Halo Infinite: what is the free-to-play multiplayer worth in beta?

While waiting for the single player campaignHalo Infinite, which looks promising, fans of the legendary franchise FPS received a beautiful and unexpected gift on November 15, on the occasion of Xbox's 20th anniversary: ​​an open beta for its multiplayer free-to-play. What to make the eyes of players shine like children on Christmas Eve? That's what we thought when announced by 343 Industries. What about after twenty hours of PC play? Answer here!

From the Academy to the gameplay, passing through the different game modes or the economic model, we have scrutinized this beta in order to provide you with the most informed opinion possible. If this experience partly confirms our first impressions during the second technical test, it raises some questions, which we will detail.

Spartan Academy

It's a good idea to start at the beginning, for franchise veterans and newcomers alike. A true first in the multiplayer branch of a Halo game, the Academy provides a smooth introduction to the unforgiving world of the Spartans. To do this, we take advantage of a scripted tutorial, anchored in the very chronology of the main campaign expected on December 8.

The opportunity to see immediately that the technical and visual part of this multiplayer mode is frankly successful. Without exploding our retinas, the sets are pleasant to look at with very clean textures and visual effects. Same observation for the sound design and especially for the superb soundtrack, characteristic of the franchise.

Having at heart to offer a version dedicated to the PC, 343 Industries spoils us with many options to guarantee a tailor-made experience. The game is therefore as beautiful as it is fluid in High/Ultra in 1p on our solid configuration. We can however deplore the absence of a full screen mode.

Other very significant new features of the Academy: the introduction of a shooting range to test all the weapons in the game, as well as a Training mode allowing you to become familiar with the ten maps present at launch, facing overall beautifully coded bots.

The maps offer a skilful balance between verticality, open areas filled with cutlery and narrower passages. All coupled with a truly superb art direction, highlighting the Halo universe more than ever, while adapting it for a multiplayer orientation. Hats off (or helmet?) to the designers and artists on this point!

Bring a weapon to a vast sandbox

After training, it's time for serious things and action! On this point, Halo Infinite's multiplayer is as brilliant as it is frustrating at times. Cleverly mixing old-fashioned formulas and revisited proposals from the latest opuses, our Spartan moves very fluidly with sprints, slides, jumps and climbing on low walls. The movements are thus particularly pleasant to take in hand, at least on PC, for a nervous overall experience without being too frenetic.

We start every non-Ranked game with the indestructible Assault Rifle and Sidekick Pistol, the name of which in no way represents its true power. To equip other weapons, you will have to find them in specific locations scattered on the maps.

Kinetic, energy, heavy, and melee weapons abound, and each generally fulfills a specific role in the infamous sandbox gameplay of the Halo franchise. The sensations when using them are generally very good, but we can rail against the dispersion of certain weapons. With these, duels are sometimes limited to a stupid game of chance to know who will win, especially since the time-to-kill in Halo games has always been particularly long, because of the shield to knock down before attacking our opponent's life points.

In general, the community is very divided when it comes to controls and aiming, both on keyboard/mouse and on the joystick. Some deplore a risky aim with the classic PC hardware, while others complain about very heavy movements with the controller. After trying both options, we can only support the reluctance of our fellow Spartans. Many console players even deplore the existence of cross-play, in particular because cheat solutions are already beginning to circulate on the PC version.

Besides the weapons, Halo Infinite presents no less than four different grenades, an indispensable element in the gameplay of the franchise. Fragmentation, plasma, Brute or Tesla grenades are all tools with different functions that you will need to know how to master in order to triumph, in particular to dislodge Spartans from their hiding places.

Finally, the famous accessories introduced in Halo 3 have a new look on this new opus. Grappling Hook, Thruster, Solid Light Wall, Sonar, Repulsor, Super Shield or Optical Camouflage all add to the complexity of Halo Infinite's gameplay. To equip yourself with them, you will also have to find them in dedicated locations on the maps. With their power, they truly open up new dimensions to the relatively frenetic action of the game. They are, however, difficult to keep, death watching at every turn. Note that if we had one or more charges of a given accessory left, the latter can be recovered on our still warm body.

Keep an eye on the goal

Now is the time to focus on the second major aspect of any good self-respecting multiplayer: the game modes. Again, there is good and less good. Basically, there are what we can call four "playlists", in order to minimize the waiting time between games: Arena games against bots, Quick Arena games against players, Big Team Battle and Ranked Games in Arena.

The Arena Games oppose two teams of four Spartans, and we will find here four game modes: Assassin, Capture the Flag, Oddball and Forts. If the first two are self-explanatory, it is worth dwelling on the other two.

Oddball consists of recovering and keeping a skull for a set time in two winning rounds. Forts asks for him to capture at least two points out of the three scattered on the map in order to increase the score. The first team to reach a given score or with the best total at the end of the allotted time wins.

In Ranked Games, we use more or less the same rules, with a few exceptions. The sacrosanct movement detector is deactivated there, and each Spartan begins with the only weapon of the combat rifle, equipped with a scope and firing in semi-automatic. This is also the only mode to join games with players exclusively keyboard / mouse or controller. We haven't had a chance to try out this mode much, but it seems for now that losing a game doesn't result in a leaderboard point penalty. An element that removes a lot of flavor from the experience.

Big Team Battle is, in our opinion, the most fun game mode. Well known to veterans of the franchise, this one sees things much bigger, now bringing together two teams of twelve Spartans, against eight previously. There are Assassin, Capture the Flag and Forts modes, as well as a unique mode called Stockpile, requiring us to bring five batteries to our base in order to feed our cannon faster than that of the opposing team.

