{"id":18518,"date":"2016-01-14T21:35:15","date_gmt":"2016-01-14T11:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=18518"},"modified":"2016-01-14T21:50:02","modified_gmt":"2016-01-14T11:50:02","slug":"halo-5-guardians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=18518","title":{"rendered":"Halo 5: Guardians"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"halo5guardiansposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Platform: \u00a0<\/strong>Xbox One
\nDeveloper: \u00a0<\/strong>343 Industries
\nPublisher: \u00a0<\/strong>Microsoft Studios<\/p>\nM<\/span>aster Chief is not what he used to be.<\/p>\n

In Halo 5: Guardians,<\/em> Master Chief is on the run with his squadron Blue Team, desperately trying to track down the whereabouts of his old AI companion Cortana so he can save her.\u00a0 Hot on his tail is a team of new Spartans named Fireteam Osiris – lead by Jameson Locke\u00a0– who want to put a stop to Cortana\u2019s plans of launching an army of sentient AI creatures who can control the universe.\u00a0 These conflicting interests threaten to pit one Spartan against another.<\/p>\n

Guardians<\/em> is the middle chapter in the second trilogy of the Halo <\/em>games and it very much feels like this franchise\u2019s own version of The<\/em> Empire Strikes Back<\/em>.\u00a0 The campaign starts halfway through a narrative arc and it doesn\u2019t finish in particularly decisive fashion.<\/p>\n

Taking on the development of Halo<\/em> was always an unenviable task and something of a poisoned chalice for 343 Industries who became the custodians of the franchise after original developers Bungie moved on from their publishing relationship with Microsoft.\u00a0 It\u2019s a prized game franchise to work on but how to balance the expectations of an ardent fan base with the need to introduce a new generation of fans who currently favour the likes of Call of Duty<\/em> and Battlefield<\/em>?<\/p>\n

As far as the campaign mode is concerned, 343 Industries haven\u2019t shied away from expanding on the series\u2019 lore, adding in a host of new faces and colouring in the existing characters with far more detail than we ever previously had.<\/p>\n

With the Bungie Halo<\/em> games, a lot of the backstory was relegated to peripheral material \u2013 spin off novels and the like \u2013 while the games themselves were relatively stripped back of detail and dialogue.<\/p>\n

\"halo5scene\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think I\u2019m necessarily adverse to the idea of having more story in Halo<\/em>, but I feel that 343 Industries have traded away a lot of mystique without having much to show for it. \u00a0Master Chief is no longer a lone wolf and now works with companions Linda, Kelly and Fred (they seriously couldn’t come up with more exotic sounding names?). \u00a0Instead of a single Spartan we have dozens.\u00a0 Cortana has switched from being a quick witted AI companion to an emotionally turbulent (and strangely sexualized) villain.\u00a0 Master Chief was previously soft spoken and could function as an avatar for any player whereas now he has his own distinct but rather unremarkable personality.<\/p>\n

Halo 5<\/em> is a perfectly functional and adequate shooter but its not much more than that either.\u00a0 The campaign mode is not the worst in the series but its far from the best.\u00a0 The addition of AI Spartan companions add a new wrinkle to the gameplay but it is very slight.\u00a0 You can comfortably breeze through most of the game neglecting to give them any instructions without any impediment to your progress.<\/p>\n

The campaign mode\u2019s biggest crime is its constant recycling of the game\u2019s big bad \u2013 Warden Eternal\u00a0\u2013 who appears not once but a mind numbing five times.\u00a0 There isn\u2019t really much variation in these encounters either.\u00a0 Frustratingly, Warden Eternal\u00a0has a vulnerability spot on his back which is where it would be handy to have your Spartan allies draw some covering fire so you could flank him but I found the companion AI was rarely able to enact this sort of strategy.<\/p>\n

The campaign mode splits its time between Master Chief and Locke.\u00a0 This is not the first game in the series to let you play as someone other than Master Chief but I suspect most people won\u2019t be particularly swept away by Locke and his team.\u00a0 They\u2019re blandly inoffensive in a Saturday morning cartoon super hero kind of way.<\/p>\n

Multiplayer has always been the lifeblood of Halo <\/em>games and with Guardians<\/em>, 343 Industries have strived to deliver a broader level of appeal by revisiting some classic maps in the series as well as adding a new mode called Warzone.\u00a0 Happily, they have avoided the disasterous connection issues that plagued their Master Chief Collection<\/em> game last year.\u00a0 Technically, Halo 5<\/em> is sound as a pound.<\/p>\n

Not unlike the campaign mode, the multiplayer is perfectly serviceable but clearly the wave of hype and popularity that accompanied Bungie\u2019s Halo<\/em> games has long since subsided.\u00a0 There was an alarming drop off in the number of regular players when 343 Industries first took over with Halo 4<\/em> and I suspect this game isn\u2019t the one to win them back.\u00a0 It looks like most Halo<\/em> migrated with Bungie to Destiny <\/em>and left the Halo<\/em> franchise with a decimated userbase.<\/p>\n

I have to say, I\u2019m one of them.<\/p>\n

\"halo5team\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve put over a hundred hours into Destiny<\/em>, a game that has plenty of shortcomings but still feels like a very natural successor to Halo.\u00a0 Halo 5: Guardians<\/em>, looks like Halo<\/em>, plays sort of like Halo<\/em> but somehow captures none of the predecessor\u2019s magic.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think there\u2019s necessarily any glaring issues with Guardians<\/em> and yet it doesn\u2019t scratch that Halo<\/em> style itch the way Destiny<\/em> does.\u00a0 And this is 343 Industries challenge to unlock.<\/p>\n

Under 343 Industries, the Halo<\/em> franchise feels like it has begun a slow decline towards irrelevance.\u00a0 Its hard to imagine Microsoft\u2019s flagship franchise ever completely falling away and it still remains a recognizable brand and a game that sells in the millions of units.\u00a0 But a couple of months after launch I don\u2019t feel as though anyone in the gaming community at large is talking Halo<\/em>.\u00a0 It is no longer a pioneer for first person shooters on consoles and it is no longer part of the gaming zeitgeist.\u00a0 It is becoming a regular, run of the mill shooter.\u00a0 The Chief is becoming a shadow of who he used to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Its Spartan vs Spartan as Fireteam Osiris and Masterchief face off in a race against time to find Cortana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2388,505,2387,2386,1643],"class_list":["post-18518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","tag-343-industries","tag-halo","tag-halo-5-guardians","tag-masterchief","tag-xbox-one"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18518"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19082,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18518\/revisions\/19082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}