IGN has new Halo Infinite gameplay.

Halo Infinite: Full Slayer Match on Xbox Series X Multiplayer Gameplay
Youtube Video

Longtime Halo YouTuber 'MintBlitz' shares his thoughts:

Halo Veteran Reviews Halo Infinite
Youtube Video

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We were discussing this a bit in the EZA Fantasy Critic chat (and by discussing, it was me having an "old man yells at cloud" moment), and I'd like to put together my own thoughts about it:

POINT 1 - I'm too close to the series

For somebody who never even owned an Xbox except for a month or so in 2011 before it bricked itself; I actually really love the Halo series. I played CE on my parents computer when that port released around 2003 or 2004. My middle school years were filled with hours of Halo 3 split-screen at my friends house.

I really miss those days. I'll admit there is a nostalgia factor, but there is plenty of objectivity towards why I love those original games.

All this to say, I'll admit it. I'm a bit too close to the series to be fully objective.

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POINT 2 - It looks fine

I'm not blown away by it, but after my first watch and obvious disappointment with the IGN Slayer gameplay, I can take a step back and say, "Okay it's fine I guess." You'd think Microsoft would strive for higher than that, but I'll get to that later.

Objectively, the gameplay looks fine enough. I think some people will like it. I think new fans will hop in and it'll feel familiar to other shooters. It's not all doom and gloom despite my personal disappointment.

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POINT 3 - FPS has reached full homogeny

For better or worse, the average player can pick up any major FPS on the market and immediately know the controls, game modes, the movement, physics, and have clear expectations about the TTK.

I wish more genres had this degree of commonality but I think it's seriously kneecapped the MP FPS over the past half decade. There is so little differentiation anymore. Sprint, slide, hurdle, jump; it all feels so similar. Obviously Halo Infinite would take some modern expectations but I didn't expect this to look like Apex in an arena. It is what it is.

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POINT 4 - Does Microsoft not know Halo is a legendary franchise?

Sort of what Capnbobamous said last night, there was a time when every game wanted to be like Halo. Now Halo wants to be like every other game. I don't understand what 343 is going for anymore.

When the God of War series in 2018 returned from it's stagnation and fall from grace, they made a video game so impactful that it won most GOTY awards and is considered one of the greatest games of all time by many. There too was a time when every Halo release felt monumental. That is why I don't understand why Microsoft is content with "good enough" or "fine" but they should return to form unequivocally with a gigantic splash and statement to say "HALO IS BACK!".

Just imagine if God of War in 2018 came back and was only kinda sorta good? It's weird seeing a legendary franchise not act like it has legendary status.

I appreciate your lists Shoulderguy but I can't ever partake most of the time cause I haven't played them.

I've played a healthy amount of Spider-Man though!

1. Spider-Man (The Movie) (2002)
2. Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro (2001)
3. Ultimate Spider-Man
4. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
5. Marvel's Spider-Man (2018)
6. Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales (2019)
7. The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction
8. Spider-Man (2000)

I know everybody picks Treyarch's Spider-Man 2, but I loved their original Spider-Man movie game on GC. That costume is iconic and I loved playing through the beats of the first film (with lots of extra stuff thrown in) which I was obsessed with back in Grade 2.

I loved that you started as the gumshoe Spider-Man in his shitty wrestling costume. Most levels are brawlers but then there are awesome boss battles. The one with Shocker always scared me. The final few boss levels against Green Goblin were intense.

It was sick doing stealth MGS stuff through Oscorp.

The narrator was pretty funny too. Idk if he holds up but I loved the narrator when I was little. Honestly love this game. Classic single player licensed brawler.

@bam541

I haven't touched the storymode yet but this is what @JDINCINERATOR said about it:

I've completed the Braking Point story mode in F1 2021 and I have to say it's ok but needs fine-tuning. Without spoiling anything the story doesn't feel wholly entwined into the gameplay as it should. Your stake as the player feels completely arbitrary as well. EA published games have a tendency to bung cutscenes into proceedings to interfere with the gameplay and the same holds true here. There is a nice whiff of character development that I appreciated and there were certain aspects I felt enriched the story a little bit beyond what I was expecting-but generally it's still a lukewarm offering.

For me, I think video games in general need to spend more time doing custom lighting and general plussing up for scenes that are meant to be cinematic. The problem with the sports TV broadcast stuff that every sports game is going for these days is that they all kinda come out a bit flat and janky looking because they just place the assets and models into these environments then use a camera algorithm to kinda jump around everywhere and things just feel odd.

So knowing there is a cinematic story mode is nice where you'll probably see different lighting, dramatic angles, better blocking and movement when compared to the base game. But I want to start to see that stuff in general. When they show the Paddock, don't just have models standing around in groups kinda sorta doing something. Give me nice lighting, good shot composition and all that.

