry forward and more impact to be made and I couldn't be more inspired to climb the next mountain! More to come on that front."

As cited by Mobygames, Wolfkill served as art lead or art director on an array of Microsoft Games. She became executive producer at Halo studio 343 Industries in 2008, and then the studio's head of "Halo transmedia and entertainment," a role she held until 2022 when she rose to head of Xbox film and TV. From there, she oversaw production of the Halo TV series and worked (indirectly, unintentionally, and from a great distance) with PC Gamer editor Wes Fenlon to give us one of our greatest headlines ever, "Master Chief had sex."

Thanks for that one, Kiki.

Halo: Combat Evolved is getting a second remake and there are plenty of reasons it's sort of an odd duck. On top of taking a hatchet to Halo's perennial Xbox and PC exclusivity, it's got all sorts of ground-up changes: new weapons, 4-player co-op, sprinting, and uh, "enhanced level design."

That last point fielded some criticism from Jaime Griesemer, game designer on the original CE and design lead on Halo 2 and 3. In a post on X, Griesemer reposted gameplay footage saying, "You aren’t supposed to be able to take the Warthog up to steamroll the Hunters. I intentionally placed rocks in the way so you had to fight them on foot." Tagging Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto, he added, "What have they done to beloved B30?!"

Commenters gathered in the replies to compare the new footage with their experiences of the Xbox original. Washington Post games critic Gene Park concurred with Griesemer's note about the Warthog: "That's why I felt like my runs were so short. Because they were just drivable. Those rocks were part of the rhythms of the adventure, forcing us to walk and explore and be intimidated by the slow-moving, hulking hunters." Griesemer replied: "It’s like the dance remix of a classic song that skips the intro and the bridge and just thumps the chorus over and over."

When other posters pointed out it was possible to get the Warthog past the rocks in the original with some finagling, Griesemer said it just wasn't the same: "That's why it's fun You got one over on the Mission Designer! The remake wants to show you how clever the MD is. It steals the fun."

It's easy to see his point. Marketing a new spin on a game as celebrated as Combat Evolved with "enhanced level design" comes off a bit like hawking Starry Night with "improved brushstrokes." It might be possible, but the risk of undermining its original appeal seems perilous.

It's a risk run by any remake of a classic game, and Grisemer had plenty to say about remakes in general, as well. In one post on his earlier thread, he sympathized with the developers involved: "Remakes and remasters are soul-destroying and I feel for any dev working on one. They can’t win and even if they do they won’t get credit. Bad situation unless you are getting paid $$$."

And when it comes to Halo specifically, he said he doesn't quite see the appeal. When one commenter asked if Griesemer thought Halo: CE would succeed in today's market, he replied, "Probably not. But I’m not sure what the point is of a 'remake' anyway. Nostalgia? A new generation of fans? Occupying an enormous art team while you figure out what to do?"

Something very special happened in our hobby this weekend. The Digsite team, a group of Halo modders who've been working with Halo Studios (formerly 343 Industries) to restore lost artifacts of Halo history, delivered a mother lode: A playable version of the legendary Halo 2 "Earth City" demo.

The mission, originally played live on stage at E3 2003, was the world's first look at the sequel. With a runtime just under nine minutes, the demo was a vertical slice created to introduce the Covenant's invasion of Earth and showcase features that would go on to make Halo 2 one of the most beloved (and criticized) chapters in the series 20 years later. Just listen to that crowd roar as they watch Master Chief dual-wield SMGs, ghost-jack a Brute, and fire the battle rifle for the first time (which at that point was a single-shot rifle like Reach's DMR). The Earth City mission was cut from the final campaign and left unseen for two decades, until now.

The (H2) E3 2003 Demo, as it's officially called, was uploaded to The Master Chief Collection Steam workshop by the Digsite team on November 9, Halo 2's 20th birthday. In a blog post on Halo Waypoint, community writer Alex Wakeford said it took lots of work to reconstruct the demo from a version of the Halo 2 engine that doesn't exist anymore, and that the intrepid modders had to tweak the scripting of the demo so that it wouldn't constantly break.

"Massive improvements have been made to the visual quality and overall stability of this experience, as the original demo required the player to hit specific individual triggers in order to ensure it did not break," the post reads. "Players will see that nav markers help to guide them through each beat of this mission from the moment they step off the Pelican all the way up to boarding the Ghost and escaping into the highway tunnel at the end."

Being mostly unfamiliar with this demo (I wasn't cool enough to watch E3 trailers at the age of seven), but having a handful of Halo 2 playthroughs under my belt, Earth City is a really remarkable thing. As soon as Chief stepped off the pelican, I felt like I'd been drafted into a stage play with no rehearsals. Predictably the demo lacks Halo's flexible sandbox, playing out more like an early Call of Duty campaign that grinds to a halt if you don't follow a particular NPC the correct way. Despite Digsite's best efforts to stabilize the scripting, and my best try at sticking to the critical path, I managed to softlock the mission at the moment Chief is supposed to pick up a second SMG. This is a finicky beast—can you imagine how hard then-Bungie cinematics director Joe Staten must've been sweating playing on stage that day?

It's neat to try out Bungie's scrapped gameplay experiments. The demo features this three-hit melee combo where Chief follows his initial gun bash with two more swift strikes. The maneuver looks great, but I could hear the conversation that probably led to its removal as I was beating down a brute—make melee more spammy and you upset Halo's already perfect "shoot-shoot-punch" combat loop. The DMR battle rifle is also super weird. In my mind, Halo 2 is synonymous with the rhythmic hum of the battle rifle's three-round burst. This single-shot version sounds weaker and just doesn't ring true as Master Chief's weapon of choice. Still, it's cool to see the wheels turning on what'd eventually become Halo: Reach's punchy DMR.

From a preservation standpoint, Earth City is nothing less than a miracle. It's an unreserved win for everybody that this notable piece of gaming history no longer has to exist solely as a grainy YouTube video, but more than that, Earth City is a huge demonstration of PC gaming's power. It's fantastic that Halo Studios has a real interest in preserving Halo's legacy, but this project would've gone nowhere without the Halo modding scene—a scene with foundations in Halo: Combat Evolved's earliest PC port, which continued with Halo 2's eventual Windows Vista release, and has since blossomed with official mod support in The Master Chief Collection.

Three days ago, Halo 2's lost E3 mission was an obscure piece of trivia, and now it's a thing you can play with three clicks. I can't think of a better argument for companies embracing the fans who want to preserve, remix, and generally keep aging games alive instead of being actively hostile toward them.

The Halo 2 Earth City demo is free download, but there is a small catch: It's only currently available on the MCC Steam workshop, so no console or Game Pass compatibility, and you have to own Halo 2: Anniversary for it to work. If you finish the demo and want to keep the warm and fuzzy Halo feelings rolling, might I suggest jumping into some Halo 2 multiplayer with its still-active community, or joining the nostalgia party going on in Halo Infinite.

When Halo Studios (formerly 343) announced this year that it was moving on from Halo Infinite to focus on what's next, I took that as a sign that the days of significant Infinite updates were coming to a close. To a degree that's been the case—the free-to-play Halo that finally became great last year slowed down in 2024, with recent seasons consisting mostly of forgettable cosmetics and (much appreciated) maps made by the community.

Infinite's latest season, The Great Journey, has some actual weight behind it. In honor of Halo 2's 20th birthday, the studio commissioned seven throwback Halo 2 maps from the community and put together a playlist with a 2004 ruleset. Oh, and there's a new gun: The MA5K Avenger, a rapid-fire variant of the assault rifle that fills the role of the SMG (a gun that first appeared in Halo 2). Similar to last year's Halo 3 Game Fuel celebration, the Infinite scene is one big nostalgia fest right now, and dammit, it's working its magic on me again.

It's not just warm memories of original Xbox Halo getting me in the door, though. This Delta Arena playlist with rules meant to mimic classic Halo is legitimately cool:

• Sprint: Disabled
• Clamber: Disabled
• Jump Height: 120%
• Starting Weapon: MA5K Avenger
• Secondary Weapon: None
• Friendly Player Collision: On

And these map remakes are slick:

Historically I've embraced Halo's trend toward FPS conformity with sprinting and sliding, but Delta Arena is winning me over to the old ways. Halo Infinite is a slower, more methodical shooter without sprint. I'm taking my time rounding corners and both teams are noticeably more alert. Starting with only one gun is also really weird, but maybe brilliant? Infinite's default AR/Pistol combo is so strong that you don't ever really need anything else, but with an empty slot by default I'm grabbing the first gun off the rack and playing around its strengths.

I've always liked clamber in Halo, but being without it is reminding me how creative longtime Halo players get with the jump button. Without a generous ledge grab, jumping is a more relevant skill, and vertical map control comes at a higher premium. I felt that reality strongest in a King of the Hill match on Conjurer (Warlock), a close-quarters cubic battleground flanked on all sides by platforms that are just too tall to reach from the ground, or on Canopy (Lockout), where learning a jump shortcut to the Sniper Rifle spawn can shift the match's momentum.

I'm as impressed as ever by the Forge community's expertise in recapturing old Halo in new Halo, but as my coworker and fellow Halo enjoyer Wes pointed out, if he wants to play Halo 2, he can actually go play Halo 2 via The Master Chief Collection. Can't argue with that, though I do like witnessing Infinite's excellent gunplay through a 2004 lens. The one Halo 2 throwback Microsoft couldn't swing was dual-wielding.

The only underwhelming aspect of the update so far is the MA5K Avenger. It's cool that Infinite finally has an "SMG," but I wish this one didn't just look like a remodeled AR with a 60-round magazine. It's also not considered a "core" weapon like the battle rifle or pistol, so skins can't be applied to it. I can't help but wonder if the Avenger could've gotten a bit more razzle-dazzle if supporting Infinite was still a priority for Halo Studios—instead, I'm inclined to think we're lucky to even get this.

One other cool arrival in the Great Journey update: Third-person Firefight. Halo in third-person is functional (no surprise, given third-person miniguns have been a Halo thing since 2007), but I don't really see the appeal. It's the same game from a wonkier perspective—maybe if you're introducing Halo to a young Fortnite player in your life, this is a place to start.

Infinite's Halo 2 celebration is on for at least the next month. After that, I imagine these neat Halo 2 maps will join the standard map pools.

Earlier this year it was reported that 343 Industries was planning to switch from the Slipspace to the Unreal Engine, though Microsoft did not confirm the report. Now it's official. With the six-and-a-half-minute mash note to Unreal embedded above, 343 Industries has left behind Slipspace as well as the name 343 Industries, officially rebranding as Halo Studios for future projects.

The aging code of Slipspace was apparently a problem during the creation of Halo Infinite, and the developers are bullish on Unreal's improvements. "Halo Infinite was the last remnants of how we made Halo games in the past," says VP and studio head Pierre Hintze. "That was our recipe and what we're doing now, we're changing the recipe."

The possibilities are showcased in three landscapes created as part of Project Foundry, a research project lead FX artist Daniel Henley calls "an effort to show ourselves how far we can push things using Unreal 5." He goes on to say, "The original Halo franchise was a graphics showcase, it was best-in-class. That's what Halo was when it first was released and that's what Halo needs to be again."

The aforementioned report also claimed that at least 95 staff had been laid off, and that there had been conflict in the studio between those who wanted to jump to Unreal and those happy to stay with Slipspace. Now that things have been settled, the newly dubbed Halo Studios is hiring again, with positions for a creative director, lead game systems designer, senior technical designer, hard surface artist, technical artist, and senior UX designer all currently advertised on Microsoft's careers site.

Everything's going crazy. People wear hats on their feet and shoes on their heads. Cats and dogs are living together in harmony. Fortnite's testing an FPS mode, and now 343 Industries has announced a third person camera option coming to Halo Infinite in November. One of the first person shooters, now going third person⁠—hold your loved ones close, we are clearly experiencing some manner of metaphysical rupture.

First reported by GamesRadar, 343 Industries took to X, "The Everything App" to announce this heretical addition. The accompanying video shows exactly what you'd expect: Halo multiplayer, but in third person. It's the Fortnite style of zoomed out, slightly offset cam rather than the more classico over the shoulder popularized by Gears of War.

There isn't a more in-depth post explaining how the camera will work or be restricted in game, but one part of the video certainly makes it look like we'll be able to freely toggle between first and third person. What remains to be seen is if it will only be available to certain game modes, whether 343 plans to have modes specifically employing the new cam, and if it will be available to use in Halo Infinite's oft-forgotten campaign.

All jokes aside, the comments on X, "The Everything App." are surprisingly negative. Maybe I've been around the block enough times not to be surprised by online vitriol about perfectly anodyne, harmless things, but still: "Fortnite-ification of Halo," "trend chasing," "I'm never playing again," it seems a bit extreme. For my money, I always enjoy idly flipping between camera perspectives in games that allow it. What's more, this isn't even entirely new: Halo has incorporated a third person view with heavy weapons for 17 years now. There's clearly demand as well: A modder added a third person camera to Halo Infinite's campaign over two years ago.

You could even say it's a return to the series' deepest Macintosh roots: Some of the earliest footage of Halo: Combat Evolved showed off a third person shooter that looks very different from the FPS we eventually got. Halo Infinite and the franchise at large are certainly in a rough spot after the deep layoffs at series steward 343 Industries, but the third person mode strikes me as a perfectly fine, potentially fun addition to Halo Infinite.

A group of community developers and Halo Forge aficionados have created a new PvE mode for Halo Infinite: Survive the Undead, and it's won over old and new players alike. 

"Survive the Undead meshes the Halo Firefight experience with the fan-favorite COD Zombies mode, resulting in fast-paced, intense, and sometimes spooky gameplay," dev team The Forge Falcons says in a blog post. "As we learned in Reach, the objective is to 'survive,' and you want to do that by any means necessary."

This mode is endless and round-based, so if you have the skills and superhuman reactions, you can theoretically keep going forever. The highest record so far has been set at 3,588 total kills lasting 1 hour 39 minutes, with a winning score of 34,090, according to a tweet from The Forge Falcons. Which is a ridiculously impressive feat, to say the least. 

There's also the possibility of more maps being added to Survive the Night. "This playlist allows us to test out new modes (BTB Heavies), new features (new networking model), and get feedback at scale before taking that information back and iterating on it," The Forge Falcons write. "From there, we can address issues and community feedback to get things ready for primetime matchmaking."

Players have been quick to applaud these volunteer devs for their chaotic thrill ride, including gaming YouTuber HiddenXperia, best known for Halo lore deep dives and explainers: "Halo Infinite just added round-based Zombies with a functioning point system, power-ups, mystery box, perk machines, Pack a Punch, wall buys, and more on both a full remake of Nacht from World at War and an original map too. Y'all KILLED IT." 

Plenty more have voiced support, with a few people actually saying that this may be what brings them back to Halo Infinite. "As someone who hasn’t played [Halo] Infinite since my boys quit in 2022, how do I find this map? I love zombies, and I’m downloading this right now to give it a go," one player tweets in response to HiddenXperia's post. 

If you want to give Survive the Undead a try, then don't waste any time because it's only available to play for the next couple of weeks before The Forge Falcons take it down to reassess things and respond to feedback. Luckily, it's pretty easy to find, as Survive the Undead is currently the top playlist in matchmaking. 

While some have pointed out that it is a bit disappointing that the community's left to pick up the pieces of Halo Infinite's unfortunate launch back in 2021, The Forge Falcons' achievement should not be overshadowed because Survive the Undead is on the fast track to becoming a fan-favourite mode.

Halo Infinite's next big update is coming January 30 with a new arena map, a new operation, a free Mark IV Spartan core, and the long-awaited ability to equip shoulder pieces on any armor. 343 showed off the update, which also includes new Covenant items in Forge, in a livestream today. It looks like a nice little followup to the midseason Firefight update in December, though the way 343 talked about the update raised a big question for viewers: where's Season 6?

At the end of the stream, 343 broke the news: there will be no Season 6. Halo Infinite is moving away from seasons.

Instead, 343 will continue to create "Operation" events with shorter 20-tier battle passes that run for four-to-six week periods. While 343 will continue to add to Infinite throughout 2024, the news will be bittersweet for fans who feel Infinite is finally mounting its comeback. It's hard not to read this as the beginning of the end for Infinite support, especially considering community director Brian Jarrard took the opportunity to mention 343's future projects.

"We have a dedicated team working on supporting Halo Infinite and continuing to deliver coming forward, but also, we have additional teams now that are accelerating towards the future working on brand new projects," said Jarrard.

343's scaled back plans could be interpreted as Microsoft throwing in the towel on a live service shooter that never took off the way it hoped. More broadly, I think it signals a developing trend away from hard-defined schedules of the live service model.

Embark Studios recently announced that it won't be releasing a public roadmap or make any promises about The Finals updates. Instead, updates will come when they're ready and Embark hopes players enjoy the surprise. How very 2007. Maybe 343, knowing Halo is probably never going to be Fortnite or Apex Legends big, is reading the room in a similar way. More maps, playlists, and customization updates are coming, but the only thing that's guaranteed is a small Operation pass every six weeks or so.

