Halo Combat Evolved, the start of the legendary FPS franchise, may have already been remastered (albeit in 2011), but now it's time for a full-blown remake. Enter, Halo: Campaign Evolved. It's the original story you know and love but with fancy graphics, "refined controls", and three bonus prologue missions—it's not just a retread.

Xbox hasn't presented a clear plan for Halo beyond this remake (though we know a brand-new game is coming), so it'll have to do for now. I've compiled everything you need to know about this remake, so you'll be ready to take the fight to the Covenant once again.

When is the Halo: Campaign Evolved release date?

The Halo: Campaign Evolved release date is Tuesday, July 28, 2026, which was confirmed during a new trailer for the game at the latest Xbox Games Showcase. However, you can also pre-order the Premium or Collector’s Edition to get five days of early access beginning Thursday, July 23, 2026.

It will, of course, release on PC and Xbox Series X|S consoles, but it'll also be available on PS5. This makes it the first Halo game to ever be released on PlayStation—weird times.

What's changed in Halo: Campaign Evolved?

Halo: Campaign Evolved is a full remake of the original game, but what does that mean exactly? Here's everything that we know of so far that makes it different from the original and its 2011 anniversary remaster:

Halo: Campaign Evolved trailers

The Halo 1 remaster was first revealed with a trailer and gameplay demo of perhaps the most iconic mission in the game, The Silent Cartographer, back in October 2025. Apart from reticence towards it being in Unreal Engine 5 and an oddly specific dislike of the assault rifle having 32 bullets, I'd say it went down pretty well. I mean, it's Halo: Combat Evolved again.

Seven months later, at the Xbox Games Showcase 2026, we were treated to a cinematic story trailer, which will feel very familiar to fans of the series. The Master Chief crash-lands on the ringworld and fights off Covenant aliens with the help of his AI companion Cortana.

The Operation Meteorite trailer we got is much more interesting, showcasing brand-new content arriving in the remake. As I mentioned earlier, it's a short prologue to the events of the main story, where we see Master Chief and Sgt. Johnson fight through some lush environments and Covenant ships. It's new, but it also looks very classic, and hopefully seamlessly slots into place.

I was pleasantly surprised by the Xbox Showcase overall this year. Seeing Marcus in normal clothes was rather funny, but Gears of War E-Day looks as gnarly as ever. Clockwork Revolution is a very promising time-bending steampunk RPG, and a hit of Bioshock nostalgia. I'm already sold on Vivarium, the most charming Ghibli-esque life sim I've ever seen.

Of all the games that Xbox showed off, I'm sad that I was most disappointed by Halo. We got a fresh look at the creatively named Campaign Evolved during the showcase, and it looks fun—I like Combat Evolved. More specifically, we got a look at Operation Meteorite, three brand-new missions featuring the Master Chief and Sergeant Johnson, set a year before the main story. I'm looking forward to playing through Operation Meteorite, and I'm glad there's something actually new coming with the remake.

However, Xbox's mascot has been treading water essentially since Microsoft set up 343 Industries to shepherd it into the future after Bungie's departure. That was almost 15 years ago, by the way. Halo 4 was alright. Halo 5's campaign was terrible, but I enjoyed the (controversial) multiplayer quite a bit.

And the promised next evolution, Halo Infinite, was actually very finite it turns out, after the team announced at the end of 2025 that it would shift focus from live-service support to creating new games. That's for the better though, honestly.

In 2024, Xbox even rebranded 343 to Halo Studios, which I thought would finally put the series on track and usher in a second golden age for everyone's favourite green, gun-toting spaceman. But so far, all we've got is yet another rehash of Halo Combat Evolved.

If there's anything the Xbox Showcase was missing—apart from the awkward elephant in the room that is The Elder Scrolls 6—it was a clear plan for Halo. I'm sure Halo 7 is coming at some point, but there are a lot of questions and, personally, a lot of doubt. Perhaps it's time we moved on from the Chief, dare I say it, and told some new stories that didn't feel so tethered to a past that it can't live up to.

While Xbox is in 'the future is going backwards' era—with all-caps XBOX rebranding, a classic (albeit beautiful) transparent special edition console, and console exclusives (sometimes)—it's such a shame that Halo's stuck in the mud.

Doom level designer Sandy Petersen has taken to X (formerly Twitter) to explain the closure of Ensemble Studios, where he worked in the 2000s. According to Petersen, Ensemble and its in-development Halo MMO were scuttled by Xbox boss Don Mattrick to protect a short-term, profit-based bonus he was elligible to receive.

"In 2008, Ensemble Studios started planning a gigantic MMO set in the Halo universe," said Petersen. "We code-named it Titan. It was to take place tens of thousands of years ago, before the Halos were set off & destroyed all sentient life in the Galaxy."

Petersen was in charge of sketching out the setting and lore of this primeval Halo galaxy, and he said that Titan was at an advance stage in development when it was canceled, which is corroborated by prior accounts of the game's development⁠—here's an album of screenshots and in-game models allegedly sourced from the project.

Petersen claims that the "lowest estimate we & Microsoft had for the game's total income was $1.1 billion," which is a staggering sum for any game to pull in. For context, Deadline reported in 2021 that the entire Halo franchise had reached 81 million copies sold at the time. Back of the napkin math at $60 a copy puts the series' revenue from game sales at around $5 billion after 20 years of existence.

