Review: ‘Halo 5: Guardians’ saves its so-so story with marvelous multiplayer

Even a grizzled supersoldier needs friends.

That’s the take-home message of Halo 5: Guardians. Microsoft’s latest entry in its 14-year-old first-person shooter franchise — the first to be built from the ground up for the Xbox One — breaks from tradition by sprinkling team-based dynamics throughout both its solo campaign and its various multiplayer modes. It’s a Halo to be enjoyed with others.

OK, it’s much more than that. Halo 5 is the biggest Xbox One exclusive of the year. With Sony’s Uncharted 4 and Nintendo’s Star Fox getting pushed back to 2016, it’s the biggest exclusive game for any system this holiday. That’s a treat for a console maker, and luckily for Microsoft, Halo 5 delivers where it counts. This is a gorgeous, streamlined video game, and while it stumbles with its storytelling, it soars with some of the best online play the series has ever seen.

Story bored

Its plot, however, has seen better days.

Over the years, Halo’s narrative has evolved into something of a mess. What began as an appealing, understandable tale about a space ace and his AI buddy fighting some aliens for control of an apocalyptic weapon has evolved into a sprawling, convoluted sci-fi jumble spanning novels, short films, podcasts, and, yes, the occasional video game. The aliens begat more aliens, humanity splintered, wars were won, and lost, and tied, maybe. I’ve played every Halo game and can barely keep it all together.

Halo 5 takes the focus off Master Chief and plops it on the similarly sturdy shoulders of fellow Spartan Jameson Locke. Locke and his squad, Fireteam Osiris, have been tapped by the powers that be to track down the Chief and his hallowed Blue Team, who have gone rogue after bumping into Chief’s old pal Cortana. You spend most of your time — a good 75 percent of the campaign — following Chief’s footsteps as Locke, hopping into the boots of the iconic badass for only a handful of missions.

It’s a strange shift, and while Locke and his crew do a fine job of balancing the bloodshed with witty banter, too little time is devoted to Chief’s Blue Team, who are mostly silent despite literally risking their lives to help their pal chase his old girlfriend. Compared with Locke’s relaxed, wisecracking pals, Chief’s crew is something of a snooze.

Either way, you’ll quickly get acquainted with Halo 5’s emphasis on team-based play. The three other members of your squad join you in each mission, lending support by shooting at the Covenant and Promethean baddies and, more commonly, reviving you after you stupidly Rambo your way into the fray. That’s right — you no longer keel over and die after taking a carbine shot to the face. Instead you lie prone, your armor “locked up” as you wait for someone to rescue you.

But despite Halo’s rightly earned reputation for delivering some of the most sophisticated enemy AI in first-person shooting, your teammates are surprisingly dumb. Often they’ll just sort of stand around as you beg to be revived, or they’ll lamely wander over right when some awful enemy is hovering over your prone body with a giant gun. It can be a little frustrating.

A solution? Play the game co-op with up to three other friends. Halo 5’s campaign is clearly built with co-op in mind, and indeed, it’s significantly more fun when you’ve got at least one buddy helping out. Bump the difficulty level up to Heroic (or, if you’re daring, Legendary) and co-op becomes the preferred way to play.

You don’t have to, of course, and most Halo vets will plow through the solo experience in a quick eight hours. Though it’s well-paced and offers a nice cross section of map styles, the campaign lacks a signature moment on which to hang its helmet. You’ll follow arrows to push buttons and open doors. You’ll charge through a level in a Scorpion tank, over before you know it. You’ll shoot the same enemies you faced in previous Halos, just with a new coat of paint. For all its dramatic marketing and technical prowess, Halo 5’s campaign plays it really safe.

And by the time you finally start to get invested in the plot, the game abruptly ends. Developer 343 Industries has made it clear that Halo 5 is part of a new trilogy that began with Halo 4, which is fine, but leaving people hanging is not, especially when Halo 6 (I can’t believe I just typed that) won’t arrive for several years. It’s not as egregious as the cliffhanger ending of Halo 2, but it’s in the ballpark. As series fans will be quick to point out, that’s one crappy ballpark.

Shoot to thrill

Where Halo 5’s storytelling takes a turn for the worse, its mechanics have never been better.

Halo has always been about the holy trinity of guns, grenades, and punches to the face, and that’s all preserved here, though it has also been sped up. This is the most agile Halo game yet; one button is now dedicated to a quick dash, while parkour-like scrambles up most surfaces add verticality. Hold the melee button in midair and you’ll unleash a monstrous ground pound attack; hold the aim button and you’ll hover for a few seconds like Neo from The Matrix.

The whole game is faster and punchier than ever, and 343 has done a terrific job of keeping the core shooting crunchy and satisfying. While former Halo developer Bungie has earned raves for its technical work on competing shooter Destiny, 343 should get equal credit for not only not screwing up Halo but arguably making it play better than ever.

And it’s artistically breathtaking, particularly when it plunks you down on strange new planets brimming with organic life. Halo has always been a colorful game; Halo 5 embraces the rainbow with beautiful worlds and spectacular effects. This is a gorgeous, smooth video game, and you can’t help but power through that mediocre single-player game just to see the sights.

Wars with friends

But Halo 5 shines brightest in its multiplayer — specifically, in a brand-new mode called Warzone.

Supporting 24 players, Warzone matches take place on massive, multibase maps. In addition to battling fellow players over a handful of control points, gamers tussle with computer-controlled bosses and soldiers that periodically warp into the carnage. Capturing control points, killing enemy players, and taking down bosses all dole out victory points. First to 1,000 wins.

As the match wears on, your team acquires “Requisition Points,” which can be spent in-game to access bigger and badder weapons, mods, and vehicles. These are dictated by your personal stash of “Req Cards,” which are earned by playing multiplayer games. You earn cards as you play, and while you can plunk down real-world money for packs, you certainly don’t need to. Even novice players will potentially have access to the same kick-ass gear (read Scorpion tank) as the die-hards. The burlier weapons are fairly rare too, mitigating the potential for more-active players to dominate with insane gear.

The result of this is a game that starts off small — everyone’s got an assault rifle and a pistol — but builds to a riotous crescendo. It’s terribly addictive, and best of all, you can still contribute to your team even if you’re not a crack shot by chasing after bosses. Given, the enemy team will also go after bosses too — particularly the tougher ones that award lots of victory points — so you’re never really safe. But even in death, Warzone is a genuinely compelling experience that somehow works for both advanced players and relative newcomers just looking to level up a little.

More competitive players will gravitate to Halo 5’s other mode, Arena, a catchall for classic styles like Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag. These are also well designed, and smart changes to the way weapons spawn ensure a more level playing field. Of course, you are going to die a lot in Arena, because people have been playing Halo for 15 years and you probably have not. But that goes with the territory of any online shooter, and at least Halo 5 has the sense to dole out Req Points after each match to make your pathetic losses feel like wins. Or at least not as pathetic.

And I am happy to say that, as of launch day, the thing works. The servers are holding up, a far cry from the online disaster that was Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Here’s hoping they don’t crap out 20 minutes after I publish this review.

And here’s hoping the caretakers of the Halo franchise find a way to give its story as much love as its multiplayer. The narrative missteps and overly complicated lore intrude on what should have been another shining moment for Master Chief; while it sets up an intriguing future, the campaign is an unqualified disappointment. But even the greatest of heroes stumbles, and Halo 5’s stellar online play is certainly strong enough to pick up the Chief and keep him moving. What are friends for?

What’s Hot: Warzone, all the way; looks and sounds fantastic; faster than the average Halo

What’s Not: The campaign kinda sucks; so do cliffhangers; dumb squadmates

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