Halo Infinite's move away from the seasonal model could be the start of a natural dissipation of the live service model that will eventually stretch to many more games. It's tough for a big-budget game to attract a large enough audience to justify adding to it for years, and even the most successful examples like Destiny 2 have struggled to keep it up in perpetuity. Fortnite becoming a platform that encompasses racing and Lego building and more is Epic's way of countering that inertia.

Considering how hard Halo Infinite struggled with its first few seasons, it makes sense for 343 to slowly return to the old ways: releasing a new game every few years that people hopefully like more than the last one. There's a part of me that's annoyed Infinite might never reach its full potential, but another part of me is excited by what a fresh game that learns from Infinite could look like in a few years, and that 2024 could see more developers turn away from a Sisyphean business model that grinds too many games to dust.

Cosmetic microtransactions: Most of us profess to hate them, yet people are clearly still buying them. A decade ago, this kind of monetization was the territory of predatory mobile games, while mainstream gaming was still arguing about whether or not paid DLC should come preloaded on a disc. Now, Valorant has comfortably released its latest premium bundle, Kuronami, that includes one weapon skin compatible with four guns and a knife for $100. If you want to unlock all the variants for that skin, it's closer to $300.

Also this week, Apex Legends kicked off its big Final Fantasy 7 crossover event featuring 36 themed cosmetics, "iconic" skins with a minuscule drop chance, and a grand prize that costs nearly $300 in loot boxes to guarantee you get it. Loot boxes were shouted out of games years ago, but they never left Apex Legends.

Two of PC Gamer's biggest fans of live service games, Morgan Park and Tim Clark, have been feeling the squeeze in some of their favorite shooters and RPGs lately. With triple-digit bundles and FOMO-fuelled collaboration events becoming the norm, is the economics of live games completely out of hand? 

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: When I think about the conversations we had about $2 loot boxes and $10 skins only a few years ago, I wonder how exactly we got to where we are now. I'm looking at the main menu of Apex Legends, which is currently painted with literal gambling odds nestled next to outfits that cost over $20 on their own and $16 four-pack "deals" that guarantee a legendary item, but will actually increase in price the more packs I buy. Am I losing my mind? When did some of the biggest games around get this gross? Expensive microtransactions are nothing new, but I think boldness is on the rise.

Tim Clark, Brand Director: Yeah, I wish I could remember the exact moment, but at some point I noticed that all the service games I play had collectively decided it was OK to charge $20 for a single skin.  These are often marketed as being 'premium' or 'prestige', and truthfully they often do look cool, but that's exactly why it's so frustrating. Especially in a game like Destiny 2, where players are constantly looking for new carrots to chase, it sucks that some of the best-looking gear is found in the store rather than as rewards for completing the hardest content. 

To give you a recent example, Bungie has been running a series of collaborations with other studios to create armor themed around iconic games. We've had riffs on Assassin's Creed, God of War, and most recently The Witcher. A full set of this armor for one character costs 2,000 Silver (Destiny 2's made-up MTX currency), which works out to an actual price of $19.99. Some of that cost will be kicked back to the partner that owns the other game, but even non-collaboration sets will set you back $14.99. 

Again, there's no disputing that the Witcher-themed gear is cool, but it would also have been the perfect reward for this season's dungeon, which is called Warlord's Ruin and is set in a snow-shrouded castle. Hello, Kaer Morhen! It would have been such a good thematic fit, but instead we got some fairly mid mountaineering outfits as the loot for that. 

Morgan: Be honest Tim, you bought the Witcher pants didn't you?

Tim: Of course I did. I bought all three sets. Which genuinely makes me wince to admit. I've rationalised my profligacy in several ways, all of which you'll probably laugh at: 1) I'm very into the Destiny fashion scene so not having access to such good transmogs would have felt like a splinter in my brain I couldn't remove. 2) I do not have children so I have a decent amount of disposable income for a man of my advancing years. 3) I am supporting the game (although apparently not enough, given reported Bungie's 45% revenue miss). 4) I am weak. 

To be honest, my bigger problem right now is Diablo 4. The in-game armor selection is great, but again the swankiest sets are all in the store. As Tyler Wilde noted when the game launched, these paid sets always look as flashy as possible to tempt you to part with your Blizz bucks. (In this case the made-up currency is called Platinum.) These outfits are detailed to the point of being over-designed, often feature spot FX like glows and smoke, and—in the case of the 'Beauty in Sin' rogue outfit—even try flashing some skin. Top-end outfits cost an eye-watering $25.99 for gear that you rarely see displayed bigger than a couple of inches on-screen. Hell, even buying a deluxe horse can set you back 20 bucks. 

But so help me Lilith, despite knowing I'm the easiest of marks and the whole practice is a grim direction for gaming to be going in, I've been "treating myself" to one outfit for each character that I level past 70. I currently have four toons at 100, so you do the math. And that's not counting a few weapon bundles I've bought. Morgan, please tell me you have more self control. 

Morgan: Kind of? I'm pretty picky about which cosmetics I'll throw down cash for, but I'm far from immune to the allure of a great outfit. I've bought a fair number of $15 Siege bundles over seven years, and more recently I coughed up the $20 for Master Chief's armor in Halo: Infinite. "Spartan fashion" is its own subculture in Halo and that original Mark V set is just too good.

I pounce when the item is exceptional, but it's wild just how bad most modern cosmetics are. Apex, Siege, and Overwatch are lousy with recolors and bundles that force you to pay $20 or $30 just to get one cool thing in a sea of crap.

Tim: The obvious question whenever this stuff comes up is "why does anyone pay these idiotic prices?" We've already established that I am that idiot, and honestly I have nothing but respect for people like Phil Savage on our team who's played Destiny 2 for as long as I have but never bought a single thing from Eververse. The brutal reality is that publishers are charging these prices not only because they can, but because—ludicrous though it may seem—the data will be telling them that this is the exact amount to charge to make the most money. And whether we like it or very much do not, that's capitalism, baby. 

A few years ago I had an interesting conversation with an esports caster who was well-connected at Blizzard. He made the point that they have an entire Business Intelligence department tasked with working out the exact most amount of money that can be extracted from players like me before we stop paying. And that's how the price gets set. It's in their interests to make me feel the most pain possible without kicking the habit.

I've thought about that many times as I typed in my credit card CCV. It's the reason why however much we rail against MTX, or advise people not to pre-order things, the practices won't stop because they fundamentally play on human nature, and that's not changing anytime soon. 

Morgan: I don't think it's the very concept of microtransactions we're against here, right? It's the sliding scale of what value propositions we find acceptable that's increasingly at odds with the games we enjoy. 

Tim: For sure. It definitely feels to me like we've slept walked into everything being priced at an entirely higher tier without much discussion or pushback. Let me give you another anecdote. Before an interview I did with Hearthstone's Dean 'Iksar' Ayala, I decided to work out exactly how much I'd spent on the game. Again, this was a few years ago, and I've been playing since the open beta. The bill came to just over two grand. I asked him whether he thought that was an OK amount to spend on a game. He replied that only I could answer that, and added: "Have you enjoyed the time you've spent with the game?" I said I had, but it's nagged at me since. I've started buying less pack bundles with each expansion, and have finally drawn the line at more recent premium cosmetics like the Diamond Card that cost $25 (for a single card!) and the new 3D animated hero skins, which again come in at that magic $25 mark. I like to think the fact I've been able to stop somewhere shows I'm growing as a person.

Morgan: Exactly. The problem with comparing our experiences in Hearthstone, Valorant, or Rainbow Six Siege is that the line is drawn in very different places depending on the game. It's significant to me that 343 Industries selling Master Chief armor for $20 or Overwatch 2 asking $40 for crossover Diablo skins triggered minor meltdowns in those communities, but Valorant players have a near-opposite reaction to a knife skin that alone costs $50. 

Seriously: Scroll down Riot's tweet announcing the $100 Kuronami bundle and you'll mostly see people sharing screenshots of buying it, joking about picking up groceries or buying the skin, and generally gawking at the cool kill effect that comes with it. What is sticker shock to us is normal for that particular, insular corner of the FPS community. I won't pretend I play enough Valorant to know this for sure, but I suspect that the community's embracing of triple-digit bundles and skin "upgrades" that can cost an additional hundred dollars or more can be explained by players seeing their digital goodies as a collection of status symbols. You can trace that trend back to Counter-Strike's similarly unhinged skin market that many players treat as a speculative game of its own.

I visited my teenage cousin over the Christmas break and he spent half an hour showing me the new additions to his Valorant skin collection. From the way he talked about a few of his Vandal skins it was clear he genuinely enjoyed how they looked, but he was most eager to show me skins that he only really described by how much they cost or how rare they are.

So while I could spend all day arguing that Riot is ripping people off, what does it matter if the people Riot is selling to actually think it's fine? That'd be like yelling at Nike for selling grossly expensive shoes. It's not wrong, but why should sneakerheads care?

Tim: Exactly. It sucks but beyond a massive sea change in player behavior it's very hard to see any reversal, beyond the occasional good guy game that doesn't dip into its fans' pockets, or at least does so slightly less. In the meantime I'm excited to publish this and have people shout at me online about why whales with no sense of value are the problem. Trust me, I know!

Last month, I got way too invested in a Mountain Dew. I searched multiple websites trying to get it delivered to my apartment, annoyed store clerks with questions about unstocked Dew they might have sitting "in the back," recruited friends to scout out Walmart locations, and became an expert on the official online Dew tracker. Why do it all for a 12-pack of soda that usually makes me recoil in its extreme sweetness?

I didn't do it for any old Mountain Dew variety—I did it for Halo Mountain Dew Game Fuel, and I'd do it again.

If you'll allow me to paint a picture, dear reader: It's 2007, I'm an 11-year-old with an Xbox 360, and the most important videogame of my brief life, Halo 3, was imminent. My brother was over the moon. It's all anyone at my school wanted to talk about—I remember crowding around an older kid's original iPhone to watch Halo 3 trailers. My dad pre-ordered the Master Chief green Xbox 360 with visor orange disc drive despite already having several Xboxes in the house. Just months before Call of Duty 4 would take over shooters, Bungie had our full attention.

As did Mountain Dew. Halo 3 Game Fuel was a brilliant piece of marketing. When I think back on those strong, positive bursts of hype in the months before Halo 3, the blood orange fizz of Game Fuel ranks just as high as those cool 'Believe' trailers. My mom tried to limit our access to soda at home, but she made an exception for our Game Fuel mania.

It might be hard to picture what made this particular collaboration special when drink brands plaster videogame logos on their cans all the time these days, but in 2007 it wasn't so common for the world at large to roll out the red carpet for a big game release. The total makeover of the Mountain Dew can, Master Chief's prominent placement on the key art, and the creation of a whole new flavor (Citrus Cherry) specifically for Halo made the whole occasion uncommonly important and essential to fans. 

Mountain Dew brought back Game Fuel a handful of times over the years for similar partnerships and different flavors promoting World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Titanfall, and even a Halo 4 campaign in 2012 (the year many of us checked out on Halo) that produced an iconic image of Geoff Keighley surrounded by Doritos and Dew. None of these Game Fuel pretenders would reach the cultural heights of the OG Halo 3 edition, and I paid them no mind.

I was happy to leave Game Fuel in 2007 as a fun little footnote in the story of a fantastic game. Then last month, they brought it back again. This time, for a special Halo Infinite (slash Diablo 4) promotion, and they couldn't have picked a better moment to reel me in. I got back into Halo in a big way this fall, and alongside the return of Game Fuel itself came the return of classic Halo 3 maps in Infinite and Game Fuel-themed cosmetics you can only get with codes on the soda. I'm not above having a little fun with stupid snack cosmetics in shooters, but there was zero irony in this Dew quest. I had to have some Game Fuel.

Sure, nostalgia had a lot to do with it, but Citrus Cherry is also a damn good Mountain Dew flavor. The best Mountain Dew has to offer…at least, that's how I remembered it.

Game Fuel 2023

They sure made the stuff hard to find for a while. I started my search in early November when pictures of people finding new Game Fuel in the wild started cropping up. I won't bore you with details, but it was certainly the most effort I've dedicated to soda. When the two corner stores closest to me wound up a bust, I turned to the official Mountain Dew product tracker. Pepsi Co's sophisticated tracking technology returned a promising lead that was actually a cruel joke that'd haunt me for days: Walmart. Supposedly lots of Walmarts had the stuff, but I had to bust that myth the hard way.

Maybe it was fate, maybe it was Master Chief's guiding hand, or maybe the stockers at my local WinCo were just faster to put out the new stuff, but I finally found it after a week: Halo Infinite Citrus Cherry and Diablo 4 Mystic Punch. Afraid that WinCo's entire stock would somehow evaporate overnight, I got a 12-pack of each to be safe.

Man, I really like the colors they went with for the Halo one. It's got the throwback orange that matches Chief's visor and looks great against his olive green armor, but the new tiger stripes of purple and red is a dazzling palette that'd catch my eye in a fridge even if I wasn't looking for it. Mountain Dew knows how to grab attention with label art, even if what's inside is rarely worth the trouble. Is my favorite Mountain Dew still as good 16 years later?

Absolutely. I'm sorry adult me who shouldn't be this giddy about soda for children, but this stuff rocks. The "cherry" half of the concoction basically tastes like Code Red (an A tier base Dew flavor), but it's the roundabout punch of citrus that cuts the Code Red's overwhelming sugar high. It's still very sweet—probably too sweet for most—but it's way more drinkable than standard green Dew, deeper than Code Red, and sharper than Taco Bell's Baja Blast. If Mountain Dew had gone the whole way with this revival and brought Game Fuel slushies back to 7-Eleven, then I'd really be in trouble. It's also nice that this is not a gimmick drink like Flamin' Hot Mountain Dew. That stuff made me question my life choices, but Citrus Cherry tastes like a legitimate member of the Dew family. They could bottle this stuff up without all the gamer branding and it'd still be a good soda.

My partner and I (OK, mostly I) tore through our Citrus Cherry haul until all that was left was Diablo 4 Mystic Punch, the new flavor of the pair. I saved it for last because purple soda and I don't have the best track record. Artificial grape isn't my thing, and Mystic Punch is definitely that with some other berry stuff going on. It's squarely in the camp of overwhelming Dew sweetness, so much that my partner gave up after one sip. I can't recommend it.

Dew rewards

I don't regret picking up both flavors, though, because each 12-pack was worth a handful of Dew reward points. These are your standard 10-digit codes found under bottle caps or inside the 12-pack box. You can cash in points on the Dew/Doritos/Rockstar marketplace to unlock goodies for all sorts of Microsoft games (Diablo, Sea of Thieves, and Forza to name a few), but I only needed three points to get the Halo Infinite items I wanted: the Virescent and the Crimson Fuel visors that literally depict Dew condensation developing on your helmet, and the "Mountain Tiger" coating that emblazons my spartan armor with the same outrageous color scheme of the can.

I'm still rocking my Game Fuel armor over a month later, partly because it's silly, but it's legitimately become one of my favorite spartan fashion looks. It's also fun to see other people rocking Dew colors and acknowledge our shared nostalgia, though that hasn't gone well for me so far. The colors are nice and I even manage to stand out among teammates wearing $30 armor bundles. My armor color cost around $5.  Plus 290 calories.

With Game Fuel in hand and Mountain Tiger skin applied, I had a wonderful time last month playing old Halo 3 maps lovingly recreated in Forge by community members. The throwback playlist was a hit, and even inspired a few friends to reinstall the game. I've mostly been playing alone since I got back into Infinite, so the Halo 3 Refueled playlist was an excellent reminder of just how effortlessly fun a casual night of Halo can be with the right people.

I picked up a few more bottles of Game Fuel today so I could snap a decent picture for this article, but to be honest, it was just an excuse to have a little more fun with this nostalgia trip before it disappears. I'm positive this isn't the last time I'll enjoy this artifact of 2007, but I'm sad to see it go. I wonder what occasion will resurrect Game Fuel next?

You may be tired of hearing about how stacked 2023 was for videogames. It's hard to argue with a year that gave us a long-awaited Diablo sequel, a pretty great Star Wars game, surprise hits in Dave The Diver and Dredge, and critical darlings in Alan Wake 2 and friggin' Armored Core 6. Oh, not to mention an RPG so good we gave it our highest review score in 16 years.

Well I didn't play most of those games. While my peers were gushing about a funky musical number in Alan Wake 2 and starting third playthroughs of Baldur's Gate 3, I was pouring over patch notes and installing updates for shooters people stopped talking about a long time ago. It was a great year for new games, but a fantastic year for the comeback.

They just kept coming up in 2023. For as much as we've seen the live service model produce troubled, unfinished shooters at launch, it's worth acknowledging when studios are allowed to put in the work and turn things around based on feedback. The year's FPS comeback stories ran the gamut: we had a slow burn of updates that finally culminated into something special, monumental patches that transformed good games into great ones overnight, and one comeback that's just getting started, but looking bright. Let's talk about the year in comebacks, what went wrong with these shooters at launch, and how far they've come.

