Halo 5: Guardians

The long-awaited fifth installment of Halo series finally arrived this past October, and we here at DLH.Net got the opportunity to play and review it for you.

Madness Takes its Course

In the past 72 hours, five human colonies have fallen victim to devastating attacks, and all signs indicate that the Forerunners are responsible. Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey, the most-wanted criminal in the UNSC, has contacted the UNSC flagship Infinity claiming to be in the possession of information regarding the attacks. However, she is currently located on Kamchatka, an artificial planet created by the Forerunners, where she is being held captive by Covenant forces under the command of Jul ‘Mdama. Fireteam Osiris, consisting of Spartans Locke, Vale, Tanaka, and Buck, is tasked with rescuing Dr. Halsey.

At the same time, Team Blue, consisting of Spartans 117 (aka Master Chief), Fred, Kyle, and Linda are on their way to recover data from the derelict mobile research station UNSC Argent Moon, which is in danger of being overrun by Covenant Scavengers. During the mission, Master Chief has a vision, and this is where the “madness” of Halo 5 takes its course.

The story is well thought out and carefully narrated, and you learn lots of new information relating to the characters and the Halo universe. And of course the end, like any Halo game, is open-ended enough to make it almost unbearable to have to wait for the next game in the series.

Teammates for the Win

If your shields go down and you start losing health, you just have to hide for a few seconds and your health will go back up – no medipacks or anything like that, which makes things a bit easier.

Compared to the previous titles, the controls are also better and lot smoother than before. Then again, that might just be my own subjective point of view.

Halo 5 introduces a few new weapons with various firing modes (single-shot, burst-fire, focused, etc.), but they got rid of the Gravity Hammer, unfortunately. That was always a good weapon for kamikaze melee attacks in the other games, but hey, there’s always the Scattershot!

The campaign in Halo 5 consists of 15 missions, which take a good 5 hours to complete on Normal difficulty if you play right through. But if you take the time to look around and gather all the additional information in the levels, it can take a bit longer. You can play the campaign in co-op of course, but unfortunately not in split-screen. You’re free to decide which character you want to play, but one player has to pick either Master Chief or Locke. I personally think the campaign is just about the right length, but that they could have made the game a bit more challenging in Normal. Heroic and Legendary are just about what you’d expect if you played the other Halo games.

Multiplayer mode features a new rewards system where you can use Requisition Points to purchase new armor, weapons, vehicles, and much more. These “REQ Points” can be earned in a variety of ways, but if you don’t feel like waiting, you can also shell out some real money and just buy the points. If you’re thinking “pay-to-win”, don’t worry – you get enough points just by playing normally.

Grand, Majestic, Fantastic

The sound design is, on the whole, awesome. It’s lots of fun just to listen to what’s going on around you. And as we’ve come to expect from Halo, this title features a majestic, top-notch soundtrack. The voiceovers are all really well done and feature the same familiar voice actors as before. The only thing that’s kind of ugly are the bright yellow subtitles.