While possibly a typo, Petersen's note that Titan started development in 2008 doesn't line up with prior accounts of the game's development which have the project starting in 2004 and getting canceled in mid-2007, around Don Mattrick's July, 2007 ascension as head of Xbox.

Petersen said that Titan's Alliance and Horde would have been the human-like Forerunners and the Covenant. Some of the leaked art and screenshots of Titan look contemporaneous with the mainline series, while other designs have a more science fantasy look in line with what Petersen describes.

It's possible that Titan might have involved time travel of some kind, or else a consistency with the setting's supposed far future aesthetics like we saw in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. In a 2008 ShackNews interview, former Ensemble technology director Dave Pottinger said that "the Covenant weren't quite the Covenant yet" in Titan, which could gel with Petersen's characterization of the game's story⁠—a distant past Covenant in all but name opposing the more or less human Forerunners.

"It was all brought to naught when Don Mattrick realized that his stock bonus was based on the income MS had from games in three years," said Petersen. "You see, we estimated [three and a half] years to finish Titan if we did it right. And that’s beyond Mattrick’s drop dead date. So by firing ALL of Ensemble, he didn’t have to pay for our expensive studio for three years and he didn’t care about Titan.

"All he lost was a game studio who never sold less than three million copies of everything we made. I don’t believe he did justice to Microsoft stockholders but hey⁠—Don started as an EA hatchet man so what would you expect?"

A harsh assessment of the former Xbox honcho, and this isn't the first time Petersen has recounted this story. Last year, Petersen discussed the downfall of Ensemble and Mattrick's role in it on the Bored With Nelly show on YouTube. Petersen doesn't elaborate if he's seen concrete evidence indicating that this was Mattrick's motivation, or if this is his assessment based on Ensemble's closure and Mattrick's contract.

Ensemble's shutdown certainly made little sense for Xbox's long-term health and profitability: Petersen and Pottinger both pointed out that the studio's games were consistently successful from a sales perspective.

"They have a plan. We're not in it the way that we used to be," Pottinger said back in 2008. "They're making the choice that they need to make to be profitable, and make the right choice for the shareholders and things like that. It's hard to look at the stuff Ensemble's done and equate those two things, and justify it in that sense."

Mattrick's time leading Xbox is not recalled fondly by fans. Under his leadership, Xbox invested in Kinect, the dashboard redesign (complete with knockoff Miis), and other initiatives clearly attempting to replicate the Nintendo Wii's shocking success, seemingly to the detriment of Xbox's established audience.

This culminated in the launch of the Xbox One, and its initial marketing as an always-online media center, which kicked off a series of console generations where Sony has maintained a commanding lead over its once-threatening competitor in the console market.

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?"

We've known for ages now that, for Microsoft, the age of platform exclusive games is over. Xbox president Sarah Bond called exclusives "antiquated" just this week. But to me, it didn't really feel over until I saw a PS5 logo in the trailer for Halo: Campaign Evolved, a remake of the most legendary Xbox game of all time (and a PC favorite, of course).

I see the logo. I accept it's there, and I'm even excited about it. But it's weird and melancholy for reasons separate from the Halo campaign remake itself, which looks fine for an Unreal 5 tech demo. By picking up a Dualshock, Master Chief is resigning his role as an honest-to-god platform mascot, and one of the longest serving outside the Nintendo ensemble. He may be the last new one we'll ever see.

"It's really a new era—Halo is on PlayStation going forward," Halo Studios community director Brian Jarrard said on a livestream today. This isn't just a one-off for the series: it's the final bit of proof that even the most precious jewels in Microsoft's crown will be available anywhere and everywhere in the future.

That just feels weird, man. So does seeing Jarrard's handle "ske7ch" appear on the PlayStation Blog after more than 20 years as the series' community guy, first at Bungie and then at Microsoft.

Though he shared joint custody with PC gaming in moments, Master Chief was Xbox. His first appearance beckoned not only an age of stick-friendly console shooters, but the arrival of a strange box by the folks who make Windows. He was the perfect creation of 2001: a tall, unshakable operator at a time when his contemporaries were a cartoon plumber and wrench-wielding rodent. His olive green armor practically was the console's logo in superhuman form. Now he's just the guy from Halo.

That's a little sad, right?

Mascots were fun. I realize rallying behind brands like they're something more than capital machines is backwards, and "console war" rhetoric has contributed to the worst kind of fandom in our hobby, but there existed a way to be normal about it all. Master Chief was the north star for an entire era of gaming—his appearance told you what Xbox was about, and Halo's success informed what kind of games Xbox would create an identity around.

There are distinct pre- and post-Halo eras for first-person shooters on consoles. Halo 2's online matchmaking features were literal years ahead of what other online games on consoles offered at the time; it almost singlehandedly made Xbox Live a thing. And Halo 3's supplementary features, mapmaking tool Forge and clip editor Theater, set such a high bar that even its sequels would end up looking a bit anemic by comparison.

As a kid who was a solid decade away from a gaming PC when Halo: Combat Evolved came out, that Xbox identity was useful. It validated my preference for shooters over RPGs and helped me develop actual tastes—what a controller should feel like, if graphics matter, whether or not Master Chief should show his face at the end of Halo 3.

By tearing down the mascot, the character becomes less special. When Master Chief was tantamount to Xbox, you could count on Halo's importance. Now it's just another name in Microsoft's sea of properties.