Battlefield 2042

📆Released: November 2021
❌Launch complaints: Classes, sparse maps, basic features absent, balancing
✅Comeback moment: Here's the thing: Battlefield 2042 is really good now

We had a good time with Battlefield 2042 at launch, but it was clear DICE's vision for a Battlefield with bigger maps and hero-like "Specialist" abilities hadn't quite hit the mark. The maps were huge and pretty, but sometimes empty and boring. DICE evolved the class system by essentially throwing it out and letting any character use any gadget, which killed any semblance of teamwork. The consensus was that Battlefield 2042 was OK for what it was, but didn't really feel like classic Battlefield. 

Over the next year and a half, DICE would change that. The studio started by chipping away at the little things—in 2022 a proper scoreboard arrived, along with voice chat and the option to text chat with the enemy team. Then it tackled maps: several of 2042's sprawling battlefields were reined in to minimize downtime and pieces of cover were added to expanses of nothing to give infantry players a fighting chance. A classic variant of Conquest with a 64-player cap was another welcome addition. But for my money, Battlefield 2042 didn't fully click until this year, when DICE reworked the class system into a surprisingly effective merger of classic class-exclusive abilities and individual Specialist gadgets.

Seasons 4 and 5 were a big turnaround for the punching bag FPS of 2021, and things are going so well that a Season 6 is coming.

Cyberpunk 2077

📆Released: December 2020
❌Launch complaints: Buggy as hell, bad skill trees, weak open world
✅Comeback moment: Forget Phantom Liberty, Cyberpunk 2077's free 2.0 patch is a staggering upgrade on its own

We all remember the launch of Cyberpunk 2077—the bewildering bugs, teleporting cops, and general "This is it?" reaction to its unremarkable skill trees. The RPG sold well, but it was a reputational disaster for CD Projekt Red that it'd spend the next two years trying to make up for. In the meantime, Cyberpunk became the poster child for disappointing big-budget games released unfinished. CDPR moved the needle in 2022 when the excellent Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime released on Netflix alongside the "Edgerunners" patch for 2077 that included a transmog wardrobe, new gigs, and guns.

The Edgerunners update made it easier to enjoy Cyberpunk in spite of itself, but it was September 2023's 2.0 patch that truly turned the game around. CDPR rewrote all the skill trees, replacing incremental stat boosts with entirely new abilities that made combat exciting again and buildcrafting a legitimate highlight. A proper police system also arrived alongside car combat, finally allowing players to rampage across Night City like Grand Theft Auto. Many agree that Update 2.0 really honed Cyberpunk into the FPS RPG it should've been at launch, and getting the fantastic Phantom Liberty expansion at the same time was an unbeatable 1-2 combo. The vibes around Cyberpunk 2077 are good these days, just in time for CDPR to move on to The Witcher 4 and an eventual Cyberpunk followup.

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide

📆Released: November 2022
❌Launch complaints: Performance, fewer classes, stale missions, crossplay
✅Comeback moment: Warhammer 40,000: Darktide class overhaul patch is live, and it sure seems like the massive update everyone was waiting for

Darktide was, in many ways, exactly what we wanted from the spiritual successor to Vermintide. It's easily the best-feeling iteration of Fatshark's melee meat grinder with a punchy arsenal of guns layered on top. But at launch it was another big game that needed more time in the oven: it was a bit of a performance nightmare, and fans immediately noticed Darktide's four playable classes had a lot less depth than Vermintide's roster of five (who had additional subclasses to boot). Darktide wasn't an unmitigated disaster, but it also wasn't the slam dunk that it should've been. 

Fatshark took the feedback to heart going into 2023. Performance was smoothed out within a few months, and the missing crafting system was patched in. In October, the class overhaul patch introduced new skill trees that dramatically expanded the horizons of all four classes. Similar to the Cyberpunk 2.0 update, the overhaul meant your playstyle could evolve beyond what guns you took into the fight, and that alone made Darktide more replayable. The patch also ramped up the intensity of the Conflict Director and tidied up some input complaints. More recently, a free anniversary patch dropped that included a whole new mission.

Halo Infinite

📆Released: November 2021
❌Launch complaints: Monetization, progression, armor system, map variety
✅Comeback(?) moment: Halo Infinite Season 5 has the makings of an honest-to-god comeback

I'm being hopeful and calling this one a "comeback-in-progress." Halo Infinite shared the negativity spotlight with Battlefield 2042 when they both launched in late 2021. While its first few weeks were triumphant, players quickly turned on Halo due to 343's slow turnaround on updates and frustrating progression that relied entirely on an unpopular challenge system that could only be improved by purchasing "challenge swap tokens." The qualms snowballed into 2022 as 343 delayed new seasonal content for six months. Infinite's first year was pretty bland: few new maps and lackluster battle passes while players eagerly awaited Forge and campaign co-op.

Only very recently have things been looking up for Halo Infinite. 343 has been on a hot streak of great updates since Season 5 kicked off in October, introducing new maps, AI enemies to Forge, and (finally) the ability to equip any helmet on any armor. This is where I came back aboard and noticed that Halo Infinite finally feels like a Halo game. There are lots of playlist options that let you curate a tasting menu of classic FPS modes, and if you get bored of competition, there's an active community goofing around in the Custom Games browser just a few clicks away. More recently, a throwback Halo 3 playlist with Forge remakes of classic maps was so well-received that all of those maps are here to stay.

As a cherry on top of Halo's good Season 5 vibes, PvE Firefight arrived in early December to give players a way to unwind with friends and still progress their battle pass. 343 still has work to do hammering away at the Infinite's worst qualities (those store prices can be pretty bad), but it's great that Halo finally has some positive momentum behind it. I have high hopes for 2024.

We lost our way as a society when we stopped making wave-based co-op modes. "Horde mode" (as popularized by Gears of War) became the hot new thing in shooters of the late 2000s, spawning unique interpretations of PvE gauntlets in everything from Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty to Uncharted and even Mass Effect.

They all ruled in their own ways, but I have a soft spot for how Bungie did it. In Halo 3: ODST, it was called Firefight: a difficult, but rewarding horde mode that leveraged Bungie's unrivaled singleplayer sandbox in the best ways possible. The mode was so popular that fans celebrated its return in Halo Reach, then grew a chip on their shoulders when 343 Industries took the reins and Firefight skipped Halo 4 to make only a half-hearted appearance in Halo 5.

Halo Infinite is 343's chance to do the beloved co-op mode justice in 2023, and I like what I'm seeing so far.

Last month I played a few rounds of Firefight: King of the Hill, an objective-based variant of Firefight coming in a midseason update on December 5. Here's the TL;DR:

• Four players max
• Supports nine maps in matchmaking at launch: five existing multiplayer maps, three community-created, and one adapted from Campaign
• Hold and capture hills, capture five to win
• Firefight template will be available in Forge and Custom Games
• All 12 campaign skulls are there, but they only activate after deathless rounds
• Normal and Heroic playlists at launch, and Legendary to come

I played one round on the Big Team Battle map Oasis, and two on a new map adapted from a location late in the Infinite campaign: the House of Reckoning. 343 told me they chose the House of Reckoning, an indoor Banished facility with a simulated UNSC training facility at its center, because it kept hearing from players that "this would make a great Firefight map."

And so it does. The cover-dense, square-shaped battleground originally designed to make Master Chief break a sweat before a major boss fight feels just right with a group of four and looks fantastic. My first instinct in round one was to grapple up to the high ground and hunker down, but that's where the "King of the Hill" bit comes in: rounds center around a randomly chosen capture zone. At least one player has to be in the zone at all times to keep the Banished from capturing. This was a deliberate design choice, 343 said, to minimize the power of turtling in Firefight. You have to stay in the action to survive, but you also won't immediately lose if nobody's touching the hill for a few seconds.

I suppose the hill restriction is also a natural consequence of Halo Infinite's enhanced movement and its reuse of multiplayer maps in Firefight: there are high spots in Big Team Battle maps where the Banished could never reach you. The hill nips that problem in the bud, but thankfully, 343's Firefight module will also be available to tweak in Forge, meaning forgers could theoretically get a hill-less version of Firefight running pretty easily (they've already been making their own since campaign AI came to Forge in October). 

The constant capture zone didn't make it feel any less like Firefight to me, though. Our squad naturally fell into roles. In my Oasis match, one player became the designated hill holder while another focused on picking off elites with a DMR from afar. Meanwhile, I took the gunner seat in our singular Warthog. Yes, you only get one (at least on that map) and once it's gone, it's gone. It's a good thing the midseason update is also bringing a clutch new piece of equipment: the Repair Field. Similar to the Regenerator item in Halo 3, the Repair Field triggers an AOE healing aura that restores player health, enemy health, and repairs vehicles on the fly. 

Knowing where the Repair Field spawned made all the difference between rounds as we'd seal up smoking wounds and unpop tires so our battle-worn SUV could live to drive another day. It was one of the longest relationships I've had with a Warthog before its inevitable demise, and its vulnerability made me appreciate its awesome power all the more. Scarcity is a big deal in Firefight, as precious supplies like ammo boxes and power weapons only replenish between rounds.

My brief Firefight demo was a fun reminder that resource management in shooters rocks, and it's been a while since I've been challenged by scarcity. I can't remember the last time I had to scavenge for ammo in a multiplayer FPS—most of my favorite shooters give everyone unlimited ammo, or deep enough pockets that I don't live long enough to go empty. But if my gun runs dry and I have to improvise, there's no shooter I'd rather be playing than Halo. 343's deep weapon sandbox, like Bungie's before it, shines brightest with your back against the wall. At my darkest hour, the wimpy plasma pistol I love to ignore is my shield-draining best bud, and guns that underperform in a PvP context, like the plasma-fire-spitting Ravager, are top-tier drops against densely-packed AI.

There's nothing wildly unique about Infinite's take on Firefight, but if you can't tell, it's really hitting the spot. It's simple and effortlessly fun, but honestly, I'm more hopeful about what Firefight adds to the package of Halo Infinite. Season 5 is the first time I've been excited about how much stuff there is to do in Halo since Reach. I've clocked around 50 hours since October (oh dear), and most of that time was me hopping between playlists based on mood. Bearing down for sweaty arena games, cooling off with 8v8 Squad Battle, goofing around in Fiesta, perfecting a parkour map at 2am with twelve other randoms—Infinite is radiating mid-2000s FPS energy these days, and I'm eating it up.

Firefight is the cherry on top of Halo Infinite's streak of good vibes, and an excellent way to ring in the game's second anniversary. Give it a shot yourself on December 5. 

Halo Infinite has been on a roll lately, with its latest season having the makings of an honest-to-god comeback. The game is now well stocked with fun maps and game modes, while its battle passes have evolved from terrible to tolerable. The player count has jumped significantly, and a flood of nostalgia-bait maps from Halo 3 that will absolutely work on me are just a week away. 

The Halo community is pretty upbeat for the first time in two years, but I'd say players are almost universally displeased with the latest cosmetic launched in the Infinite shop today: the Mark V armor that Master Chief wears in the original Halo: Combat Evolved.

The design isn't the problem—players seem to love the modern interpretation of the 22-year-old armor's simpler polygons. The problem is that the Mark V armor, launched to coincide with Halo: Combat Evolved's anniversary next week, costs $22—more than twice the price of the entire videogame Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary on Steam.

$22 certainly isn't cheap for a cosmetic, but it's also not particularly unusual for a free-to-play game. Fortnite's legendary skins are about $18; Apex Legends' legendary skins are the same price. The highest tier of League of Legends skins cost over $25. But most F2P games don't have to contend with a history like Halo's, which has made for an awkward point of comparison for Halo Infinite since its launch.

On the one hand, Infinite's multiplayer is free; on the other, it makes players pay for a battle pass to unlock many customization options, including basic colors and emblems that have been standard in the series across every single game. So far I still don't like Infinite's armor combinations as much as I liked Halo 3's, which was very simple but still offered some variety. 

So the standard F2P monetization model is already a tough sell for Halo, and it looks even more absurd when you consider what 343/Xbox charge for entire videogames. You can buy two entire Halo games for $20 as part of the Master Chief Collection—that's a lot of game for the same price as a cosmetic! Heck, when the Master Chief Collection is in the next Steam sales around Thanksgiving and Christmas, the entire six game bundle will cost $10 based on prior sales. Fans on Reddit and elsewhere have pointed out the glaring value discrepancy, there.

The salt in the wound with this particular skin is that you can't mix-and-match the armor pieces, a feature Halo Infinite just fully opened up as of this season. It makes some sense that a cosmetic celebrating the original Halo's look would be a standalone piece of kit, but it again feels a bit like 343 regressing on something that's been a Halo staple for ages.

Is Halo: Combat Evolved really worth half as much as a new skin (based on the armor from Halo: Combat Evolved) just because it's old? I guess that's just how videogame prices work, but the MCC version of the first Halo is pretty wonderful; it fixes a bunch of old bugs, supports online custom games and modding, and even lets you choose what color you want your Spartan to be without spending anything. If you play hundreds of hours of a F2P game, dropping $22 on a skin certainly works out to be a cheap investment. But I can't help but feel like the whole model's a bit broken in comparison to how we used to just buy games.

Really nice armor, though. They almost got me.

Yesterday I experienced something in Halo Infinite that I hadn't since its 2021 launch: I'd wrapped up a match of Squad Battle and was waiting for the next one when I realized I'd just played six consecutive matches of Halo without blinking, and I didn't want to stop. I was having a really good time in multiplayer—so good that, for once, I wasn't distracted by all the ways 343's free-to-play FPS still falls short. 

The pieces are finally starting to fall into place for Infinite, and all it took was two years of unofficial early access as 343 struggled to run a live service while also trying to get staple features like campaign co-op, Forge, and a custom games browser out the door. Remember when Big Team Battle was flat-out broken for weeks? Or when "Seasons" 1 and 2 were six months each? Me neither, because I stopped playing after a week of grinding one of the worst battle passes I've ever seen. 

Halo Infinite Season 5: Reckoning, which kicked off last week, feels like a turning point. There's a lot worth checking out: Forge got support for AI enemies that has already spawned an impressive battle royale mode, you can wear any helmet with any armor core, two new arena maps join a pretty good new mode, and you can earn XP in custom games. I've checked in on Infinite at various points over two years, most recently when it added my favorite Halo gun of all time, the DMR, and Season 5 is the first time I've noticed other lapsed players taking an interest in what's new. Higher Steam concurrents since launch are a sign that they're sticking around, too, for now at least.

It's a great time to play Halo Infinite, as long as you don't mind all the ways it's still janky, awkward, and obtuse. Such is the Halo experience right now: There are major improvements, but most of them come with significant caveats.

Where Halo Infinite stands at the start of Season 5

📈 Progression doesn't suck anymore*
⚒️ Forge is there, and cool
🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Custom games have been a boon for variety**
⛑️ Armor customization is better***
🔋 Arena is overflowing with good playlist options
🔫 Combat is more responsive****
🖥️ Servers are more stable
🌞 Seasons are releasing somewhat consistently
🗺️ Maps: there are lots of them now, and they're good!*****

*Progression doesn't suck anymore, but it's not great either

These days you can progress Halo's battle pass simply by playing, and challenges are a lot easier to complete too. But, what for? Infinite's battle passes are still stuffed with stuff I'm not that interested in on their own, like kneepads and gloves that look slightly different from the ones I'm wearing. It's encouraging that there are more color variants in the mix now, and even overlays that dramatically change the shape of your guns, but disappointingly few of these cooler cosmetics end up on the battle pass. You'll find most of them in $10 - $30 bundles in the Shop tab.

**Custom games are great, but they're broken

Like, they literally don't work. When I join a map via the custom games browser, there's around a 60% chance it'll error out. It has been like this since the browser launched 10 months ago, and 343's latest communications make no mention of how terrible the experience is or provide a timeline for when it'll be fixed. The UI is also terrible. This is a major part of Halo, and it's unacceptable. 

***Armor customization is better, but still a nightmare

Using any helmet with any armor core is great. Now do that, but with every single piece of armor in the game. The "armor core" is a failed idea. 

****Combat is more responsive, but still occasionally wonky

This isn't unique to Halo, but I don't like getting killed when I've already cleared a corner on my screen. Sometimes I'll trade simultaneous melee blows with an enemy and we both die, and sometimes only I die. There's a layer of inconsistency that's occasionally annoying, but improved from launch.

*****The maps are good, but overly reliant on Forge

Forge creators are hard carrying Halo Infinite at the moment. 343 has added a pile of Forge-created classic map remakes and original arenas to official matchmaking playlists. While Forge remakes are surprisingly faithful and fun, they all have that snapped-together "Forge" look that's incongruent with the game's art style. I wish we didn't have to rely on talented community creators to produce the maps people are most excited to play. 343 should be doing that work.

For me, Season 5 is evidence that 343 is finally in a place to spend more time expanding on Infinite than putting out fires. If the trajectories of Cyberpunk 2077 and Battlefield 2042 are anything to go by, then Halo Infinite has the makings of an honest-to-god comeback.

