Halo Infinite

What’s up, Chief?

- IAN EVENDEN

HALO’S RELATIONSHIP with the PC has always been rocky. We had to wait for 2019’s Master Chief Collection to finally bring the Xbox games (which began life on the Mac) to Windows, but even then they were slowly drip-fed to PC users over the course of a year. It’s a lot to expect Halo Infinite to make up for these 18 years waiting for a proper Halo PC launch, but this is a darned good attempt.

The Halo story has become convoluted across the last six or so games, but the basics are that a war between the religious collective known as the Covenant and humanity ended up including mysterious ringworlds that were built as a doomsday weapon system to wipe out a voracious species known as the Flood. The fact this means wiping out all sentient life in the galaxy doesn’t seem to have sounded like such a bad thing to the weapon’s creators.

Some idiot kept a sample of the Flood on one of the ringworlds, but somehow it got loose, setting off the three-way battles of the first games. The Covenant’s defeat led to it splintering and huge hybrid ape/bear creatures known as Brutes took command. However, the war with humanity continues and, given its nature, further outbreaks of the Flood cannot be ruled out. While they don’t actually appear in the campaign, they would seem perfect for a horde mode.

Due to a slow start, you see rather more of the Brutes early on in the campaign than you might expect to. In fact, the game begins with you being dropped out of a spaceship by one of these Brutes, who then follows you around like some giant ranting holographic projection.