The upside is an opportunity for Halo, now standing on its own feet, to really be back. I hope millions of kids younger than Halo itself, and who definitely skipped Xbox this generation, will see what makes it the best.

During Friday's Halo World Championship esports tournament on Friday, Halo Studios was meant to unveil its next project. But the Xbox store got to it first: Halo Campaign Evolved has appeared on the site, revealing that Microsoft is remaking the iconic FPS 14 years after the last time it remade it.

"Halo: Campaign Evolved is a faithful yet modernized remake of Halo: Combat Evolved’s campaign. Experience the original story rebuilt with high-definition visuals, updated cinematics, and refined controls, plus three brand-new prequel missions featuring the Master Chief and Sgt. Johnson," the store page says.

After the store page popped up, Halo Studios quickly pushed the trailer live on YouTube and its social media channels. There's no release date currently, but the trailer does confirm the remake will be coming to Steam... and PlayStation 5.

Here are the highlights from the store description:

• A "broader arsenal of weapons, vehicles, enemies, and gameplay-modifying 'Skulls'"
• Console-only 2-player splitscreen co-op, but 4-player online co-op with cross-progression
• "The original missions, newly rebuilt with enhanced level design, updated cinematics, and improved wayfinding"
• "New voice performances recorded with the primary cast"
• Sprint added
• Energy sword, needle rifle, and battle rifle added alongside six other series weapons
• "Join the Master Chief and Sgt. Johnson in a brand-new arc set before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, featuring new environments, gameplay, characters, and enemies"

In addition to the trailer above, Halo Studios has also put out a "Roundtable Reveal," with several developers on the team commenting on why they're remaking the game again.

"We did this work on Halo Anniversary, and I felt like there were certain things left unsaid, certain things we were unable to achieve at that time," says director Greg Hermann. (Anniversary's graphical remaster was not well-received by fans back in 2011).

The new remake is being done in Unreal Engine 5, with the cinematics also being fully redone with motion capture. The biggest addition, though, will be those three new "prequel" missions, though the Halo Studios team didn't say much about them.

Given 2026 is Halo: Combat Evolved's 25th anniversary, we'll presumably see the game out sometime next year.

Whenever I tell friends that I'm still playing Halo Infinite in 2025, the reactions are usually somewhere between confusion and open laughter. No, it's not dead, and yes, 343 (now Halo Studios) still adds stuff to it—battle passes, the occasional gun, and frequent map packs created by the Forge community.

This week kicked off a Halo 3 nostalgia event, marked by the return of 2007 armor sets and remakes of 11 Halo 3 maps bundled into a special playlist. But the mode doesn't only turn back the clock on maps, it also recreates the feel of Halo 3—that means no sprint, no clamber, player collision turned on, and jump height increased.

I've been playing Halo Infinite with Halo 3 rules nonstop for days, so I'm sure it's not just the nostalgia talking when I say it's the most fun I've had with Halo since Reach. This slower, more methodical version of Halo is better—it always was, really—and I believe it should serve as the blueprint for Halo's future.

Subtracting sprinting and mantling restores Halo's distinct rhythm. With everyone running at the same jogging pace, sticking with teammates takes less effort, vehicles are more valuable, and death has more meaning when you can't just sprint back into the fight within 10 seconds.

The ramped-down pace has me more focused and aware of my surroundings, so much so that I'm questioning if I ever liked sprinting in the first place, or if it just felt like a feature that's supposed to be there because it's an FPS. Just like in Call of Duty, running at full speed with my gun down gets me killed a lot more often than it gets me kills—as such, taking sprint off the table entirely is like Halo slapping the pack of cigarettes out of my hand. What's the rush?

Above: When maps are built with Halo speed in mind, there's never a lack of action.

No sprint kicks a nasty habit that never served Halo's floaty movement in the first place, but no clamber? That's a real eye-opener. The ability to automatically catch any ledge, another feature that just sorta showed up in Halo 4 because every other shooter had it, shaved off a lot more skill expression in Halo than I realized.

With clambering, jumping from A to B is essentially automatic. Without it, even rudimentary jumps become legit skill checks. You have to learn the ins and outs of Halo's gravity (turned down in the Halo 3 playlist to mimic the original game) until you can sense the arc of a jump before you take it. Sticky ledge grabs can't bail you out of an ill-considered leap. This week, I crouch-jumped in Halo for the first time in 15 years, and it was lovely.

It's remarkable how naturally Halo's weapon sandbox slots into this throwback movement. The version of the playlist with SMG starts instead of battle rifles highlights the benefits of slowing the game back down: Halo is at its best when you spawn with a gun that you'd rather swap for something better. Base Infinite makes closing the distance so easy that you can always make a starter gun work for you, but with no sprint, the MA5K Avenger (Infinite's version of the SMG) is appropriately situational.

Dang, it's almost like Bungie knew what it was doing in 2001, 2004, and 2007.

Addition by subtraction. Maybe it was a mistake for Halo to blindly adhere to 2010s FPS movement conventions established by the rise of Call of Duty and Titanfall. I embraced the change at the time, but in our modern era of live service shooters cannibalizing each other for attention, I think Halo has more to gain by being different. In this case, the old really does feel new again.