But it's not there yet. 343 has tackled almost every problem I had with Infinite at launch, and yet there are fires that still need extinguishing. Onward and upward in 2024.

Yesterday, I almost reinstalled Halo Infinite for the sixth time. I couldn’t care less about Season 4’s battle pass (earning XP is still a terrible experience) or the new teleporter gadget—no, apparently the only thing that can draw me back into 343’s free-to-play Halo at this point are targeted appeals to my nostalgia. 343 dropped an update this week that added a trio of Forge-created Halo throwback maps to official playlists: Zanzibar, Valhalla, and Rat’s Nest.

They really got me there—those are two all-timer Halo destinations (and also Rat’s Nest, which is fine). I was hovering over the install button when my eye drifted to The Master Chief Collection sitting right below Infinite in my Steam library. Oh yeah, I thought. The all-in-one Halo game with every classic campaign, map, and mode in a faithfully-preserved time capsule. 

MCC already has Zanzibar, Valhalla, and Rat’s Nest, in all their original glory. If I’m jumping into Infinite to play three old Halo 3 maps, why wouldn’t I just play Halo 3?

No offense to the talented folks who put them together, of course, but Forge remakes can’t really do classic maps justice—it’s a different engine with mismatched assets, and they have that unnatural "snapped-together" appearance inherent to everything in Forge. It’s just not the same. 

The real reason to play a reconstructed Zanzibar in Halo Infinite is to play a sleek 2020s Halo with modernized shooting and cool new guns. You can’t get either of those things in MCC, but funnily enough, it does have pretty much everything that Halo fans think Infinite is lacking: a deep pool of maps and modes, a robust custom games browser, and armor personalization that doesn’t suck. MCC is the gold standard for keeping old-but-great multiplayer games alive and kicking. Not to mention, MCC still gets updates too (though not as frequently since Infinite came out). 

MCC’s sterling reputation speaks to a larger perception problem Infinite has faced since its 2021 launch. MCC is, in a sense, the anti-Halo Infinite: so convenient and improbably generous as a product that it’d make more sense as a fan project led by modders. And actually, since last year it has largely been driven by modders as 343 turned its attention to Infinite.

Labor of legacy

343 Industries was established to make new Halo games, but the studio has spent just as much time delving into the series’ past with a level of respect and reverence that just wouldn’t be possible from people who don’t love Halo. The MCC team constantly looks for opportunities to resurrect classic content with a modern twist, finish work started by Bungie, or dig up ancient artifacts of Halo history just for fun.

An MCC update from this week is a perfect example. The headlining feature is Escalation Slayer mode for Halo 3—a newer mode custom-made for a game that wasn’t designed for it, pretty cool. And then just because 343 can, it also doubled the Firefight player limit from four to eight in both ODST and Reach, admittedly breaking the balance… but also who cares? While at it, why not add three Spartan gadgets to Halo 3 multiplayer that you could previously only get in the campaign? Or add a statue scavenger hunt to every campaign with locations that change weekly? There’s an entire section of the July 2023 patch notes about one dev tinkering with the co-op-only ODST to get 16-player multiplayer working inside it—an unnecessary and extremely cool project that I hope can be completed someday—before casually mentioning a discovery of three unfinished Halo 3 DLC maps in ODST’s files that have now been added to MCC’s modding suite.

That’s right, modding! The studio has spent the last year refining its modding tools, bringing community modders into the fold to search for cut content hidden deep inside Bungie’s old files (with the help of modders), and implementing Steam Workshop support. Nine years into its life, MCC is the Halo gift that keeps on giving. Rewind to 2014’s disastrous MCC launch and you’d be surprised to learn it’s become the Halo to root for, while the free-to-play Halo Infinite struggles to be exciting.

Halo wars

It’s a rare situation for two games in the same series to be pitted against each other, but also a good opportunity to reflect on what we want from multiplayer shooters. Halo Infinite has way more going on these days with new maps, gadgets, and cosmetics while MCC gets fun little scraps of history every six months, so why is MCC averaging over twice as many players on Steam?

It’s just better Halo, with beloved co-op campaigns, way more maps, and a decidedly less competitive vibe. Plus, I’m not constantly waiting for it to meet my expectations. Infinite is the newer game, and 343 set expectations high from the start. I have no expectations for MCC beyond what it’s already doing, because everything you could want from it is already there, and then some.

It matters a lot to me that MCC is a complete game (actually, six complete games) while, after nearly two years, Infinite still comes off like 343 is laying down the track as it goes. Nostalgia certainly plays a role too, though Infinite also tugs on heart strings where it can. 

Infinite players have proven to be harsh critics always hungry for more, but I increasingly believe they’re justified. By consequence of its live service model, Halo Infinite is constantly asking more from us, too. Infinite doesn’t just get cool stuff, it gets cool stuff and a new $10 battle pass, store refresh, and limited-time premium cosmetics. 

I just don’t want my Halo experience to be a series of scheduled, itemized transactions—one where I’m encouraged to buy into a new phase of Halo and ask myself each time if it was worth it. Infinite, for all its strengths, represents an era of games that nakedly treats people like ATMs, while MCC is a living reminder that Halo doesn’t have to be this way. When you think of it like that, it’s hardly a fair fight.

Last year, it was announced on the Halo: Waypoint website that 343 Industries would be working with a coalition of modders from the community to dive into  "the darkest depths of ancient folders" and salvage what they could from the cutting room floor of 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved, then bring those scraps to the Master Chief Collection, which came to PC in 2019.

They released a three-part blog series: "Cutting Room Floor", "Cutting Room Corps" and "Cutting Room Lore", then went dark until last week, tinkering away with what community writer Alex Wakeford calls "the secret tenth circle of Hell (the cutting room floor of game development)". Fortunately they survived Cortana's Inferno, and came out with some real gems.

The blog post starts with some maps that never made it into Halo PC's retail release, from a much more ambitious multiplayer experience that never was: "Some of these were cut before they even had a name more evocative than gbx_map#. Nevertheless, two were interesting enough to playtest and bring over the finish line within MCC." The maps found were Indoor and Dusk, which were remade into Underground and Abyss by the team's modders.

The rest of the blog dives into a treasure trove of cut content. Among the more fascinating relics, however, are indications of Halo's previous concepts as both a third-person shooter and an RTS.

From the over-the-shoulder side, a bounty of weapons: "We do want to point out that the recovered weapons shown below were from the third-person era of Halo development [...]  All of the cut pre-release Halo: CE weapons with first-person models in these Digsite releases were done from-scratch by the team as a labour of love!"

This arsenal includes an assault rifle/grenade launcher and an SMG with a side-mag, for which the team had to create custom animations and models to bring them to first-person. They also built in the other direction, tidying up a revived third-person mode: "the CE engine can now support third-person weapons, allowing us to replicate their original look".

My favourite bit in the whole post, however, is a callback to Halo's weird conceptual phase as an RTS: a set of dinky little vehicles, which the team plan to make available to modders. "After internal testing and discussion, we ultimately decided to release these as data-only assets due to a lack of documentation on their weapons and performance [...] We look forward to seeing what the community does with them."

Look at these li'l guys. I want low-poly plushies for all of them. Halo did eventually realise its original RTS ambitions with Halo Wars and Halo Wars: 2, but I doubt anything in either title will capture my heart like these chunky lads.

There's far too much to go over here, so I highly recommend diving into the blog post yourself. There's freaky animals, scrapped vehicles and enemies, and details on bringing crunchy in-development sound effects up to a modern standard. There may also be some new music tracks on the horizon: "we are, of course, far from the culmination of our journey into Halo’s audio."

I'm not a big Halo guy myself—I am, however, fascinated by game preservation, and I can't wait to see what the team digs up next. I won't have to wait long, either: the team plans to drop a second blog on July 14 to uncover "some of the additional things the crew has been up to—from the E3 2003 demo of Halo 2, to the Guardians cut from Halo 3, more weapons, maps, vehicles, characters, and more general awesomeness."

Way back in the days of Halo 4, 343 Industries' first crack at the series post-Bungie, one of the developers had a mighty brainwave. What if Spartans fought, but they were all much, much smaller? Like, smaller than the guns they were carrying around small? Who knows which genius came up with the idea, but Halo 4 added the "Mini Slayer" game mode, and it turned out to be one of the few parts of Halo 4 that (for me anyway) captured the silliness that was always a part of Bungie's games.

Ten years on, Mini Slayer is making a comeback in Halo Infinite. It's now available in social matchmaking and, yep, you play as a shrunk-down Spartan who, with their oversized weapons, looks nothing short of comical. Adding to the effect is that the mini Spartans seem to get around on some sort of sci-fi rollerskates and, well, guess I'm re-installing Halo Infinite tonight. 

The mode was announced with a five second video which is one of the best things Halo Infinite's done.

Player reaction so far has been hugely positive because, y'know, dumb Halo is fantastic Halo.

And you can see sights like this:

One of the best things about Mini Slayer is the assassinations. Seeing one Spartan shank another with a knife that's the same length as their body… it can't be beaten.

Halo Infinite soldiers on, though 2022 felt like a bit of a horrible year for the game. But this year has seen the updates get a lot better, and 343's leaning into releasing classic modes like Invasion which always felt like a core part of the Halo package. Seeing Mini Slayer make a return is a welcome surprise. Now do prop hunt..

Halo Infinite trundles on, both a testament to the enduring appeal of the foundations laid down by Bungie and, in some ways, an indictment of how Microsoft has handled it since. This once felt like the most important FPS series in the world. Now Halo's just another free-to-play shooter in a sea full of them, kicking desperately against the straits that carry it off. 

We can speculate as to why, but for me the problem with Halo Infinite was that it launched in such a barebones state. The multiplayer is great but multiplayer was only ever one side of Halo, and the way 343 either chose or was compelled to launch Infinite felt like a bit of a crash landing. Halo games once launched with a dizzying array of content ready to go, different modes and ways of playing that eked everything out of the fundamentals. Infinite? It's all been or is being added post-launch. We only got campaign co-op and Forge six months ago.

Which brings us to one of the best Halo custom gametypes, which 343 has just announced will arrive in Infinite this summer. Infection first appeared in Halo 3 and is basically a zombies mode, in which a small group of infected hunts un-infected players. Each kill from the infected turns the victim to their side, and the goal for the un-infected is simply to survive until the timer runs out.

The infected mode will arrive in Halo Infinite on June 20, as part of season four, and is themed as an AI takeover within the Halo fiction. The latter is admittedly quite neat, allowing 343 to add a demonic robot face to infected spartans. The announcement came from Sean Baron, who is head of live service for the game, and other incoming changes and additions include:

• Beginning with Season 4, all new premium coatings (Premium Battle Pass and Shop) will include individual versions compatible with all armor cores.
• Career Rank is also coming to Halo Infinite on June 20, giving players an all-new progression system with military-style ranks
• 343’s official Forge remake of the Halo 5 map “Plaza” is targeted to be released early in Season 4
• Halo Infinite’s first Bonus XP Weekend will take place over June 2-4

It's a start, though Halo Infinite still has some way to go after the horrible, no-good, very bad year that was 2022. It doesn't help, and it's hard not to link this into the ongoing story of the game somewhere, that 343 Industries suffered a horrific round of layoffs late last year. Even Xbox Studios boss Matt Booty admitted that the game's release was like "stumbling as you come across the finish line".

Lest you think we're a little down on it, though, season three did end up being pretty great and, as I'll keep saying, the best thing about Infinite is that 343 finally got the foundations right: This may still be adding features piecemeal, but it's the first post-Bungie Halo game that feels like Halo should. Now it just needs to get to a place, even belatedly, where it has everything a Halo game should.

Ever since Bungie added Forge to Halo 3, Halo Karts has been a thing. The inspiration of Nintendo's all-conquering Mario Kart was obvious, but the various Halo Karts were built from Halo elements and played on Halo maps. Now the prophecy is upon us. A Halo Mario Kart mod as ludicrous as it is amazing.

Cursed Halo Kart, to give it the proper title, is a part of a much larger mod called Cursed Halo Again, which is a campaign sequel to the multiplayer map pack Cursed Halo. The Mario Kart 'campaign' here is based on that prior mod,Halo Karts, and tasks players with winning Mario Kart races in Warthogs against various comedy Halo duos to progress (this is, after all, a 'cursed' campaign). Everything mentioned here was created by modder InfernoPlus and the whole overarching project is equal parts bizarre and impressive.

The mod's shown off below by Youtuber Mint Blitz, and it's where I took the above absurd gif from.

Like, it almost seems one of those things that started as a joke, then got legs of its own, and became some sort of labour of love. The Cursed Halo Again mod specifically alters Halo 1 in the Master Chief Collection and, when you step back from the humour and silliness of what's going on in the mod, there's a certain grandeur to what this old warhorse is being gee-d up to deliver. 

Which in this case, of course, is classic Mario Kart tracks, but now with stickies instead of blue shells, a vague Double Dash quality in the paired-up Warthog riders, and some bonkers grenade physics that send the karts careening across the tracks. Which, it turns out, can be a useful shortcut.

InfernoPlus has a patreon where you can keep up with their work, but Cursed Halo Again (as well as much of their older work) is most easily available through the Steam Workshop.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to PC Gamer that Halo's franchise director, Frank O'Connor, has left Microsoft, telling us, "We thank Frank for his numerous contributions to the Halo franchise and wish him well going forward." O'Connor's departure was first reported over the weekend by Windows Central, who noticed that his LinkedIn had been updated to show him leaving Microsoft for a new role at an unspecified company.

O'Connor began working on Halo at Bungie in 2004, where he wrote the "Bungie Weekly Update," a predecessor to the still-running Destiny bulletin "This Week at Bungie." O'Connor left the company for Microsoft proper in 2008, after the release of Halo 3, where he held the senior role of franchise creative director, overseeing 343 Industries as well as other studios working on various multimedia projects in the setting. O'Connor is also credited as an executive producer for the Halo TV series.

O'Connor is the latest in a stream of senior developers and executives working on Halo to leave Microsoft and 343. Just two weeks ago, Halo creative lead and fellow Bungie vet Joseph Staten left Microsoft after nine years with the company. 343's founder, Bonnie Ross, stepped down from her position as head of the developer in September, while 2022 also saw the departure of Halo Infinite's lead multiplayer designer, lead narrative designer, and multiplayer creative director.

Additionally, the game's creative and project directors left 343 during Infinite's development, which by all accounts was a taxing process even before the game was delayed an extra year following a poorly-received first showing in 2020. Worse still, a significant number of salaried and contracted developers at 343 seem to have been included in the wave of 10,000 employees laid off by Microsoft in January.

One of the last big names at 343 through late 2022, Kiki Wolfkill, is also no longer part of the Halo braintrust. Wolfkill left the studio for a role as "head of Xbox IP expansion and entertainment" in November. The big meetings with Pierre Hientz, who took over for Bonnie Ross as studio head, must look almost completely different than they did a year ago. Though O'Connor's replacement, Corrinne Robinson, has been working on Halo since 2009, and served as a "franchise manager" for the last nine years.

Things seemed to be looking up for Infinite immediately after launch, but its first year live was rough, marred by delays of new multiplayer content and expected features like campaign co-op and no word of further single player additions. With the studio hit by all these layoffs and senior-level departures, I find myself wondering who's even going to be left to work on Halo. Infinite was supposed to be a fresh beginning for Halo, but it seems like whatever comes next will really be the start of a new era.

It's a good time to return to the 2021 shooters that got a critical walloping at release. In case you haven't heard, Battlefield 2042 is really good now, and I'm starting to feel better about Halo Infinite's multiplayer after last week's Season 3: Echoes Within update.

First, the good stuff: Season 3 added two new Arena maps (Chasm and Cliffhanger) and one Big Team Battle map (Oasis). Halo Infinite has been in dire need of map injections since the day it launched and I'm glad to report that all three of these are winners so far. I'm especially enjoying Chasm, which might take the award for Halo-est Halo map 343 has put out yet.

Chasm is essentially two hallways in an unspecified alien facility divided by a bottomless pit (or chasm, if you will), connected only by a couple of light bridges and floating hexagonal platforms arranged like a 3D platformer.

The symmetrical staredown of the rival hallways is perfect for mid-range fights with Battle Rifle bros or pistol pros. Since most of the space between you is death pit, you tend to stay on your respective side and side-strafe until the fight is over, which is a nice changeup of the usual "run at each other while shooting then punch each other in the face" Halo tactic. It's more spacious than it sounds, but not so big that whoever grabs the top-floor sniper rifle automatically dominates the map.

There's something very "original Xbox Halo" about Chasm that I haven't put my finger on. It's partially the cold, geometric alien architecture that reminds me of Halo's earliest polygonal days, but I think it's more the fact that it's the sort of simplistic, blocky map that'd never get greenlit in any other modern FPS. Can you imagine a Call of Duty map that's mostly negative space? Chasm screams old-school PC arena shooter, a club that I believe Halo: CE belongs in despite its Xbox origins.