If we appreciate Big Team Battle more, it's for the joyful chaos it offers, especially thanks to the vehicles, and the moments of calm that the necessarily larger maps allow, compared to the constant action of the Arena game modes. . What we appreciate much less is a level-based matchmaking that seems to be absent subscribers, except of course in "Ranked". This leads to many one-sided games, even to chain defeats, for about ten games. Not really motivating to play in these conditions.

Similarly, we can deplore the existence of these playlists grouping together different game modes of unequal interest, and therefore the impossibility, for example, of joining parties exclusively on modes like Assassin.

Battle Pass Infinite

Free-to-play requires, the multiplayer of Halo Infinite had to find a parade for its economic system. And that's where things go pretty badly, at least for now.

If the cosmetic part of the game is presented as the most complete ever seen in the license (customization of the body, voice and prostheses for our Spartan; parts, paintings and decorations of armor; paintings and decorations for weapons and vehicles or further customization of our personal AI), most of these items can only be obtained by paying.

This first passes through the now classic Battle Pass. If it includes a few rare free elements, you will have to pay ten euros to be able to unlock the hundred levels contained in each Season Pass.

In a desire to offer a fair model, 343 Industries has opted for a Pass that never expires. It will therefore be possible to play to unlock elements of Season 1, even though the game is in its third season, for example.

However, the only way to advance in each Pass is by completing daily and weekly challenges. Simply playing will award 50 Pass Points, but the best way to advance is by completing weekly challenges. Except that these are sometimes extremely difficult to achieve. Some require, for example, to eliminate opponents with a given weapon or vehicle, or even to complete games in a specific game mode, or even to win games in said mode.

However, as we mentioned earlier, it is impossible to join a queue for a specific game mode. The completion of many challenges is therefore exclusively a matter of chance, making the overall experience particularly painful.

It is of course possible to speed things up by paying two euros for two packs of experience boosts and tokens to change the content of a weekly challenge. These can also be sporadically obtained by progressing through the Battle Pass.

To climb the levels of the Battle Pass, you must therefore comply with the rules imposed by 343 Industries, to the detriment of your personal pleasure. And the pill clearly does not pass, visibly for us as for the community in general.

Note that it is also possible to pay to go up to the next Pass level. If you want to unlock the entire Pass without breaking a sweat, you will have to pay the modest sum of 200 euros (all the same!).

In addition to the Battle Pass, there is an in-game store that is renewed regularly. And there too, the note is particularly salty: most of the packs offering various cosmetic elements are indeed sold between 10 and 20 euros, or a sixth or a third of the price of the single-player campaign. What to think about the prices applied.

If 343 Industries has indicated that it wants to rework the economic model, we bet that few changes should be made between now and the official launch of the multiplayer and the single-player campaign on December 8. This should also allow you to unlock some cosmetic elements for multiplayer, but the rumor indicates that it will only be poses, emblems or accessories.

A multiplayer that is in the event

Halo Infinite multiplayer will indeed regularly offer free events in order to obtain cosmetic elements unique to said events. As a grand opening, we had the very recent Fracture Tenrai event, centered around samurai folklore.

And here again, the direction taken by 343 Industries is making the community cringe. Offering a system similar to the Battle Pass to hope to recover the 30 elements that compose it, the only way to progress is through the completion of weekly challenges in the game mode dedicated to the event.

Called Fiesta, these are Assassin parts in Arena where each respawn will grant you random weapons. A happy chaos on paper, but which in reality reinforces the inherent imbalance of the games and the absence of real matchmaking. All it takes is for your team to never pick up powerful or situationally appropriate weapons to have a really bad time.

As with the Battle Pass, the challenges to advance in the Fracture event are subject to randomness and sometimes difficult to achieve, once again making progress particularly painful. Other cosmetic elements related to the event can only be obtained in the shop, at prices ranging between ten and twenty euros. For a first attempt, we can not decently say that it is a masterstroke.

Last element of the store that we have deliberately set aside so far: a tab dedicated to the colors of e-sports teams. With Halo Infinite, 343 Industries and Microsoft intend to put the franchise back on the professional scene.

To do this, just five days after launch, we were treated to a kickoff for the Halo Championship Series in different regions of the globe. If you want to have a taste of what e-sport could give on Halo Infinite, here is for example the retransmission of the European championship of the last weekend.

Halo Infinite Multiplayer: A Double-Edged Energy Blade

You will have understood, for us, the free-to-play multiplayer of Halo Infinite blows hot and cold. Impeccable from a technical and visual point of view, generally very successful on the gameplay part, despite some problems of handling or aiming, it fishes on many other points.

Among the latter, we regret a very random queue, without level-based matchmaking, forcing us to play in conditions that are not always optimal or pleasant. But where the Halo Infinite multiplayer signs its worst performance, despite some good intentions from 343 Industries, is of course the economic part.

The progression in the Battle Pass is, despite an initial patch to improve the situation, a real purge, and the prices of the packs in the store are shockingly high. The same observation can be made for “free” events. We can argue that these are only cosmetics, so nothing essential. But given the way Halo Infinite's multiplayer is built, the only motivation to play revolves around progression to unlock cosmetic items. And as it stands, this is clearly not enough motivation for us.

We therefore hope that by December 8, 343 Industries will have made some welcome changes and that e-sports on Halo Infinite will manage to find a place in the sun in this particularly closed universe. The reverse, however, will not prevent us from reconnecting with Master Chief in the single-player campaign, the first hours of which captivated us pleasantly. It remains to be seen if, as with multiplayer, the magic will continue to operate over time or if it will eventually fall.