If you've ever wondered how Saber Interactive ended up handling the remaster of one of the biggest shooters of all time, well, Saber's CEO Matthew Karch recently regaled journalist Stephen Totilo with the tale of landing the contract for Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, and includes some of the most absurd business shenanigans I've read about for a long time.

Speaking to Totilo for his Game File newsletter (via VGC), Karch explained that, before Halo, Saber eked out a hand-to-mouth existence making games like Will Rock and Timeshift. Then chance intervened and Saber was invited to pitch for the Halo remaster. Karch opted for an absolutely bananas gambit, and essentially told Microsoft that Saber would do the remaster for free.

"I said I'd do it for free because it's Halo," Karch told Totilo. "It’s the biggest franchise in the world at the time. I said: ‘It’s like putting a Harvard diploma on your wall. Everyone in the world is going to want to work with me after they see that I've worked on this last Halo game, and it is going to open up doors. So I’ll suck it up and I’ll do it at a loss.'”

To this Microsoft basically said 'No, you have to pitch a number', because while Karch's offer might sound like a deal too good to miss, you don't really want an unpaid studio handling one of the most hotly coveted remasters of the time. So Karch sent a new pitch raising the number from, well, not a number, to $4 million. Now, I'm not a mathematical genius, but that seems like quite a lot more than zero. Yet Karch reckoned nobody could do it cheaper, because Saber at the time was based in St Petersburg.

In any case, he was right, Saber got the job and released Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary for the Xbox 360 in 2011. Yet it seems that while Karch was happy to do the initial work for free, there was an agreement in place that Saber would receive some royalties following Halo Anniversary's launch. Karch says that Microsoft added "certain clauses" to his contract that "reduced his royalty to zero." Despite this, Saber agreed to do the (much better) Halo 2 remaster, and eventually was asked to port Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary to Xbox One as part of the Master Chief Collection.

This is where things all get a little Mad Men. Apparently, Microsoft neglected to send a contract for the port work until right before the release of The Master Chief Collection. Seeing an opportunity, Karch refused to sign the contract, demanding that Microsoft reverse their position regarding Halo: Anniversary royalties. Microsoft agreed to this, and Saber began to receive royalties for its previous work, which Karch claims amounted to tens of millions of dollars. "We've watched other people make money on our work," Karch allegedly told his partner Andrey Iones. "Now we're going to make money on our own."

In short, Karch made a wild lowball bid for Halo: Anniversary, got bilked by Microsoft out of royalties, and then by pure chance found himself in a position where he could stonewall Microsoft until he got what he wanted. And that, my friends, concludes today's business masterclass.

Mind you, this is hardly the only time Saber has taken a ride on the old financial rollercoaster. The company was acquired by Embracer Group in 2020, and was then sold in 2024 after Embracer fudged a deal that led to massive layoffs and numerous cancelled games. But Saber has thrived outside of Embracer's umbrella, having recently launched Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 to considerable success.

Half-Life 2, Halo 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and Knight Rider: The Game. All iconic titles in their own right and all using Havok's iconic physics or pathfinding engine components. If you haven't seen the legendary Havok saw logo in some time, a recent physics engine test video could signal a comeback.

Other than a presentation at the Game Developers Conference and another at Develop: Brighton last year, this is the first promotional video posted to the Havok YouTube channel in 10 years. The last was titled "Havok Powered Titles at GDC 2014" and shows off gameplay from Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, Battlefield 4, and Halo 4 among others.

The trailer itself is rather impressive. Starting with a blaring siren and presumed crisis, a figure stands alone in a dig site of some kind, before perfectly destructible rocks start to really test that physics engine. Stone bridges collapse, debris falls, and an electronic figure runs through the remains. Standard 'show off the engine' stuff.

However, Havok isn't finished showing off its fancy engine work here. The trailer continues, showing skulls clattering on Indiana Jones-style spike traps (sorry I can't stop thinking about the new game), and fire erupting through the ancient halls.

Havok offers three central products to videogame studios: Havok Physics, which deals with real-time particles, collision detection, and more; Havok Cloth, which adds physic-based movement to character clothing; and Havok Navigation, which hands NPC intelligence and pathfinding. Havok Physics is what is being showcased here and the trailer does a good job of doing so.

Despite me name-dropping older games above, Havok has worked with plenty of newer titles, like Helldivers 2, Sonic X Shadow Generations, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

A video like this, due to the fact that Havok doesn't publish or create its own games, is more likely to be used in pitching to developers, rather than gathering any interest from the general public. This could explain why the YouTube channel has remained largely inactive for some time. The new video coincides with the launch of Havok 2024.2, which upgrades all three of Havok's products.

However, it's still nice to see what such an iconic software studio is up to and the dynamic destruction and lighting look great. Truly destructible worlds are a rarity, and as the tech surrounding games only gets more advanced, we could hopefully see the full implementation of this tech in future games.

Excuse me while I go locate my old copy of The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. The nostalgia has got the better of me.

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.

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.

A just-announced Halo: The Master Chief Collection mod project is working on a full singleplayer and cooperative campaign in the style of Halo: CE and Halo 2, and has released a trailer, statement, and screenshots that are pretty promising.

The trailer does some flyover shots of what might be the destroyed colony world of Reach before transitioning to the familiar environment of the Halo ring, then showing off some unique takes on the older covenant alien designs.