Halo Infinite Season 3, at a glance:

• Three maps (Chasm, Cliffhanger, Oasis)
• One new weapon (M392 Bandit)
• New mode: Escalation Slayer (it's Gun Game)
• New equipment: Shroud Screen (shoot a dome of no-see-me)
• 100-tier battle pass
• Ray tracing

You know what else feels great on Chasm? Halo Infinite's first new gun, which just so happens to be the return of my favorite old Halo gun, the DMR. Infinite's version is called the M392 Bandit, a semi-auto kinetic rifle that was made for clicking heads. It fires a bit slower than its iconic Halo Reach predecessor and has a more aggressive recoil than a Battle Rifle, but that time between shots locks you into a rhythm that makes it easier to land consecutive hits. I don't think it'll be outclassing the Battle Rifle anytime soon, but I'll take the Bandit over its full-auto little brother, the Commando, every time.

You'll find the Bandit in weapon lockers on maps across arena maps, but where I'm most excited to see it is in Big Team Battle. 343 added a "BTB Unlimited" playlist this week that replaces the default pistol loadout with a Bandit/Assault Rifle combo, closing the loop on the Halo Reach throwback in a way that I hope becomes permanent.

A surprisingly cool addition to Season 3 is Halo Infinite's team-based twist on Gun Game. Instead of hot swapping between single guns, teams cycle between 11 pairs of weapons with a loose theme. I've been pretty iffy on Infinite's marquee seasonal modes so far (Last Spartan Standing was a flop for me), but Escalation Slayer is hitting just right. Gun Game fits particularly well in games with distinct weapons like Halo, and making it a team sport was a smart move, too—in other games, the mode can often come to an abrupt end when one dominant player snowballs to the end of the gun ladder.

There is a free-for-all variant of Escalation out there for Gun Game purists, but I haven't encountered it in normal matchmaking yet. 

The quality and quantity of stuff in Season 3 is encouraging as someone who loved and then quickly dropped the game at launch. It finally feels like there's a good amount of things to do in Infinite—the mile-long playlist selection helps and it's cool that you can now chase a tense ranked match with an equally tense Mongoose race on a faithful recreation of Mario Kart's DK Mountain.

One part of Halo Infinite that's still stuck in 2021 is its new 100-tier battle pass. I'm maybe nine tiers into the thing and already bored to tears. It's a lot easier to earn XP these days, which is great, but the pass is once again stuffed with individual armor pieces and disappointingly few gun skins. And that's if you're a premium spender—the free track is a lonely road paved with terrible non-rewards like challenge swap tokens.

Since it seems like no design change is out of the question at 343, here's how I'd fix it: Take armor out of the battle pass and make it its own thing. Dressing up my spartan in personalized armor like a tacticool Barbie is fun, but unlocking it in a linear path makes it difficult to envision the "perfect look" and work to achieve it.

It'd mean so much more if, instead of unlocking some random shoulder guard because I got to tier 11, I had to complete unique challenges to get a cool samurai helmet. I'm essentially describing Call of Duty's system for unlocking gun camos, a progression ladder that annually inspires millions of people to grind that game for a year and manages to coexist with a separate battle pass. And before 343's monetization department has a heart attack: you can still sell those overpriced skins! 

Anyways, Halo update is good. I'm having fun. I hope 343 harnesses this momentum and turns Halo Infinite into one of those feel-good comeback stories a year from now.

At least once a year, the stars perfectly align and all the multiplayer shooters have a big update at the same time. This year, the stars decided that time is March. Everywhere I look, an FPS I'm excited about or want to get back to is beckoning me with promises of new gadgets, maps, exclusive betas, or overpowered guns that'll be nerfed in a week.

Some of the biggest hitters, like Call of Duty: Warzone 2 and Apex Legends, missed the whole March memo and had their first big 2023 updates in mid-February. Overwatch 2 season 3 is in full swing too, but without a new hero this time there's not much to get excited about. Fine by me, because I'll be busy enough checking out the newest operators of Rainbow Six Siege and Valorant, plus the closed beta for The Finals, a promising destruction-heavy FPS from ex-DICE devs.

Another theme of March is redemption: both Battlefield 2042 and Halo Infinite are kicking off new seasons this week—classes are officially back in Battlefield and Halo can finally solve its map pool problem with Forge. Have the massively-criticized shooters of Fall 2021 finally done enough to earn back their goodwill? 

Here's the lowdown on every big FPS update this week.

The Finals closed beta (March 7-21)

• Opt-in to the beta on The Finals Steam page
• Three classes: Light, Medium, Heavy
• Two maps, multiple times-of-day
• Two modes: quick play and tournament

Our most anticipated FPS of 2023 is holding a closed beta this month. We played a few hours of The Finals during a press preview session and had a blast experimenting with its entirely destructible maps. It's definitely early, and you should be ready for performance issues, but worth playing if the powers that be let you in.

Halo Infinite Season 3: Echoes Within (March 7)

• Three maps (two Arena, one Big Team Battle)
• One new weapon (M392 Bandit, basically the DMR)
• New mode: Escalation Slayer (it's Gun Game)
• New equipment: Shroud Screen (shoot a dome of no-see-me)
• 100-tier battle pass
• Ray tracing

Besides the addition of Forge mode last year (which technically contains the potential for all maps of the known universe), this may be Halo Infinite's biggest update yet. A grip of new maps, a new gun(!), a mode that sounds a lot like gun game, and a 100-tier battle pass that never expires. I still think Big Team Battle's map pool is too shallow, but one step at a time.

Battlefield 2042 Season 4: Eleventh Hour (February 28)

• Classes are back
• One new 32v32 map: Flashpoint
• New specialist: Blasco
• Four guns: RM68 assault rifle, RPT-31 LMG, AC9 SMG, Super 500 Shotgun sidearm
• New vehicle: CAV-Brawler, a light armor transport with a freaking shotgun
• 100-tier battle pass

Yep, Battlefield 2042 snuck its latest season out right before March, but I'm guessing you're just finding out about it now. Here's the thing: I think Battlefield 2042 is really good now? I had a good time at launch, but I'm impressed with the maps and specialists added since then. The biggest change by far, though, is the (re)introduction of classes. Specialists and the gadgets they have access to are now hard-locked to their class. Classes also have passive bonuses relevant to their role on top of the unique attributes of individual operators.

Rainbow Six Siege: Operation Commanding Force (March 7)

• New operator: Brava (hacks defender gadgets with a special drone)
• Immersive reload
• Anitcheat "Mousetrap" on consoles

With no new map or notable reworks, Siege's year 8 kickoff is pretty small, but Brava's absurdly interesting Kludge drone is enough to get me excited. Her Kludge drones can sneak into bomb sites and hack defender gadgets from a distance, swapping their allegiance. We've already seen some truly impressive plays using it.

Valorant Act 2 Episode 6: Revelation (March 7)

• New agent: Gekko
• Input latency improvements
• Bug fixes

A lighter update compared to other games on the list, but that's just how Valorant rolls. Sometimes you get a map, sometimes an agent, sometimes both. It's been almost six months since an agent release, so Gekko's arrival is a fairly big deal. Their kit is mostly what I expect from Valorant at this point: slight variations on stun grenades, smoke grenades, and grenade grenades. But their Wingman ability is intriguing: Gekko deploys a little alien dude that can carry and even plant the spike.

343 Industries studio head Pierre Hintze issued a public statement on Twitter declaring that the developer would continue to work on Halo. This statement comes just a few days after 343 was impacted by the 10,000-person round of layoffs at Microsoft.

"Halo and Master Chief are here to stay," The statement begins."343 Industries will continue to develop Halo now and in the future, including epic stories, multiplayer, and more of what makes Halo great."

It is unclear how many of those 10,000 workers Microsoft laid off were 343 developers. The statement seems to be in response to a story originating with French Halo influencer, Bathrobe Spartan, who had previously leaked stories like the plans for a Halo Infinite battle royale mode. 

Bathrobe Spartan alleged that 343 saw a major restructuring of its role on the franchise, outlined here on ResetEra in English. Bathrobe Spartan specifically claims that 343 lost one third of its workforce including contractors, Halo Infinite missed its sales targets, and that 343 will step back into a "coordinating role" on the franchise as opposed to actively developing new Halo games.

One of the leaker's claims, that planned Halo Infinite single player DLC was canceled and that this contributed to the departure of creative director Joseph staten, has been at least partially debunked by Windows Central managing editor Jez Corden: "There was never any campaign DLC in active development," Corden tweeted, "I don't know how you scrap something that doesn't exist."

The same day as the layoffs, former 343 developer Patric Wren and contractor Nicholas Bird criticized 343 leadership for its direction on Halo Infinite and treatment of contracted workers, who were limited by Microsoft to 18-month stints at the company with mandatory six-month breaks in employment.

After a troubled development and seemingly successful launch, Halo Infinite unfortunately had a rough 2022, with a slow pace of multiplayer updates and significant delays on features like Forge and campaign co-op. Even with Hintze's public assurance, Halo was already in a bad place before 343 took this hit, to say nothing of the human cost of so many workers having their lives upended.

The same day Microsoft announced it would be laying off 10,000 workers, including employees at game studios Bethesda and 343 Industries, a former senior multiplayer designer on Halo Infinite, Patrick Wren, had harsh words for 343 management's direction for the game.

"The layoffs shouldn't have happened and Halo Infinite should be in a better state," Wren wrote on Twitter. "The reason for both of those things is incompetent leadership up top during Halo Infinite development causing massive stress on those working hard to make Halo the best it can be."

It's clear that the wide sweep of Microsoft layoffs can't be laid at 343's feet, but Wren seems to argue that the studio could have spared or at least mitigated the effect this downsizing had on its own team. Halo Infinite has had a strange arc, with its initial reveal met with skepticism, mocking memes, and a year delay. Infinite had a bit of a redemption when it launched in fall 2021, with a decently-reviewed campaign and a warm reception to its free-to-play multiplayer. 

Since then though, the game's spent an entire year crawling towards a sense of positive growth, with fans dissatisfied with the pace of multiplayer updates and promised additions like Forge and campaign co-op not materializing until a full year after launch. Shortly after Infinite was delayed, studio director Chris Lee left the project. 343 has additionally seen a sequence of major departures, including the studio's founder, lead multiplayer designer, lead narrative designer, and director of engineering.

Wren and a contractor who worked on Halo Infinite, Nicholas Bird, both criticized how 343 deployed contract labor in development. "I would have loved to stay on the team if I could have and worked my way up," Bird wrote in response to Wren, lamenting the Microsoft-imposed time caps on contract workers. "So many amazing people and talent that just disappeared," Wren agreed.

Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier wrote on the subject of Microsoft contractors back in 2020. "At Microsoft, contractors can only work for 18 months max (they can come back after a six-month break)," Schreier tweeted at the time. "Microsoft uses so many contractors that this limit leads to a lot of attrition⁠—and for games that take four plus years to make, like Halo Infinite, it has been disruptive."

Wren did have a more positive take on the leadership of Infinite's multiplayer team, writing "I do want to make sure that I call out how amazing the multiplayer team was during development."

It's surprising and uncommon for a developer still active in the industry to speak so openly and critically about a former employer, but to my eye this speaks to how deeply-felt his dissatisfaction with 343's leadership during Infinite's development is.

343's lack of preparedness for launching a live service game after a full year's delay has been puzzling from the outside, and dismaying for players who were initially excited by the excellent foundation set with its multiplayer. I can only imagine the frustration from those within the studio as layoffs sweep through one of the wealthiest companies on the planet.

Skyrim has broken containment. No longer content with releasing multiple times on every platform under the sun, Bethesda's opus is now bleeding into other games. At least, that's my understanding after checking out an incredibly detailed recreation of Skyrim's Whiterun created in Halo: Infinite's Forge mode. Finally, you can load up a rocket launcher and show Nazeem what you really think of the Cloud District.

Spotted by Rebs Gaming, the map was made by a creator called Bullet2thehead9, or Ethan Hibbs if you want to be formal. Hibbs has recreated Jarl Balgruuf's domain in exacting detail. The Gildergreen tree dominates the town square, the streets twist and turn just how you remember, and a statue of Talos looms in the centre. I'm not sure Talos wore UNSC Marine armour in the established Elder Scrolls lore, though. Maybe that's in C0DA. 

It's a demonstration not only of Hibbs' talent as a map-maker, but of the versatility of Halo Infinite's Forge mode. Another Halo mapper—CaptainDireWolf—popped up in Rebs Gaming's replies to highlight the stark contrast between their own Whiterun map made in Halo 5 and the one made by Hibbs. While CaptainDireWolf's map is still an impressive effort, it's noticeably lacking in detail and polish compared to what Hibbs was able to do in Infinite.

The map has drawn praise from all quarters, and has even garnered the attention of Bethesda and Microsoft, with the companies chiming in to offer kudos and make legally-mandated arrow to the knee jokes. At least it was accompanied by a new (to me) image of a needler dart piercing a Skyrim NPC's leg, I suppose. Small mercies.

Last year was pretty dreadful for Halo Infinite, and was marked mostly by fan frustration and development on key features crawling along at a snail's pace. On the plus side, November's Forge mode beta release put fans in a good mood for the first time in ages, and projects like Hibbs' Whiterun map show just how flexible and capable that mode is. With any luck, Whiterun will be just one in a long-line of maps and content that continue to breathe new life into the game.

If you want to check out Hibbs' Whiterun map for yourself, it can be downloaded on Halo Waypoint. Or you could just go watch him play the Halo theme on guitar. That's pretty cool too.

For the first time since December 2021, I played Halo Infinite last week—and somehow, despite loving and playing Halo on-and-off for 20 years, I was still shocked by how much fun I had. The springy movement, the rhythm of shield-stripping body shots followed by a snappy magnum round to the head, the zippy sci-fi slide whistle sound effects for every little action, the *chef's kiss* sensation of hooking a frag grenade around a corner just right. Infinite is truly the best Halo has ever felt under my fingertips, a Jurassic Park-worthy refinement of decades-old FPS DNA. But I guess reviving the dinosaur wasn't really the problem for Jurassic Park or Halo Infinite—it was knowing what to do with it once it was alive.

First impressions last year were glowing. Halo players new and old almost universally loved the new multiplayer in its beta tests, a balance developer 343 has been chasing since 2012's Halo 4. Infinite nailed it in a way I honestly didn't believe was possible. The first blow to that enthusiasm came in August 2021, months before the game was even out. It would end up taking a full year for Infinite to pull out of its downward spiral.

Bad year, month 1 (November): Infinite launches without core Halo features

Halo Infinite's decline over 2022 was death by a thousand cuts and a couple gaping wounds.

In an August 2021 video update, 343 delivered the news that both campaign co-op and the Forge mapmaking mode would miss launch and arrive in 2022. The goal was for campaign co-op to arrive about three months later (reality: 12 months) and for Forge to ship in six months (reality: 12 months, in beta).

Nevertheless, the mood was still good when multiplayer surprise launched in November, on Halo: Combat Evolved's 20th anniversary. Infinite was just… fun! Halo was good again! It was relevant. It was… a flaming dumpster fire within a month.

So much went wrong with Infinite's multiplayer launch and its support throughout 2022, but the rot began here, with this decision to launch without Forge or campaign co-op. It was a practical, necessary decision to make it possible to release the game by the end of 2021, a date that was already one year later than planned. It was also wrong. 

This choice set Infinite up to fail in two ways: 

1. It magnified Infinite's missing features vs. the classic Halo games

Every single Halo launched with co-op. Halo 3, Reach, and 4 all launched with Forge. After it seemed like 343 had finally nailed the essence of Halo's arena gunplay, not having these two core features was a bitter chaser.

There are reasonable justifications. Modern game development is expensive, in both people and time. Infinite's campaign was a series-first open world sandbox. Halo 3's Forge was vastly simpler; character models and maps and lighting were all far less detailed; the old games had to run on a single console, instead of across two consoles and PCs, with dedicated servers and a network system that can seamlessly interlink between Steam and the Xbox backend. There are doubtless far more insidious complexities to do with Halo Infinite's engine and design that I don't understand.

None of that matters, because that's not what players see or touch. What they see is a game missing things they've expected for a decade. Two decades. And when launch arrived, the lack of Forge and co-op formed the core of a snowball that picked up more and more criticisms of absent features, like:

• You couldn't replay campaign missions.
• There was no SWAT playlist, a perennial favorite and simple mode to implement.
• Thanks to the F2P progression and customization system, you could no longer pick a simple color for your Spartan the way you'd been able to do since 2001. As summarized by a player on Reddit: "You have to pay for the color blue."
• No way to earn most armor customization simply for playing.

2. MIA Forge exacerbated Infinite's greatest failing: the content drought throughout 2022 

The above ignited the firestorm at launch, but Forge's absence did Infinite far more damage over time. It took six months for Infinite to get two new maps and game modes. A year in this remains Infinite's biggest problem, but the recent arrival of Forge has already proven to be what the game needed all along.

If Infinite had launched with Forge, 343 would've had its pick of community maps to highlight; even if only the best of the best made it into matchmaking, there'd have been a constant flow of new stuff to see. Instead, players logged in week after week to a dry riverbed.

