Microsoft’s Halo 5 demo displays a lot of the new features in the upcoming Halo 5 game.
At the recent E3 conference, most would say that Halo 5 was the best thing that Microsoft had to show off. The game franchise has been on the market since the original release of the first Halo game in 2001. The game boasts over 3 billion dollars in sales since its start, but after the successful release of Halo 4, the franchise has been on a bit of a decline. Microsoft released Halo: The Master Chief Collection which left fans upset due to the poor content of the game. Microsoft has since listened to its fans and has finally revealed a lot of content that will be in the fifth game of the Halo series, Halo 5: Guardians.
Halo is definitely getting a makeover in all aspects across the board. In Microsoft’s trailer, it opens up with a four player cooperative mode that does not include the Master Chief. The Halo characters have pretty much identical armored suits, but it is said in the video that Master Chief has departed the current planet that the players reside on. Aside from not having Master Chief, the Halo characters have received some upgrades on their armor and abilities. The new suits boast what Microsoft are calling “stabilizers” that are pretty much a fancy name for jetpacks. These allow the soldiers to “Spartan Charge” and “Ground Pound” across maps in cooperative and multiplayer game modes. “Spartan Charge” is used as a speed boost that can help speed up your movement, or be used as a useful melee attack. “Ground Pound” works in a similar way where when you are airborne during a jump, you can use a speed boost to ram yourself into the ground as a melee attack on enemies as well. It seems like our friends at Microsoft might have taken a few pointers from Mario’s famous ground pound. Along with the stabilizer upgrade, your soldier also has the ability to pull themselves up ledges as well as run and slide across the ground.
Some other fun upgrades that Microsoft and 343 Industries have implemented, are the revamped scoping on the guns as well as map interaction features. The scoping is much more realistic as portrayed in the trailer, and you are taken out of scope mode when hit by a bullet. This makes sniping a lot less overpowered in the Halo gameplay. In terms of the maps, there is now a voice over feature that announces when things like snipers are dropped on the map. Also, prior to map loading, “hot spots” of the map are highlighted to inform the players. These features are mainly focused on helping Halo’s multiplayer mode to become more of a competitor on the multiplayer shooter platform.
The last major component that fans are talking about is the Breakout Mode that Microsoft and 343 have talked about releasing. In the main Halo multiplayer mode, Slayer, it is a “team deathmatch” schemed mode where you re-spawn after each death. In the new Breakout Mode, it is said to be teams of 4 players each matched up against each other without re-spawning. Once an entire team is eliminated, that round is over and the surviving team gains a point. The team that scores a set amount of points first wins the game. It is very similar to how competitive shooters like Counter Strike work, and Microsoft hopes that Halo can become a larger online competition.
The game has a lot of great features being added including simple graphics and movements as well as campaign gameplay and multiplayer mode updates. The game is predicted to continue the success of the Halo franchise and is set to release on October 27th, 2015.