The RedShift team, a seven person group called Blimp Brigade, described their project like this on ModDB:

"RedShift is a large open-ended Halo campaign that can be played either solo or cooperatively with up to 4 players. This is a brand-new campaign. All of our levels are being made from the ground up, with a completely unique story and new set of characters. While we are drawing our inspiration from Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, we are particularly looking far beyond the world of Halo to make sure we have an experience that is completely unique," they said.

Rich, the project lead, was previously known in the Halo modding community for working on a mod called Halo: Composition, which was in on-and-off development from 2012 to 2019. Rich says that "all of the good ideas from Halo: Composition have been integrated into RedShift."

"For example, the first level in Composition was set to be an autumn level, just like Redshift and most of the level/play spaces were ideas I had already worked out on paper and was easily able to make those designs compatible for RedShift," said Rich.
"This means that a large chunk of the play spaces in RedShift did not have to be thought up from scratch, which was a huge time saver."

You can find Halo: RedShift on moddb.

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.

In 1895, our forefathers watched a train arrive at La Ciotat station. In 1969, families gathered to watch mankind take its first tentative steps beyond the surface of our planet. In 2022, Master Chief had sex.

It was the television event of the century, but it turns out not everyone was on board. In a recent chat with SFX magazine (via GamesRadar), Master Chief actor Pablo Schreiber revealed that he was adamantly against John-117's hook-up with Covenant spy Makee. I mean really adamant. He's not mincing words here, telling SFX that making John and Makee an item in the show's first season was "a huge mistake."

Schreiber makes it sound like he really dug his heels in, too, but to no avail. "I argued against it and fought against it," he said, "But I am who I am. I don't write the scripts. I only give my opinion." Alas, "It wasn't listened to."

Schreiber reflects a lot of fan sentiment on the thorny issue of Big John's love life. When the episode in question aired back in 2022, fan communities weren't thrilled by the narrative decision, feeling it was a misunderstanding of the character from the games. If you Google "Master Chief sex Reddit," like I just did while at work, you can still find traces of the fallout.

"That is non canon and we do not need to talk about it," reads the top-rated comment on a Reddit thread titled "We exist in a world where we witnessed Master Chief lose his virginity."

I poke fun because ultimately the notion of a big green steel man making love is very funny, but some of the fan criticisms have a point. All the stuff about Master Chief's apparently canonical lack of interest in sex—an effect of his Spartan training—aside, plenty of people pointed out that Makee was essentially a prisoner of war in the context of the show at the time, an issue the show never really remarked upon.

"Like who wrote it? Then who approved it? Then who greenlit it to film? Needed too many people to OK that for no good reason," asked an exasperated Halo fan named Matrix0523 on Reddit last year.

Perhaps the combined outcry of both fans and Schreiber himself will see Paramount change course with the Halo TV show's narrative when it comes back for season 2 on February 8. Or perhaps not. Love always finds a way.

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?

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.

When Intel returned to the discrete graphics card market last year, it promised that the Arc GPU drivers would improve over time. And true to its word, that's exactly what's happened, with regular updates appearing to massively improve frame rates in older games. But I don't think anything will top the one of the claims in the latest set of beta drivers.

Released yesterday, the new version of Alchemist drivers is said to provide up to 54% more performance in Returnal, at 1080p with 'epic' ray tracing enabled. That's a healthy boost and it's not the only game that's been given a wave of the coding magic wand. Guild Wars 2 players might see 53% more fps at 1080p, with Ultra settings, and if you're a fan of Yakuza Zero, then an extra 154% performance (again, at 1080p ultra graphics) has to be welcome.

But the biggest speed jump goes to Halo: The Master Chief Collection. As with all the game performance improvements listed in the driver notes, it's for 1080p at maximum quality settings. Intel's suggests that you could see up to 750% more frames per second. No, that's not a typo, at least not on my behalf.

Just read that figure again: 750% uplift on average. The first thing that came to my mind was just how bloody awful was the performance of earlier drivers to get this kind of improvement. Unfortunately, we only have one Arc card in the office, and getting into a suitable test machine to allow for a thorough retest isn't something we can do overnight (many of us work remotely), so I couldn't check things out myself.

However, a quick browse through YouTube showed me everything I needed to know, especially the testing done by Abe's Mission Control. They ran Halo at 1440p with the Enhanced graphics settings, so not exactly the same as what Intel has in its notes. Even so, the frame rate was utterly abysmal.

Not only did the game run at 15 fps on average but the GPU utilisation hovered around 13%. Before you think that the testing was CPU limited, it definitely wasn't, because on Performance graphics settings, the average frame rate jumped to 50 fps and the GPU utilisation was around 40%.

If you want a highly technical breakdown of exactly why Intel's Arc GPUs have such wildly varying performance, then may I suggest you head over to Chips and Cheese. Their consensus is that Alchemist is great when there's a high demand on the chip's cache and compute ability, but struggles in cases where it's not.

And that's precisely what's going on in older DirectX 11 games, as well as modern games that don't go overboard with the rendering techniques. Intel's driver team will be able to mitigate some of these issues, as we've seen across all of the software updates since Arc launched, but ultimately things are only going to get better with a new architecture.

For Arc graphics cards, that will be Battlemage, and it's generally expected to appear sometime in 2024. It feels a little odd rooting for Intel as the underdog in the GPU market but I'm looking forward to seeing what improvements will come to light. In the meantime, if you have an Arc GPU and want to check out these performance uplifts for yourself, you can grab the new beta drivers from here.