Bad year, month 2 (December): Warning signs of the slow year ahead

By the time campaign landed in December (to overall quite positive reviews) the mood on the F2P multiplayer had turned venomous, based on a crappy battle pass, a narrow map selection and limited playlists. 343 announced that the first season would drag on six months, cementing the dread that Infinite's core multiplayer issues were a long, long way from being solved. The reality turned out to be worse than the fear.

Issues that players felt needed to be addressed immediately were clearly way down the roadmap. However complex they were from a development standpoint, they seemed frustratingly simple to players. For example, Infinite launched with a progression system based around daily and weekly challenges. But everyone hated them: 

• Many required specific gametypes that players just had to hope to get into via matchmaking
• Others required using certain weapons or playing in a specific way, like a melee hit to the back
• Simply playing the game rewarded no XP until 343 hastily patched in challenges that rewarded playing your first few matches
• It took a year, until November 2022, for Infinite to reward match XP for playing and performing well on your team

The battle pass was littered with "challenge swaps" that let you replace one challenge with another, a band-aid for an obviously bad system. The trickle of armor you unlocked felt particularly meager. The season's first special event had its own free battle pass, which 343 had to alter because it, too, was loaded with challenge swaps and XP filler.

343's former head of design, Jerry Hook, talked openly about those issues in a December 15 livestream, but also said something that I think encapsulated Infinite's first painful year: "One of the biggest challenges we knew we'd have, no matter what we did, was that changing Halo's 20 years of boxed product models to a free-to-play model is not going to be inherently satisfying for most of our players. We get that. However, we don't think we have to continue to follow normal tropes of the industry to make that effective. We think we can do some things better for our players and better for the game experience, to push that edge a little bit. So we're taking a look at that across the board."

Other than Infinite's good idea to never have battle passes expire, its progression system and cosmetics seemed sparse compared to other F2P games, not innovative. While Halo players were grinding for shoulderpads, Fortnite was literally being turned upside down and adding Spider-Man. Fortnite is in a class of its own, but Infinite was meant to be Halo's grand comeback, the start of a "10 year platform" fueled by Microsoft's bottomless pockets and years of development time.

How did it take until launch to see how poorly it stacked up to other F2P games?

In hindsight, Infinite's 2020 delay set the wrong expectations

Microsoft and 343 Industries absolutely needed to delay Halo Infinite after its first poor showing at E3. It was originally meant to be out by the end of 2020, and an extra year of development time made many players think that Infinite would arrive robust, extra polished, with a bulked-out multiplayer and more maps lined up to debut at a rapid clip. What's the point of a live service game without constantly feeding grist into the content mill, right?

Yet the "10 year platform," which had seemingly gotten a generous extra year in the oven, looked thin even next to the older games in the series that promised no such longevity and launched into far less competitive multiplayer environments. 

Halo multiplayer map history

Halo 2

• Launch day: 11 maps
• 5 months later: 2 free maps, 2 paid maps ($5), made free 2 months later
• 7 months later: 5 paid maps ($12), made free 2 months later
• 2 years, 6 months later: 2 paid maps ($4), made free 3 months later

Halo 3 

• Launch day: 11 maps, Forge
• 3 months later: 3 paid maps ($10), made free 3 months later
• 7 months later: 3 paid maps ($10), reduced price later
• 10 months later: 1 free map
• 1 year 7 months later: 3 new maps ($10), reduced price later
• 2 years later: 3 new maps ($10)

Halo Infinite 

• Launch day: 10 maps (6 exclusive to Arena, 4 exclusive to Big Team)
• 6 months later: 2 new free maps
• 1 year later: 2 new free maps (built in Forge), Forge mode
• 1 year, 1 month later: 1 new free map (built in Forge)

One year in, Halo 2 had 20 maps. Halo 3 had 18 maps. Halo Infinite had 14, divided more strictly between game modes.

That was never going to go over well with longtime players or wow new ones.

Looking back, perhaps a radical degree of transparency about Infinite's fraught development, instead of repeating the upbeat mantra "this is just the beginning," could've set a different expectation: that it was a freaking miracle Infinite shipped in a playable state at all, and that 2022 would be a year defined by playing catch-up. 

Bad year, month 3 (January): Big Team Battle woes

In December, it became clear that Infinite's Big Team Battle matchmaking was having serious issues, especially when trying to play with groups. Due to the holidays, it took until January 19 for a patch aimed to fix the issue. It did not succeed.

A limited time event introduces a new mode which is mostly well-received, but players remain frustrated by the challenge system used for progression.

Bad year, month 4 (March): Quiet period

Big Team Battle matchmaking is finally fixed. 

In a post on Halo Waypoint, 343 writes that its priorities are addressing issues, completing season 2, and working on co-op, Forge and season 3 while also balancing "team health, with an emphasis on getting ourselves into a sustainable development rhythm so that we can deliver great experiences to all of you while keeping a healthy work/life balance… Frankly, these last few months have been slower than we expected, and we sincerely thank you for your patience." 

The post highlighted major issues still being worked on, including anti-cheat vulnerabilities and the progression system. The update breaks the news that campaign co-op will not be available at the start of season 2 in May, and that only two maps will be added in season 2.

Bad year, month 5 (April): Season 2 stretches to November

"We would all like to have more things happening at a faster pace," says Halo community lead Brian Jarrard on a livestream before the launch of season 2, which is turns out will also last for six months, instead of the expected three.

Here's something I don't think 343 gets enough respect for: they know they're going to get booed, and they get up on stage anyway. They put out lengthy blog posts and video updates about their goals and their shortcomings while the crowd pelts them with rotten cabbage and human shit. They're far more open than most development studios. Unfortunately, admitting that they're unhappy with the pace of updates internally can't mollify fans who don't understand why the updates take as long as they do, when other games seem more capable of meaty, rapid-fire additions. 

Bad year, month 7 (June): Frustration mounts over lingering problems

343 consistently worked to fix technical issues Halo Infinite launched with, improving anti-cheat, smoothing out incorrect animations, rebalancing the sound mix, squashing bugs and crashes. This work does not alter player perception that Infinite remains flawed in some key areas, including network performance impacting accurate shot registration. Dozens of threads about lag and "desync" dot Halo Waypoint and Reddit, intensifying over the summer.

A 343 post in late June says that it's high on the priority list, but explains that "the devs that would work on these fixes have been allocated to other Infinite work." Some of that work has indirectly helped desync issues, but not in the most important cases "around melee and 'around the wall' shots." It took 343 until the December 2022 update to specifically target these issues. 

Bad year, month 10 (September): Local co-op gets cut, and an updated timeline does not go over well

In a community update video, Joseph Staten announces that splitscreen co-op is being scrapped. Digital Foundry gains access to an unfinished version of splitscreen co-op and found that it was actually quite playable, even on a 2013 Xbox One.

In the same update video, new head of live service Sean Baron strikes a nerve by saying that Halo's DNA is a "highly competitive game," which some players construe as prioritizing ranked/esports-esque competitive play over the sillier social side of Halo. This is, I think a bit unfairly, used as more ammunition for the argument that 343 is out of touch with its players. 

Other things Baron says in the stream are candid and good to hear, like: "We want players to expect a smooth quality experience with very few technical issues, and we've really fallen down there, from a PC perspective. We can do better." But 343's objective of improving on all of its core pillars by the end of 2023 highlights how little seemed to get done in 2022. After months and months of the same refrain, it becomes increasingly hard to believe.

Forge is delayed two months from a planned release in September.

Bad year, month 12 (November): The update everyone was waiting for

The end of Halo Infinite's very bad year is, at long last, a very good month. On November 8, 343 launches online co-op and the ability to replay missions. I've played it, and it works as well as I'd hoped.

Forge mode launches (still in beta form, but solid) and immediately brings a sense of hope that the year-long content drought is over.

An overhauled progression system arrives, delivering XP just for playing Halo (what a concept). A free battle pass offers players a slew of new cosmetics. The winter update also includes a brand new game mode and two maps, weapon balance changes, and many bug fixes.

The mood, for the first time in a year, is resoundingly positive. 

Forward unto dawn

In early December, 343 moved up its planned release of a custom game browser by several months, making it possible for players to join games played on custom Forge maps with ease. It also added a remake of popular Halo 3 map The Pit made in Forge. 

In a reversal of the heavily criticized cosmetic options available at launch, 343 made all of the Spartan armor cores (key pieces of the customization system) free to all players, alongside 10 color options.

I wish this had been the game Halo Infinite launched as. Imagine a version of this comeback story where Infinite launched with Forge and a progression system that prioritizes just playing Halo, and one month later players got an early version of a custom game browser to play community maps. Sure, the six month wait to the second season would still annoy some people—but the rest of us could've hopped into some classic CTF on a fan-made Blood Gulch to pass the time.

Building a smoothly updating, constantly engaging live service game is like climbing a mountain. Despite 343 Industries' best efforts, Halo Infinite spent much of its first year burrowing down instead, losing players who expected much more, and much faster. Now after 13 months Halo's finally returned to level ground, with a tailwind of enthusiasm from Forge and an accumulation of improvements big and small. It still feels far, far behind other live service games, and it's going to take a long time to get there. But if 343 can deliver on its goals by the end of next year, we might have finally reached a vantage point from which 10 years of Halo Infinite looks like an exciting journey.

It's largely been forgotten about now, but Halo: The Master Chief Collection launched on Xbox One in an absolute state. The games were all there, in a fashion, but it felt like something that had been slapped-together as fast as possible on a shoestring, rather than a definitive remastering of the series that remains one of Microsoft's crown jewels.

The reason that launch period's receded into the mists is that 343 Industries took charge of the project (the released game had multiple developers) and has, over many years, doggedly added-to, polished-up, and made Halo: MCC shine. As well as actually bringing it to PC, of course.

I'd now say that this package not only represents enormous value, but is the definitive way to enjoy some of the classic FPS games. That's because 343 has one-by-one added all the pre-Infinite Halo games, including Halo 3: ODST (one of the series' best campaigns), and has over-reached itself by, for example, going back and fixing Halo 2's broken PC port, adding mod tools to Halo: Combat Evolved, and restoring cut content. When microtransaction plans inspired a bout of community grumbling, Microsoft just cancelled the plans.

All of which suggests that, back in that launch period, Microsoft had some serious internal discussion about how it had presented its supposed icon of the Master Chief (and in a collection bearing his name). 343 Industries clearly has both the will and the funding to continue improving the game. And now, in what may make the biggest difference to the game's PC playerbase yet, it's added Steam Workshop integration out of nowhere.

For the uninitiated, Steam Workshop can basically be read as "easy mods". In a blog about the game's latest update 343 writes: 

"Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Steam is now integrated with Steam Workshop. Using Steam Workshop, players on Steam can now subscribe to mods, such as a multiplayer map, then play that content in-game without having to manually navigate to or move downloaded files."

In addition to this, the update adds modding tools for Halo 2 and Halo 4, as well as an "excession tool" that makes it a doddle for modders to package-up their existing mods to be workshop-ready. 

As can be seen from the workshop page, the mods are already flooding in: including biggies like Halo 2 Uncut, various total overhauls of the games, oddities like a Resident Evil 4 location, a fight against a giant rat in Reach, and something called "Saving Sergeant Johnson" which I have to play tonight.

The update comes along with a bunch of smaller bug fixes and tweaks, listed here, and the addition of even more Golden Moa statues. These were first added to Halo 3 but can now also be found in Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 4, appear in different missions every week, and are collected by shooting them. I mean they're not exactly big ol' skulls but, look: if 343 keeps on supporting Halo: MCC like this, it can add all the daft birds it wants. 

A long-time member of the Halo development team has departed, as Tom French, the creative director for Halo Infinite's multiplayer, had his last day at 343 Industries on Friday, December 2, 2022. French had worked on Halo for roughly 11 and a half years.

"It's been a massive honor to have been part of a game I loved so much as a player and admired so much as a developer. I couldn't be more proud of my time at 343," French said in a Tweet announcing his departure. In his time at 343 Industries, French was a mission designer, worked on Halo's Forge features, and departed as the Multiplayer Creative Director on Halo Infinite. 

French was a familiar face to Halo fans on development diaries and multiplayer features. He hasn't yet said what he plans on doing next, or if he will stay in game development.

French's departure is the latest in a series of very public personnel changes at 343 Industries. Studio head and founder Bonnie Ross left the company in September to attend to a family medical issue, followed shortly after by David Berger, a developer on Halo Infinite's Slipspace Engine.

Halo Infinite hasn't had an easy time of it, though. We've been running headlines like "Halo Infinite gets features it should've launched with" for the better part of a year now. Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty said last month that Halo Infinite's launch was like "stumbling as you come across the finish line."

That's not to mention the cooperative campaign, which finally came last month—a year after release. It's only playable on a network, however, as the studio junked local co-op earlier this year, walking back statements that it'd be available eventually. Halo Infinite was the first game in series history to release without a cooperative campaign mode.

Halo Infinite's winter update, described by developer 343 Industries as "the largest feature update to Halo Infinite yet," is now officially live. The update brings a number of major new features to the game, including campaign network co-op play, a new battle pass, and—this is the big one—beta access to Forge, Halo's long-awaited powerful creation tool.

"Forge lets players create new multiplayer maps and game modes that can be shared with other players via the Community tab in the main menu," 343 Industries said. "Within Forge, players can place and modify in-game objects, effects, and scripts to create a custom map."

Because it's in beta, Forge does not currently support developer-made maps, but is instead limited to "canvas maps," which are essentially templates that players can use to make their own custom creations. Forge for Halo Infinite has six canvas maps, each of them nearly double the size of the canvas maps in Halo 5 (which isn't of great relevance to us because Halo 5 didn't come to PC), and 343 said that developer map support will be implemented in a future update.

Even with that limitation, Halo Infinite's Forge has a lot going on. It boasts "thousands of new objects," along with "a new visual scripting engine, object scaling, lighting and audio tools, bot support, huge budget increases, file sharing capabilities, and much more to help you create and share your maps, modes, and prefabs," 343 said.

It also emphasized that while Forge is a beta, it will remain a fixture in the game. "Forge is here to stay for good in Halo Infinite, all content will carry forwards and persist, and the mode will continue to see updates and support over time, evolving to add even more content to further inspire and empower creators," the studio said.

Campaign network co-op play is another major addition included in the update, enabling up to four players to join up to take on the Halo Infinite campaign. Crossplay is supported across Xbox consoles and PC, and progress and unlocks earned during co-op play are shared across all players. Missions will also be replayable once completed, for players who want to pick up collectibles they missed the first time through (or maybe who just really liked the action in one particular level or another), and 24 new achievements have been added.

There are also two new multiplayer maps—Argyle, a tight, indoor map set within the narrow corridors of a UNSC vessel, and Detachment, a once-abandoned UNSC facility set atop a rocky outcropping—and a new mode called Covert One-Flag, a variant on the one-flag CTF mode that gives the attackers Active Camo, while defenders are equipped with Threat Sensors. 

The introduction of Match XP, also in beta, will continue to "evolve" Halo Infinite's progression, while the Winter Update battle pass offers 30 tiers of new rewards—and, in case you'd forgotten, does not expire. There will be two free events taking place "in the coming months" that will offer another 10 reward tiers each, and in December, Winter Contingency will return with various holiday-themed cosmetics up for grabs. 

Halo Infinite's winter update is live now. The full patch notes are available on the Halo Support website.

The Halo Infinite Winter Update has been a long time coming, and brings with it some of the features the game should've launched with back in 2021. Campaign co-op was supposed to release in August and has had a somewhat troubled development, but the mode is finally arriving with this update.

The highly anticipated Forge is also dropping in beta, and as with previous iterations, it'll let players build their own maps for use in custom game modes. On top of that, there's a variety of new content and in-game tweaks. Here, I'll explain the Halo Infinite Winter Update release time based on your region, so you know when you can load it up for yourself.

Halo Infinite Winter Update release time 

The Halo Infinite Winter Update arrives on November 8 for most regions at the usual weekly reset time. Here's when that is based on your timezone: 

• US EST: 1 pm EST 
• US PST: 10 am PST
• UK: 6 pm GMT
• Europe: 7 pm CEST
• Tokyo: 3 am JST (November 9th)
• Australia: 5 am AEDT (November 9th)
• New Zealand: 7 am NZDT (November 9th)

You can see the full breakdown of every timezone in the image from 343 Industries above. Of course, this time may vary a little if there are any technical issues, and depending on how many players log on for the update, servers might be a bit packed.

What's in the Halo Infinite Winter Update? 

The Winter Update is the most significant dose of content that Halo Infinite has received since the game was launched. Not only does it contain the long-awaited campaign co-op mode, it'll also include the beta version of Forge so you can start designing your own maps. There is also the Covert One Flag multiplayer mode, new maps, and a free battle pass with which you can earn cosmetics. You can see the full roundup of content in the video above. 

Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty has been getting candid about Halo Infinite. As spotted by The Gamer, Booty was asked to give his take on the game's rough launch during an appearance on the Friends Per Second podcast, and compared Halo Infinite's release to "the classic runner's mistake of kind of tripping and stumbling as you come across the finish line".

Halo Infinite has had a bumpy ride since it came out in December 2021. Players have dealt with update droughts, matchmaking glitches, and a long saga surrounding the game's co-op mode that eventually saw 343 Industries scrap split-screen co-op entirely.

That's suboptimal as post-launch roadmaps go, and Booty tried to offer an explanation. The big culprit was apparently the pandemic: Booty said that "trying to figure out how to adapt to remote work and hybrid work" was something of a "worst-case condition for trying to get games done" with a "big, multi-hundred person team".

Booty went on to say that, for a game like Halo Infinite, there needs to be "a plan for content [...] a plan for regular continuing engagement," but the game simply "fell short on that plan".

Still, Booty painted a rosier picture of the game's future. The exec said that Microsoft has "really retrenched" around the game and "made some changes in how the team is set up: we've got some changes in leadership and we've just got to really get refocused around that sustained content plan". 343 saw a few departures of key figures this year, including its lead narrative designer and lead multiplayer designer, which might be the "leadership changes" Booty is referring to.

As for the new "sustained content plan," perhaps that's why the game is finally getting its Forge mode tomorrow, a feature it really ought to have had almost a year ago.

Despite the game's various issues, Booty did say that it hit a peak of around 20 million players—a figure that will include both PC and console—in December, so the game's woes haven't done it too much harm. We gave Infinite 78% and said it came "frustratingly close to greatness". Maybe with a few more updates under its belt it can get a little closer.

Some mods were just meant to be, and Halo 3 as Minecraft feels like one of them. Created by longtime Halo and Souls modder InfernoPlus, the snappily named Halocraft is a multiplayer map pack that works with Halo: The Master Chief Collection and replaces four maps with destructible Minecraft maps.

That's probably the most impressive thing about this. Obviously the Halo side of things works perfectly, but the way it interacts with the Minecraft side is what blows your block off. Weapon fire, melee damage and grenades all damage the scenery to various extents, and the maps are built around this in different ways: one has a load of easily smashable glass panels over a fatal drop, and you can imagine how those matches play out.

Me? I just want to get the hammer and watch the world burn. Or at the very least collapse around my feet.

I saw the mod on youtuber UberNick's channel, where you can watch him play some matches in it, and you can download Halocraft from InfernoPlus' patreon here. It's worth emphasising just how impressive this mod is: Halo MCC is not built to have destructible maps, but here it almost looks like it was. The below video shows the passion that went into this creation, as well as outlining some of the hurdles InfernoPlus faced along the way and how they rigged a way around them.

You can check out InfernoPlus' other mods on their youtube channel, and if you're into Halo it is well worth a look at what this creator is achieving with that game. If you're more interested in the Minecraft side of things, you can check out our list of the best Minecraft mods.

Remember Halo Infinite? It seems like only yesterday everyone was jonesing for the grand return of Microsoft's flagship FPS, and initially at least Halo Infinite seemed to do the job. It felt and looked great, the surprise launch of multiplayer didn't hurt, and then… well, it seems to have somewhat faded into the background.

Infinite has struggled to maintain momentum and, with hindsight, that may be because it's been launched in such a piecemeal fashion. Halo 3 probably represents the pinnacle of this series, and part of why was that it launched as such a complete and comprehensive package. Everything was in there.

With Infinite we're still waiting on campaign co-op and, much more importantly, Forge mode. If anything can give Infinite's competitive and community scene a kick in the pants it's Forge, Halo's bespoke level and mode creation suite.

Forge finally arrives as part of the game's winter update, which is scheduled for November 8, alongside campaign co-op for up to four players. The latter comes with a mission replay option so groups can hop around completed sections as they wish.

Forge apparently boasts "thousands of new objects" alongside various additions and improvements: here's 343's official deep dive into the featureset. Definitely the most interesting element of this is the scripting and how players will be able to incorporate bots (as well as pistols that fire rockets), but the most important thing now is just to get it in peoples' hands.

The winter update also brings a new free battle pass, two maps constructed in Forge by 343, and some new modes including a CTF variant. I like Infinite well enough but it's a struggle to go back to: the initial wave of enthusiasm has long since peaked and the nostalgia's worn off. It feels overly familiar now and not in a good way.

What gave the older Halo games the long tail for me was never grinding the campaign on nightmare or playing endless double team (though I did plenty of that) but the daft side that Forge allows to sing: Halo karts, grifball, the meat-grinder mode where one spartan with a minigun faced an army of swords, and the endless array of good and bad maps to bounce around in. For a game called Halo Infinite, it's beyond time it started delivering those possibilities.

Spartan Points are the currency in Halo: The Master Chief Collection used to unlock cosmetics. You have to actually play the game to earn them, but back in June, 343 Industries announced it was considering making them purchasable. The justification was cloaked in benevolence: it was to be an "optional, additive alternative for players who might find the vast scope of content to be an intimidating amount of playtime and want to get ahead on (or skip) the grind, or maybe want to grab the specific items they want." 

It's true that MCC has a load of cosmetic items, including armour effects, voices, weapon skins and more. But if you consider playing Halo so toilsome that you'd prefer to pay to earn these in-game spoils, here's bad news, I guess: Halo: MCC is definitely not getting purchasable Spartan Points, 343 announced today. That's probably comforting news for existing Halo players who are proud to have earned their in-game garb the hard way. 

Earning Spartan Points will become a bit easier too. It was announced in August that Spartan Points will soon be earned with every new level reached, and that players will retroactively receive these points if they're already at a higher—or max—level. Currently, challenges must be completed to earn the currency.

But that's not happening until November, with today's update just reaffirming those plans. "We are also looking to enact changes to the earn rates of Spartan Points and remove barriers that players have been facing. The 100-point cap is being removed, retroactive points will be granted, and we will be making further adjustments to Challenges to make them more rewarding, along with bringing back Double XP Weekends," 343 Industries writes.

All this follows a substantial content update for Halo: MCC, which released last month. It added a bunch of collectibles, new Forge options, and mod tools for Halo Reach among a lot of other stuff. 

Bonnie Ross, the head of Halo developer 343 Industries, announced her departure from the company she founded via Twitter today. "While I had hoped to stay with Halo until we released the Winter Update," Ross wrote, "I am letting you know I will be leaving 343 and attending to a family medical issue."

Prior to 343, Ross worked on the Microsoft Game Studios (now Xbox Game Studios) side of such projects as Zoo Tycoon, Mass Effect, and Gears of War. Ross reportedly pitched the idea of an internal team to continue Halo's development after Bungie bought its independence from Microsoft, and the company she founded under Microsoft took control of the series following Halo Reach.

Ross' departure doesn't appear to be related to the performance of  Halo Infinite, which saw several high-profile departures throughout its development, and was notably delayed a full year after a divisive initial showing in 2020. 343 managed to release a respectable shooter campaign with a pretty fun free to play multiplayer last fall, but has since had difficulty appeasing its player base while also delaying promised features like the co-op campaign and axing others, like split-screen multiplayer.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer took to Twitter to congratulate Ross on her work with the company and wish her well. The company hasn't announced who, if anyone, will fill Ross' former position as head of 343 Industries. 

Halo developer 343 Industries has posted a new update about the shooter's future, a roundtable discussion between three of its developers over the areas they're focusing on. The good news is that Forge finally has a release date of November 8, and the bad news is that Halo Infinite will no longer be receiving the option to play the campaign in local split-screen co-op.

The latter news may not seem all that unusual, but for anyone who's followed this series from the start Halo always had that additional selling point of a local splitscreen campaign. The Bungie games all had it, and I played through most of those with mates hunched around the TV. It's not exactly a killer feature in 2022, but it is sad that something which was once part of the Halo 'package' is being left behind.

"In order to improve and accelerate ongoing live service development, and to better address player feedback and quality of life updates, we have reallocated studio resources and are no longer working on local campaign split-screen co-op," 343 Industries said in a statement.

Oh well. To be clear, Halo Infinite will still add online campaign co-op. It arrives as part of the Winter Update on November 8 and, as well as Forge and network co-op, will include two new maps showing what Forge is capable of, a free 30-tier battle pass for all players, one new competitive mode called 'Covert One Flag', and in-game events scheduled over the winter months. Oh and a tonne of cosmetics, because that's what we all want developers to spend their time making.

343 Industries is choosing to call the Forge release a beta, though given that Halo Infinite will have been out for a year by the time it arrives that feels like over-caveating. 

The winter update takes Halo Infinite through to March 7 2023, at which point season 3, rather grandly titled 'Echoes Within', will kick off. This promises Arena and Big Team Battle maps, a custom game browser, a "new narrative event", and a whole lot of minor additions like a new weapon and equipment.

Here's the roadmap:

Halo Infinite is a pretty fun game, and it's definitely my favourite entry by 343 Industries. With this one the studio felt like it had finally really cracked the moment-to-moment feel that competitive Halo should have. When it came out I was excited for its prospects.

Unfortunately the pace of updates has been slow, and elements like Forge are badly needed, because the overall experience, that Halo 'package' I mentioned, feels anaemic. There was a time when Halo was the most forward-thinking and comprehensive shooter on the planet, each new entry setting the pace for the competition. Now it feels, sadly, like the Master Chief is struggling to keep pace himself.

As Halo Infinite continues to release in delayed chunks, players have discovered a way to access an unfinished version of Forge mode in the latest co-op campaign test flight. Some players have apparently had access to Forge tools for weeks and one in particular is already making some really impressive stuff.

May I introduce you to: the Silent Hills P.T. demo's iconic hallway, created by Forge-er and cosplayer Death Templar.

I'm immediately impressed by how well Templar has captured the mood of P.T. inside Halo's engine. I think it's how the harsh white lights bake over the blank white drywall that sells it for me. I'm used to thinking of Forge in terms of Halo 3, where all you could really do was move prefab metal and concrete pieces around and spawn vehicles wherever you want. Halo 5 kicked things up a notch with sophisticated logic tools. Now, it's apparently not that hard to delve outside Halo's aesthetic entirely and make a horror house with custom lighting, framed pictures, and sound effects. Forge has certainly grown up.

Death Templar plans to keep working on the P.T. recreation as long as the Forge build is available. "My ultimate goal is to make PT so well in Forge one day, it prompts a cease and desist from Konami," Templar tweeted.

Judging by Death Templar's other creations and further leaks popping up on Twitter, new Forge will let players resize objects to absurd degrees, weld vehicles together, and alter gun attributes until they're basically brand new weapons (as documented by Rebs Gaming).

While it does sound fun to fire up this campaign co-op build I haven't tried yet and sneak my way into Forge, we don't recommend taking the plunge yourself. The process requires the use of third-party tools that 343 Industries might frown on, potentially resulting in a ban. It doesn't look like 343 has wielded the ban hammer against any Forgers just yet, but it's probably not worth the risk.

On the bright side, the official release of Forge mode is supposedly not far off. 343 still plans to add Forge to Infinite sometime during Season 3, which is kicking off in late Summer 2022 (so possibly August). 

Halo Infinite's long-awaited co-op play launched into beta earlier this month, and aside from some technical hiccups befitting a beta, it functions pretty much how you would expect: It lets you play the Halo Infinite campaign alongside other human players. But actually finding other human players won't be as easy as it could, because it inexplicably lacks online matchmaking.

And if you think that's a limitation exclusive only to the beta, I'm afraid you're wrong. Queried by GamesRadar about the weird lack of matchmaking, a representative for Xbox said there's no plans to make it easy to jump into a co-op game with strangers without hustling online or in a Discord channel.

"Online matchmaking will not be available with final co-op," the Xbox rep said. "We encourage you to continue to use the Halo LFG and the new Discord voice call feature on Xbox to find players to party up with as you continue playing the beta."

Xbox consoles did recently get Discord integration, though it's a little unintuitive to set up. But jumping into a Discord channel, or browsing a Halo LFG (looking for group) website, is obviously not as easy as automatically teaming up with strangers. Unless you have friends who really want to play the Halo Infinite campaign eight months after its initial release, diving in now will probably feel like more hassle than it's worth, unless you're a diehard.

Early adopters, and those who have been anticipating the beta, probably won't mind making the effort to join an LFG list or Discord channel to team up with strangers. But if an appetite for some co-op play hits you in, say, a year's time, it's going to be a lot harder to coordinate co-op play with strangers online. 

The Halo Infinite co-op beta runs until August 1, and supports up to four players.

If you have an abundance of time and a talent for Halo 2, you might be in with a chance of winning a five-figure bounty. All you have to do is achieve something that's never been done before in history.

Streamer Charlie 'Cr1tikal' White is offering $20,000 to anyone who can achieve a full 'Legendary All Skulls On' (LASO) playthrough of Halo 2 Anniversary without dying. That means a max difficulty playthrough with (almost) every modifier activated, whose effects range from 'your foes have more health' to 'all enemies are invisible now'. The only modifier you have to keep deactivated is the 'Envy' skull, which replaces your torch with an active camouflage system. Good luck.

There's not a single recorded instance of anyone ever completing such a run without dying. Even completing a LASO run while allowing deaths is an incredible feat, only ever attempted by a tiny minority of the hardest of hardcore players. The closest anyone has come, White admits in his challenge video, was a deathless LASO run by 'Jervalin' that kept the 'Envy' skull turned on—meaning Jervalin had the advantage of being able to turn invisible at any time.

Cr1tikal's optimistic about the challenge, though. "It makes the goddamn thing nearly unbeatable," he admits in his initial challenge video, "but it is just barely possible". Of course, in that first video he set the bounty at $5000, and the lack of anyone coming forth to claim it eventually led him to kick it all the way up to $20k.

Perhaps the only thing stopping it happening was the absence of a $20k reward at the end, but it could be that this feat requires such a rare combination of luck and skill that it might as well be impossible. Cr1tikal himself confesses he can't get past Halo 2's first two rooms following his own rules for the challenge. But if you're a Halo 2 savant, you can stream yourself completing your LASO run and submit it for review right here.

Thanks, PCGamesN.

The Halo Infinite co-op beta test that was expected to kick off today has been pushed back at the last minute. 343 Industries community director Brian Jarrard announced the pause on Twitter, saying that the studio ran into some problems it needs to address before the beta goes live, but still hopes to get the action started later this week.

"Flighting is fluid as the process entails discovering issues in initial rings and resolving them before expanding to a larger audience," Jarrard wrote. "A few issues were discovered in our current flight ring and the team is working to address.

"Apologies to folks who expected the flight today - we're eager to get this into your hands but we also want to ensure it's a positive and worthwhile flight experience. Still targeting this week but it's day by day as work continues. Ty for your patience and understanding."

"Flighting," for those not familiar with the term, is 343's in-house appellation for beta testing, and "rings" are Halo-speak for milestones that must be passed before more testers are allowed in. It's a bit unnecessarily confusing, maybe, but you have to admire the commitment to the bit.

Jarrard also pointed out that the campaign co-op beta start date wasn't actually set in stone, but rather that the "target was the week of July 11"—and in fact it warned of possible delays when it announced the upcoming beta at the start of July. 

Technically, then, it's not a delay, but even so it has to be disappointing for fans who expected to get in on the action today. 343 announced in August 2021 that the Halo Infinite campaign would be released separately from, and after, the initial multiplayer release in December 2021, and while it was expected to arrive just a few months later with the launch of season two, it's now well over seven months and counting. 343 Industries has also faced criticism recently for pausing work on a fix for ongoing desync problems because developers who would normally work on that issue are assigned to other things. 

Seven and a half months after Halo Infinite's launch, campaign co-op is nearly ready for prime time. It just has a few kinks to work out first, and that means a beta test: beginning Monday, July 11, anyone who owns the Halo Infinite campaign or subscribes to Xbox Game Pass will be able to try out online co-op.

The entire campaign will be available in the co-op beta, though there are a few hoops to jump through first. All PC players who want to participate will need to register to be a Halo Insider, and you'll have to download a separate build of the game and start a fresh save file to get online. Progress will not transfer over to or from an existing save. And you'd better sign up pronto: 343 Industries says if you aren't a registered Halo Insider by July 5, you may not be able to access the network co-op test via Steam. 343 also notes July 11 is the targeted start date, but it is possible it could be delayed if any unexpected issues pop up between now and then.

Console and Game Pass players will additionally need to sign up for the Xbox Insider program, which Microsoft has a guide to on its support site.

In an interview on the Halo Waypoint site, 343's designers touched on some of their goals for Infinite's co-op, confirming that progress you make in a co-op session will count towards playing singleplayer—it won't be a separate save (once the mode launches out of beta, that is). In a nice change from previous Halo games, progress will count for all players, too, and not just the host. The ability to replay missions, absent at launch, will also be in testing during this beta.

The devs also answered my biggest question about how Infinite would handle co-op: exactly how free we'll be to explore the open world together. The answer is: somewhat free. You'll have to stick within 1,000 feet of each other, or risk being killed and respawned beside your nearest teammate. 343 claims it's a big enough radius to tackle objectives like Banished bases together, from opposite sides, without issue—but you definitely won't be free to roam the map independently. Keep that in mind if your co-op partner is prone to flights of fancy, and maybe don't let them get into a Banshee. 

