By Jesus Mesina
@m3sinajesus
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Halo 5 is a good game. It’s fun to play, but it will disappoint the loyal fans of the series with the removal of the split screen multiplayer mode.
This is the second time developer 343 Industries revamped the Halo series, originally created by Bungie. When 343 Industries took over the Halo series with Halo 4, many people worried that the game wouldn’t be as good as the games Bungie made for the series.
But Halo 4 was a critical and financial success. 343 Industries brought something new to series –impressive graphics, better cinematic cutscenes and a more emotional story that focused on the relationship between the mostly silent protagonist, Master Chief, and his hologram female AI companion, Cortana.
Halo 5 offers this again, and is just nearly as much fun as Halo 4.
This time around, we are introduced to a new playable character, Spartan Locke, who is on the hunt for the Master Chief. The game opens up with a badass cutscene featuring Spartan Locke and his team diving off an aircraft into battle.
They slide down a snowy mountain range, doing back flips, while quickly shooting and cutting down any enemies in their path. There aren’t many new video games with pre-rendered cinematic cutscenes, but with the cutscenes here being this much fun to watch, hopefully other video games can catch on and allow cutscenes to make a comeback.
While the game is a lot fun to play, there is one major problem – a problem so big that it will make some people not want to pick this one up. That is, of course, that lack of split screen multiplayer.
Yes, you can still play with many people online, but you no longer have the option of playing with people in the same room. So if you have a sibling or a spouse or a friend down the street, you can no longer invite them to play co-op or deathmatch with you. Well, you technically still can, but that would involve a very expensive and inconvenient option, for all players would have to have their own TV, their own Xbox One, their own copy of Halo 5, hooked up to an Internet connection.
One of the things that made the Halo series so great was that the split screen multiplayer option was so much fun. It’s a different experience than playing the single player mode.
Online Multiplayer Image Courtesy of Bungie
Multiplayer on Halo is its own culture, and 343 Industries somehow thought it wasn’t important enough to put in the game. What were they thinking!?
This game was supposed to be the reason to buy an Xbox One. What’s an even a bigger let-down is that I had more fun playing on Xbox Live than playing the single player campaign mode. So all I can think about is how much better this game could have been.
Unless you are a big Halo fan, I cannot recommend this game. Halo used to be the first person shooter game to get. Now it’s just another one out of the many first person shooters.
I hope that 343 Industries learns from its mistake and gives us a much better Halo game in the next two to three years, which is usually how long it takes for a new version