If I had millions of dollars to blow on designing my own games, every single game would have the cinematography of TLOU Pt II haha

@jdincinerator said in [Official] What are you playing?:

Been blitzing through F1 2021 and I have already earned 54% of the trophies earned. I really like this year's lineup of car liveries-the Alpine and Aston Martin ones are amazing. As for the gameplay I feel the handling is more taut than it has been in recent entries, managing to provide greater feedback but now you have to be mindful of overriding the curbs. I haven't dabbled in the new Braking Point story mode yet, but so far it's a pretty awesome game-though the absence of classic cars sucks and I don't know why we have to wait for the Imola, Portimao and Jeddah race tracks-when in the past new tracks were included at launch.

I just bought F1 2021 last night. I bought 2020 and barely played it, so this investment feels extremely dirty, but I felt like digging into MyTeam again and maybe playing online a bit. The PS5 graphics are ever so slightly better and the whole thing feels ever so slightly smoother on next-gen which is nice but it's not a big upgrade package (see what I did there?).

Other than 2020, I hadn't played F1 since the 2018 demo for 2 seconds, then EA Sports F1 1999 before then. I still can't really figure out the physics for the life of me. I'm not good at sim racers but the way the cars have weight and slide in GT Sport feels so much more natural to me than the stiff turning in F1.

For example:

• Breaks HARD in a straight line
• Turn in off throttle (turning feels really stiff, hard to get the nose around)
• Try to gently accelerate, spin car

I guess on gamepad, any sort of unstable car movement while accelerating is just a recipe for disaster but I struggle so hard to get the nose to turn in so most of my movements are far from perfect.

I have work to do...

Will Buxton animation is 10/10

I know this sounds reeeeeeally stupid, but back then I couldn't rack my head around the idea of fast zombies. I've always known zombies to be slow and dumb whereas L4D has fast and somewhat strategic zombies. It's BEYOND a nitpick but it bothered me back then. Letting go of that, I never really got into horde gameplay. L4D and alike games and modes just never do much for me. Never been much of a fan of games where you shoot endlessly and stay in one area.

@mbun

I can safely say that a Deadzone adjustment in Halo prevents drift. Upon research, it seems like Deadzones are smaller in shooter games so that is why they provide an option because drift will be very noticable if it wasn't built into the settings. But I don't see why Mario Odyssey couldn't have that option either which would probably fix the issue.

On the issue of drift, I noticed in Halo MCC there is a slider in the settings called “Axial Dead Zone” which is a fancy way of saying the amount of force you need to apply for the crosshairs to actually move.

So I was tinkering around and noticed that when I put it to 0%, I had a disgusting amount of drift on my old controller. So I set it to 6% which was a low amount but also rectified the drift.

Idk why more games don’t just have that option because it’ll single handedly make drift a non issue.

I follow a ton of sports photographers on social media and I've been following skateboarding my entire life and it's funny to see my Instagram feed where these two worlds have completely merged.

What I find interesting is how photographers like Atiba Jefferson are taking his usual low angle skate photos, whereas your usual sports action photographers are using like 500mm lenses and taking their traditional shots. I think the greater photography world doesn't actually know what makes a good skate photo yet, but it's also interesting to see their perspective.

That said, I'm almost positive the event organizers have limitations of who can go where, but some people are definitely not getting up close.

Atiba - Lifelong Skate Photog

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRtgzePrkqZ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRtgYy7rJsw/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRqVqA-rbYE/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Versus other general Sports Photographers:

Pauline Ballet

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRxmJMSsTHz/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Mark Blinch

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRqMIDltNm8/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

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It isn't that one way is right or wrong. Just interesting to see different styles merging at the Skateboarding events.

The street events were kinda meh. Nyjah went a little soft for some reason and it was weird to see some serious competition like Felipe Gustavo get cut before the Finals. I guess the Olympics in general are pretty accelerated competitions but it all just felt fast.

A bunch of little girls won the Women's competition. They are great, I've followed the Brazilian Rayssa Leal for 2ish years now. It just seemed like really low competition compared to X-Games or even other competitions recently. The street events in general kinda had this low energy.

SR2 was a pretty fun rental but I never took the game too seriously in the sense it wasn't something I played very often. I think Blockbuster might've went tits up while my friend and I had it rented so we kept the game for free.

I think it's the best GTA clone before every single game became a pseudo-GTA clone. It actually did a good job of having a place in the market considering the direction Rockstar went with GTA IV, SR2 filled the void of being San Andreas on crack.

I have been having net code / lag issues lately in MCC. I made "art" about it.

Youtube Video