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."

I get bombarded with emails from companies with apparent survey results meant to "reveal" something interesting to me about gaming. Usually, they go straight in the bin as with all the other crypto and gambling shills that worm their way into my inbox. But today I had to bring you the idiocy that presented itself to me with the subject line "Master Chief from Halo ranks tenth for most stylish video game character."

My initial thought was, of course, HOW? This guy has one look. Sure you can customise your Spartan to be as colourful or bland as you like in Halo multiplayer, but that's not Master Chief himself. I had to understand exactly how these characters were being named, honestly, and who would be closer to the top if Master Chief of all people was number ten.

I was not disappointed.

"Online card game site SolitaireBliss analyzed the number of Google searches of 1,000 video game characters alongside terms such as ‘outfit,’ ‘clothing,’ and ‘style’ to determine the most fashionable." That's how the list came to be, in case you were wondering. Which doesn't sound like the most scientific method, although SEO is sapping the web of its last semblance of writing flair, so it doesn't surprise me that this was their method.

In the grand scheme of things, though, "1,000 video game characters" hardly touches the surface. Imagine how many game characters have ever existed since the dawn of games. And who exactly got to pick the 1,000 to analyse in the first place? I have a feeling they didn't even consider Pinky, Inky, Blinky, and Clyde's fantastically colour-coordinated outfits.

Let's get the winner out of the way before your heads explode, then I'll go on to complaining about the rest of the uncultured swines on this list.

Mortal Kombat's Kitana sits at number one, and came up with "8,191 monthly searches relating to her dress sense"... or her lack of clothing, more likely. The epitome of girlboss armour, Kitana doesn't need actual padding or protection to kick ass. Her cosplay looks like some of the most wholly uncomfortable gear I have ever seen in my life. And that choice of royal blue? I think not.

Popping quickly down the rest of the list, I notice Kitana isn't the only Mortal Kombat stylista here. She's joined by none other than Scorpion. Because what says style better than banana yellow vests and a bane mask to cover all your scars? Scorpion is sixth, by the way, so at least he did better than Chief-one-outfit in tenth.

The Killer Bee, Cammy from Street Fighter also makes an appearance, though those endless camo legs and/or blue yoga pants didn't make it quite as high up the list as the notoriously trendy Steve from Minecraft in *checks notes*... third?

Even Misty from Pokémon made it higher than the rough and ready, red beret-wearing amnesiac super soldier. How she managed that with a yellow tank top, hotpants, and braces I cannot get my head around. Oh, wait, I answered my own question with hotpants.

I'm sorry, I have to stop there because if anyone else tells me Animal Crossing's Isabelle is one of the most stylish characters in video game history—with that green granny vest—I'm going to gouge my eyes out with a Switch controller.

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..

SteelSeries is launching a line of Diablo IV-branded gaming accessories just in time for the release of Diablo IV, which might be one of the most anticipated PC game launches this side of Starfield. If you are a Diablo IV fan, these accessories might be hard to resist, which is precisely my problem.

The new Diablo IV collection adds red accents and demonic details to its popular Arctis Nova 7 gaming headset and Aerox 5 Wireless mouse. My reaction should have been, "Wow, what a cash grab," mainly because you can find non-Diablo versions of those products for cheaper. Instead, it's "Yo look how red it is! I want it!" This makes me wonder why I'm an easy mark.

The Diablo IV edition of both products will run you for $200 and $150, respectively. Don't get me wrong; the Nova 7 and Aerox 5 aren't bad products. However, I always found it strange how quick we are to pay a fan tax on essentially pallet swaps of existing (and often cheaper) cheaper products because a hell lady or it uses the same green as Master Chief on it.

I understand that people have affinities for certain IPs, and sometimes our fandom overrides our common sense and budget, especially regarding impulse buys. And while it's hard to recommend products like these from a hardware review standpoint, the Diablo nerd inside me is breaking free.

I think it's safe to say that I'm a complete sucker for anything Star Wars, too. So, of course, when I saw these Seagate SSDs with RGB lightsabers on them, I was relieved that they sold out almost immediately.

I had just built a PC with plenty of storage in it. Even the fact that you wouldn't be able to see the SSD didn't, or the $290 for an almost two-year-old SSD, wasn't enough to keep me from buying this stupid light-up storage drive. In fact, I'll most likely buy it whenever they show up back in stock because, despite knowing all this, I have no self-control.

Companies often use nostalgia factor to nudge consumers into buying products. Studies have shown that consumers spend more when thinking about the past. Feeling nostalgic can weaken a person's desire for money, making them more willing to spend that money on products that take them back to a "special time from your childhood."

This tactic is particularly effective during times of economic downturn when consumer spending is low. Companies will slap on logos and adopt a color scheme of your favorite media piece growing up to move some older products. Sometimes it's effective like these Neon Genesis Evangelion branded MSI components that look freaking amazing. And sometimes, not so much, like this terrible Sonic The Hedgehog-themed gaming kit I actually bought and immediately got a refund on.

If it's not nostalgia, then companies move on to fear of missing out (FOMO). I find this happens all the time whenever a piece of PC gaming hardware is released overseas and isn't available, like this Japan-exclusive Death Stranding Fractal PC case from a couple of years ago I was mildly obsessed with for a while.