The beta is expected to run through July 22, and supports up to four players.

Desync, simply put, is when an online game server and client don't agree on a player's location: The client says a player is here, but the server says they're actually over there. As you can imagine, it's a real problem when you're trying to put bullets or blades into someone, and it's been an issue in Halo Infiinite since before the game released.

"Players have found cases where you can permanently desync the client from the server," 343 Industries wrote in a February blog post, referencing a December 2021 thread on Reddit.

"Usually, the moment we detect a desync, no matter how small, the client should begin correcting to the server’s position. In bad cases this results in rubberbanding, but in normal scenarios these changes should be unnoticeable. The cases where you permanently desync occur when our systems fail to detect and respond to desyncs."

343 said at the time that it had identified multiple situations in which Halo Infinite players could become permanently desynced, and expected to have a fix "deployed in upcoming builds." But the problem has persisted, and it sounds like it's going to be around for awhile yet, as developers' hands are currently full with other things.

"I don't know if twitter/reddit is the best place to go into all the details about why there's been a lack of UCN [networking] improvement, there's a lot of factors, so I'll keep it brief," 343_Taxi wrote in response to a video illustrating desync problems that was posted earlier this week. "The TLDR of it is the devs that would work on these fixes have been allocated to other Infinite work. Their work has had some knock-on benefit to our UCN solution, especially around movers (players, vehicles, etc.) on object devices (elevators, pistons, bridges etc.), but not around the melee and 'around the wall' shots. These devs are coming home to Sandbox soon (hopefully).

"The Community and Competitive Insights teams have done an amazing job at letting us know how frustrating these kinds of situations are. It is high on our priority of fixes."

Calling it high priority while simultaneously prioritizing everything else the studio is currently doing strikes me as a little incongruous, but game development is complex and difficult, and I wouldn't presume to question 343's allocation of resources on a project this big. That said, there are few things in gaming more frustrating than getting ganked because of a preventable connection problem—especially when that problem has been hanging around for more than half a year.

Some Halo fans clearly feel the same way, as expressed in this pointedly-entitled Reddit thread: "If fixing Desync has taken the back-burner on your priorities list 343, it’s time to rewrite that list."

343 Industries has said it's toying around with the idea of adding microtransactions to Halo: The Master Chief collection.

As MCC pivots away from the seasonal model, some changes are set to come in. Along with renaming season points to "Spartan points," a new dev update discussed that it was "internally exploring" the ability to purchase the points with real money. 343 was quick to clarify that it was "happy with the current system," calling it an "optional, additive alternative for players who might find the vast scope of content to be an intimidating amount of playtime and want to get ahead on (or skip) the grind, or maybe want to grab specific items they want.

The developer said it would have more information to share in the future, once again emphasising that the microtransactions would be an additive feature rather than an entirely new thing.

That hasn't made the news go down any better with Halo fans though, with many in the subreddit disagreeing with the decision. Numerous comments point out potential money-free solutions, like allowing max-level players to still earn seasonal points through gaining enough EXP. A lot of comments call the potential change a mistake, with one comment calling 343 "tone deaf." Whether the ruckus will cause 343 to rethink its strategy remains to be seen.

343 Industries head Bonnie Ross has apologized for the release of a Halo Infinite cosmetic intended to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States that included a color scheme with an "offensive and hurtful" name.

The epic nameplate is called Juneteenth, named after a US holiday which commemorates the end of slavery. But a playerplayers quickly noticed that a secondary color palette was available for the nameplate, named "Bonobo." The bonobo is a type of great ape, which has an obviously racist connotation when used in reference to Juneteenth.

343 quickly renamed the palette to "Freedom"—YouTuber Sean W said it was "the fastest fix" he'd ever seen—and Ross issued a brief but unreserved apology on Twitter.

"We were made aware of a palette option for our Juneteenth emblem that contained a term that was offensive and hurtful. The team immediately addressed this issue via an update," she tweeted.

"We are a studio and franchise that is committed to inclusivity where everyone is welcome and supported to be their true self. On behalf of 343, I apologize for making a celebrated moment a hurtful moment."

Ross didn't comment on how the name ended up attached to the cosmetic in the first place, but 343 senior community manager John Junyszek said it was a reference to an "internal toolset." An image of the software was posted by streamer Mint Blitz, while Kotaku said that it's an "asset-editing program" in use at 343; the program was apparently not used for Halo Infinite development but is widely-known and popular among employees at the studio.

The possibility that the name was used as an unthinking placeholder doesn't seem unreasonable, but the explanation didn't hold water with everyone. OpTic Gaming player Brad "aPG" Laws, for instance, pointed out that the name presumably had to pass through multiple layers of approval at the studio, none of which flagged it as offensive.

Some fans in the Halo subreddit expressed similar skepticism, and shared theories about the origin of the name that ranged from an organized conspiracy to simple neglect.

Whatever the reason, Halo Infinite creative head Joseph Staten also apologized for the use of the name, calling it "inexcusable."

I've reached out to Microsoft for more information on how the palette got its name, and will update if I receive a reply.

Halo Infinite is expected to receive its big cooperative play update in August, which will let you roam the open world with a fellow Master Chief. If you're part of the Halo Insider program—or join it ASAP—you may be able to play co-op a whole month earlier, because 343 Industries has announced a test flight for July.

You can learn how to join the Halo Insider program here, though do keep in mind that being part of that program doesn't guarantee you'll be a part of the co-op flight: You'll be "considered" for it. Still, it's free, so you're only having to contend with the drudgery of entering details into a form.

A Halo Infinite roadmap released in April pointed to a late August release for cooperative play, and so far, 343 Industries hasn't indicated any disruption to that timeline. Online co-op will roll out first, while splitscreen co-op will follow later in the year. Another eagerly anticipated addition is Halo's Forge mode, which is still on track to enter open beta in September.

Season 2 of Halo Infinite kicked off in early May, and as is so often the case with live service games, the launch was a little bumpy. It follows a fairly turbulent reception for the competitive side of Halo Infinite since its initial launch last October; after an enthusiastic uptake from starved Halo fans, the first season ended up being a bit of an awkward mess, according to Natalie. 

Still, if you're like me and would prefer to enjoy some PvE action with friends, rather than getting relentlessly slaughtered in PvP, the arrival of co-op can't come soon enough.

Since Halo Infinite's announcement, there have been rumblings of a Halo battle royale. This week, Halo Infinite season 2 brought with it a new story chapter, two new maps, and Last Spartan Standing—a free for all elimination mode that's the closest 343 has come to parachuting 100 spartans onto an island.

Cards on the table. I don't think Halo Infinite needs a battle royale. Despite being the terminal Apex-liker on staff, I don't even like battle royale that much, bouncing right off PUBG and Fortnite. Halo is very much its own kind of shooter, with its own unique rhythms and flow, an arena shooter built from a wonderfully playful sandbox of weapons, vehicles and equipment.

But even if Last Spartan Standing isn't a battle royale in name, it's very clearly an attempt to hit many of the same beats. An elimination mode where you acquire better weapons as the match shrinks, Gun Game style, with a circle that closes on the final few combatants.

It is an attempt to capture the essence of battle royale with the tools Halo already has at its disposal. And honestly? It doesn't work.

Slayer royale

Here's how my experience of Last Spartan Standing has gone. You start on a decently-sized map, wandering about with two pistols looking for targets. If you're lucky you'll see one first, get a kill, and upgrade to a mangler. If you're unlucky, someone will see you first and get the upgrade. Now you're behind on weapons, a life down, with only five left.

The map slowly thins out from 12, to 10, and below, as players stumble into ongoing fights or chip at each other from a distance. Battles rarely last more than a few seconds, and eventually only four players are left standing. It's now that the ring arrives, very slowly, to encroach on the remaining players. The survivors likely have shotguns, and the game very suddenly slows right the hell down as players rat, popping out only to nap nearby powerups.

In one game, I watched the final two players stand practically next to each other, refusing to budge for almost ten minutes.

As an experiment, Last Spartan Standing is interesting. The kinda neat custom game you'd expect to find in a private match. But as a fully-featured mode, I'm not sure it holds up. Fights in Halo are over too quickly for prolonged engagements, getting lost for a minute can leave you behind the weapon curve, and while I appreciate adding power-up drops to direct the battle, it can often feel like players are untouchable if they manage to consistently snag an overshield.

LSS is also missing some of Infinite's wilder weapons, promoting you through a fairly rote lineup of pistols, assault rifles, commandos and shotguns. It's easy to imagine, in place of Overshields or Active Camo, the game dropping a limited-use energy sword, battle rifle, or one of the more creative equipment tools like grappling hooks or repulsors.

King of the hill

I don't think a Halo battle royale is a bad idea on the face of it. When Fortnite hard pivoted from unpopular tower-defence-RPG-quest nightmare to world-consuming battle royale, it did so by realising its building mechanics could fit effortlessly into the PUBG mould. Respawn was extremely careful in how it slowed down Titanfall's pilots for Apex Legends, ditching wallrunning while retaining the fundamental core of what makes movement in those games work.

Halo itself is a game about finding powerups and learning weapon spawns in a sandbox of chaotic, physics-driven toys. It's easy to imagine a world where 100 spartans drop onto a ringworld, scavenging gear and armour to take each other out in oddly-floaty firefights. It just requires full, ground-up commitment in figuring out what parts of Halo could work in a battle royale, and what would need changing.

There are rumblings of a proper, ground-up Halo Royale being developed over at Certain Affinity, of course. And maybe it'll do the concept justice, bringing a Halo twist to a genre we're still unable to move on from. Hopefully, Last Spartan Standing is a proof-of-concept Certain Affinity can learn the right lessons from. I don't really want a Halo battle royale—but if we have to make a Halo battle royale, let's at least do it right.

Launching a live service game can't be easy. It's hard to remember any games-as-service launch where everything went as planned but normally, as the game updates and time goes by, things get more stable. Unfortunately the release of the second season of Halo Infinite hasn't been all that smooth either.

Our Halo expert Nat Clayton previously said the first season was a bit of a mess, and I had hoped the second would pull it out the bag. But even the head of creative for Halo Infinite, Joseph Staten, has said that the release hasn't gone to plan. 

In a tweet spotted by Eurogamer, he said: "Hey Spartans, this week has been bumpy. That definitely wasn't our goal. We are indeed taking your feedback to heart, especially regarding map jumps and speedrunning. We're reviewing options and will have more news to come."

Players have been upset with the removal of tech like map jumps with the second season. Unintentional geometry within maps that make technical movements possible and even important at high level gameplay, making all the difference to competitive advantages.

Additionally speedrun tactics have been patched out, like using the Pelicans to fly across maps rather than running across terrain. Pelicans are simply not pilotable anymore, which has confused and upset fans after this was a highlight for many. Additionally, speedrunners often rely on bugs in-game to achieve the fastest times possible, some of which have been patched out with Season 2.

The comments under the dev tweet express quite a lot of frustration with the game's current condition. Some complain that fans' wishes aren't being heard, others even posting some questionably broken gameplay. 

But it's only week one of Season 2. With the acknowledgement that things haven't gone quite to plan, fingers crossed that maybe we'll get some quick and hard changes to the game to compensate. And if that doesn't go to plan too, well, at least 343 Industries has added our favourite Microsoft helper Clippy into the game. One day maybe they'll even transform him into an AI, wouldn't that be swell? 

Halo Infinite's second season has begun, bringing a clutch of new maps, modes and tweaks to the game—including, oddly enough, making the Warthog 170 pounds heavier. Some of the more notable changes that will change-up the game's feel are in melee, and there's one change buried in the patch notes that is weird in its own way: seven months on from launch, Infinite is changing one of the principles of up-close combat.

This is easy to miss because 343 doesn't really get into it in the patch notes, merely noting that "'Traded' melee kills will occur more often now than in Season 1." That is, when both players melee at once, more often now both will die rather than just one.

The reason is that Halo Infinite had a deliberate kink in the melee system relating to trades. Essentially, if two players melee-d at the same time and would usually kill each other, the one with the higher HP wins the encounter. That seems on the face of it... pretty unfair?

The counter-argument some players would make is that this is a system that is rewarding players who get a few good shots in before the beatdowns start. You can kind of see where that's coming from but, for me, if my melee attack should be killing a dude then it should kill a dude. It's not like any weapon outside of the dedicated melee tools can one-shot players anyway, so just running around thwacking people will never be an especially effective Halo tactic.

Especially because this change comes alongside a 10% reduction in melee damage across the board, though there are buffs too: the 'snapping' to enemy players during lunges has been improved, and 343 reckons it's improved collision post-meleeing. The reduction in damage has also put 343 in the slightly awkward situation of having to buff the BR's melee damage, but in Ranked multiplayer only, "to preserve the Battle Rifle's two-burst beatdown." Having weapons do different damage in different modes is odd to say the least.

The full patch notes for Halo Infinite's second season can be read here. If you're obsessed with your rank, as I was in the tender days of Halo 2, there's also a deep-dive into the matchmaking system to have a look at.

Halo Infinite's Warthog is a lightweight. That might sound like a diss, but I say it with love—of all seven iterations of Halo's iconic four-wheeled gun truck, I actually like Infinite's best. It's fast, looks cool as heck, turns corners on a dime, and doesn't flip over every time I bound over a medium-sized rock. But I have to admit that it doesn't really feel like a classic Warthog. Infinite's hog is so quick and light that it glides across dirt. It feels more like a zippy supercar than Bungie's original big-boned humvee, and 343 is trying to do something about that in Halo Infinite's Season 2 update.

That's right, Halo Infinite has Warthog patch notes, and they're surprisingly extensive.

"The Warthog's tire positions and suspension have been adjusted to better improve its handling on uneven terrain," read the official patch notes. Sounds simple enough, but click on the "Developer Notes" dropdown below that and you get into the nitty gritty truck tweaks. 343 said the Warthog was "taking the bumps in the road rougher than it should," causing it to "twist or roll a frustrating amount."

It's true. The Warthog's impressively springy suspension lets it handle rocky terrain pretty well at slower speeds, but pick up your pace and the back tires will start to sway as if they're floating. To help address this, 343 has put some meat on the Warthog's bones—170 pounds worth, to be exact.

• Increase mass from 3130 lbs to 3300 lbs

It's hard to tell exactly what an extra 170 digital pounds is supposed to feel like on a Warthog, so I fired up the game to see if I can tell the difference. I'd say the Season 2 Warthog still feels largely the same. It can still zip around the map and take corners without a ton of resistance, but I do detect some extra junk in the trunk. There's definitely more weight getting pushed around when I suddenly brake (possibly thanks to the "increased inertia tensor scale" mentioned in the patch notes) and the tires are glued a bit harder to the ground now. Still a far cry from the elephant-like maneuverability of Halos 1 through 3, but I like the change.

As for the other minute tweaks, like adjustments to traction at certain angles or how the rear tires have been pushed back from "0.56wu to 0.66wu (world units)", the difference was pretty much invisible. 

My main takeaway here is that 343 takes its vehicle handling pretty seriously. I wouldn't have guessed Warthog patch notes would include centimeter-level tire tweaks or exact measurement of digital poundage. This could allude to the density of tools players will have access to when Forge finally comes to the game… eventually. Will I be able to make a custom Warthog race map where every truck weighs 14 pounds?

For now, Halo Infinite Season 2: Lone Wolves has a few new maps and modes to play with, another battle pass filled with shoulder pads, melee updates, and a chunkier hog.

Halo Infinite Season 2 is live. Our resident Halo expert Nat Clayton thought the first season of the game was an "awkward mess" so we're hoping the second does a better job at appealing to its fans. And a great way to please your audience is by bringing back everyone's favourite Microsoft mascot Clippy.

Clippit, more commonly known by the nickname Clippy (yeah, that's a nickname, who would've thought it) was Microsoft's most charismatic help button. Upon researching this article, I was surprised to discover that Clippy was widely disliked upon release. People thought the feature was intrusive and annoying. But as a kid I was only seeing Clippy as a little animated dude on my parents' screens, and personally love the guy.

Clippy was killed-off eventually, along with his posse of other animated helpers, but his influence remained strong. Many people remember his smug little smile with a helping of positive nostalgia. So Microsoft and Xbox have added him into a gun buddy and nameplate in Halo Infinite Season 2. 

A tweet from James Shields shows off both, and I have to say the Legendary buddy especially is pretty great. Though perhaps a potential competitive distraction, I think it would be neat if he animated as he used to when you got a kill. Neat, but obviously a little over the top. As it is, he still looks pretty good hanging from the Bulldog, with that familiar eyebrow raise.

Turns out, fans have kind of wanted Clippy in the game for a while now. Halo players on Reddit had previously created a concept and then fan art of a Clippy based AI - Clip-E. With a couple thousand upvotes on Reddit it's not impossible that this help inspired the return of the assistant in Infinite.