The case itself is fine, but the idea that I couldn't buy it without jumping through hoops made me want it more. And I'm certain that for fans stateside, the lack of availability didn't stop them from buying it. I have a friend who paid a lot of money importing these limited-edition Razer x Pokemon Orochi Gaming Mice solely because she was a big Gengar fan, in fact. 

I wish companies would give us a break, considering how easy it is to exploit someone's fandom and nostalgia for a little extra profit. I'm not saying they should be giving this stuff out for free. But charging a premium on existing products because there's a Pikachu or a Gundam on it is not cool. 

Recognizing our retail blindspots and being mindful of companies' tactics to exploit our fandom and nostalgia is important. Now if you don't mind, I have a limited edition Boba Fett Xbox controller I need to buy. 

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.

Longtime Bungie writer and former Halo Infinite creative lead Joseph Staten left Microsoft earlier this month, and now we know where he's going: To Netflix.

"In my work life, there's nothing I love more than collaborating with others to build worlds filled with iconic characters, deep mysteries, and endless adventures," Staten tweeted. "So today, I'm thrilled to announce that I've joined Netflix Games as Creative Director for a brand-new AAA multiplatform game and original IP. Let's go!"

Staten has a long and varied history on the Halo series, ranging from voice work in Halo 2 to writing director on Halo: Reach and, as mentioned earlier, head of creative on Halo Infinite. But he has far more than just that under his belt: He was also story director on the original Destiny, and after leaving Bungie in 2013, he went to Microsoft, where he served as creative director on a remarkable array of games including Sunset Overdrive, Quantum Break, Crackdown 3, and Microsoft Flight Simulator, among others.

When Netflix moved into game development in 2021, its focus was primarily on mobile game development. But in November 2022, it said it wanted to create a "triple-A PC game," which had all the looks of being a live-service shooter. It's fair to say that Staten knows a thing or two about heading up projects of just that sort.

Netflix, unfortunately, declined to comment further on what Staten will be getting up to: A representative directed me to Staten's LinkedIn page for a description of his new role, but it's just a verbatim repeat of what he said on Twitter. For now, we'll have to wait and see.

Joseph Staten, the head of creative on Halo Infinite and a former longtime writer at Bungie, is leaving Microsoft, the company confirmed to IGN. Staten left Bungie during the troubled development of Destiny and joined Microsoft in early 2014, helping Xbox Game Studios publish a variety of games. In 2020, after Halo Infinite's infamous first showing and year-long delay, Staten joined 343 Industries to see the project to completion.

The initial positivity around Infinite's release in 2021 quickly soured, leading to a rough first year for the game. Just as it seemed like Infinite was starting to find its footing, Microsoft announced it would be laying off 10,000 employees, including developers at 343. At the same time, Staten left 343 to return to Xbox publishing. That move has proven to be short-lived.

"We're grateful for Joseph’s contributions to the Halo franchise and Xbox as a whole," Microsoft said in a statement to IGN. "We wish him all the best in his new adventure."

When Microsoft enacted its sweeping layoffs in March, one former 343 developer tweeted: "The layoffs at 343 shouldn't have happened and Halo Infinite should be in a better state. 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." There was speculation at the time that the layoffs hit Halo Infinite's singleplayer team especially hard, and that changes in 343 leadership meant existing plans for campaign DLC were scrapped.

Perhaps Staten was simply ready for something new. But given his history working on the narrative side of Halo development, the end of 343's singleplayer plans seem a likely catalyst for his departure.

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.

Halo's future is Unreal, according to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier. In an article published Tuesday, Schreier wrote that "late last year, when previous studio head Bonnie Ross and engine lead David Berger departed and Pierre Hintze took over, [developer 343 Industries] finally decided to pivot to Unreal." The change is just one detail in a report that outlines the challenges 343 faced while developing Halo Infinite and the impact of Microsoft's recent layoffs.

According to Schreier, at least 95 employees were laid off at 343, a number that Microsoft had not disclosed. The layoffs hit "dozens of veterans including top directors and contractors, upon which the studio heavily relies," the report says. "Those temporary employees were given just a few days’ warning before their contracts came to an end, according to people familiar with the process."

343 remains the primary developer behind Halo Infinite and future Halo games, but the report makes it clear just how unclear the path to that future currently looks. It describes Halo's existing Slipspace engine as "based largely on old code from the 1990s and early 2000s" and says it was "the source of headaches" for some of Infinite's development. Unreal development will reportedly start with a new project, codenamed Tatanka, which is being co-developed with longtime Halo contributors Certain Affinity.

Our colleagues at Windows Central reported on Tatanka last year, calling it a battle royale mode that would be compatible with Halo Infinite's Forge tools. Windows Central corroborated the detail that 343 Industries plans to move development to Unreal, writing "internally, there was a fierce tug-of-war over the change, with one camp of developers desiring the switch and another arguing that Halo should remain on Slipspace." According to Windows Central, there was also a version of Tatanka built on Halo's existing Slipspace engine; it may be quite some time before we see the results of Halo running on Unreal Engine.

After 343 Industries' leaders have repeatedly called Halo Infinite a platform for the "next 10 years of Halo," the most surprising detail in Bloomberg's report is that there are no new campaign missions or expansions in development. According to Bloomberg's sources, "Developers were making prototypes in the Unreal Engine and pitching ideas for new Halo games rather than working on new missions for Halo Infinite." The report adds that many of those developers were laid off in the recent cuts, and for now, only work on Infinite's multiplayer continues.

As of press time, Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment.

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.

Let's get this out of the way first. 'Pimps at Sea' was a long-running Bungie April Fool's gag that probably seemed like a good idea back in 2001. It would run and run, thanks to the studio pretending this was the next game it would make after Halo, and became a regular in-joke to the extent that the earliest known build of Halo 3 was given this nickname. Bungie employees were spotted playing Pimps At Sea on Xbox Live back in the day and, over the years, little glimpses of this particular build have appeared. It became something of a holy grail and then, early in 2022, a video of Pimps at Sea gameplay appeared.

Now the whole 'Pimps at Sea' Halo 3 build has, excuse the pun, leaked. It can be found easily enough through search, although you'll need a chipped Xbox or a devkit to run it, so thankfully a very tired Northern Irishman has uploaded around 25 minutes of the footage to YouTube.

The build itself is basically a very early alpha version of Halo 3, where many assets are imported straight from Halo 2. The build does not include any of the campaign content, though it does list various missions, and instead has a once-functional multiplayer mode and an extremely early version of Forge that's just called 'Editor'.

There are a few other interesting bits in the build, like an untextured rocket launcher model and early versions of Halo 3's weapons and equipment. The assault rifle, which got a large overhaul in Halo 3 to function as the starting weapon, is present in a slightly different visual form, alongside an extremely fugly carbine and a plasma pistol that has bright iconography and looks… kinda great? The few pieces of equipment are in-line with what would ship in the final game, with minor differences (like the Mongoose's honky horn) abound.

The most interesting thing in the 'Pimps at Sea' build is a slightly bugged-out attempt at a 'leaning' mechanic. In this Halo 3 build you can make your character's view tilt left and right (though the shots don't track accurately), an idea that Bungie apparently first tried to implement in Halo 2. It's unclear whether its presence here meant the studio had another go with Halo 3 before abandoning it, or whether it's just a hangover from all the Halo 2 stuff being re-used here.

Interestingly enough, Destiny 2 does not feature a peek mechanic. But it does have this odd little kink whereby, if you ADS while crouching, you'll pop over low walls. It feels like a vestigial system, however, rather than anything of practical use. Perhaps this is the one nut that even Bungie, masters of FPS control-feel, can't quite crack.

It may not seem like much, but this piece of software once had an almost mythical status among Halo fans. And for a very simple reason: It was a long wait for Halo 3, and the rising popularity of aggregate message boards like Reddit and early social media meant that Halo hype was building at unprecedented rates. We all knew it was out there, somewhere, but we couldn't have it. Finally seeing the Pimps at Sea build after all these years is the one thing some weary UNSC warriors wanted: Proof it was all real. 

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.

Co-op mission replay is now available in Halo Infinite and you and your Spartan pals can work together to get the Mix Things Up achievement. As co-op was only added this week after a pretty lengthy delay, this particular achievement is bugging out for some players so you might need to try again—and again—to get it to unlock.

In this guide, I'll talk you through how to get the Mix Things Up achievement and what weapons you're looking for.

Halo Infinite: Mix Things Up achievement 

To unlock this achievement, you need to get a kill with every available weapon and grenade on the Banished ship in the first mission, Warship Gbraakon. There are 11 different weapons to use, including a plasma cannon you can pick up and three different grenade types. Here's each weapon type you're looking for, and it's worth noting that the assault rifle and MK50 Sidekick also count here: 

• Plasma pistol 
• Needler
• Mangker
• Pulse carbine
• Frag grenades
• Bulldog
• Spike grenade
• Plasma grenade
• Plasma cannon
• BR75
• Ravager
• Hydra

You'll find these weapons in weapons racks, near your spawn position, from enemy drops and floor loot. Be sure to check the hangar thoroughly and near the elevators to find all the weapons you need. The hydra can be found at the end behind some crates to your left after you manage to cross the gap.

It only takes one person to complete this achievement and everyone gets it, so let yourself be carried to victory if you miss out on using a weapon. As this achievement and several others are still a bit buggy, you might need to rinse and repeat a few times before you get the achievement to ping.

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.

Earlier this year, Charlie 'Cr1TiKal' White issued a challenge. He offered $5,000 to anyone who could complete a full solo playthrough of Halo 2 on legendary difficulty with 13 of the difficulty-modifying skulls activated. (The 14th skull, called Envy, gives you active camouflage in place of your flashlight.) Three weeks later, with nobody claiming it, he bumped the reward up to $20,000.

In the 18 years since Halo 2's release, no recorded instance of anyone achieving this feat existed. Today, after dozens of attempts spread over the previous weeks, Twitch streamer JerValiN finally completed the challenge. In a run that took just shy of six-and-a-half hours, he made use of an incredible amount of skill as well as tricks and glitches like the one that lets you bring a Banshee with you into the final fight against Tartarus. Things almost went sideways in the final minutes thanks to a Brute with a shotgun who dodged a double-grenade, but JerValiN managed to hold it together until the end. 

JerValiN was previously responsible for the first deathless LASO (Legendary All Skulls On) run of any Halo game, having completed Halo 2 with all 14 skulls including the Envy skull active. That run was clocked at five hours, 54 minutes, and 40 seconds, while his latest feat took six hours, 29 minutes, and 44 seconds. Seems like a decent way to earn 20 grand.

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).