Review: Halo 5: Guardians

Halo 5: Guardians is the newest game in the consecrated exclusive franchise from Microsoft. The game brings a world at war where the main protagonist of Halo, Master Chief, is completely gone. Spartan Locke is sent to find the hero and investigate the cause of his disappearance. In multiplayer, two new modes were announced. One is called Arena, a competitive 4×4, and the other is Warzone, a mode for 24 simultaneous players. Find out what I thought in my full review!

In Halo 5: Guardians, the player has the opportunity to control two squadrons of Spartans: the classic blue team, composed of Master Chief and three other survivors of the Spartan-II program; and the Fogo Osiris team, led by Jameson Locke and formed by Edward Buck, Olympia Vale and Holly Tanaka.

While the team Spartan Locke Given a secret mission to rescue Dr. Catherine Halsey, the Chief disobeys higher UNSC orders to investigate a cryptic message that threatens the entire galaxy.

the narrative of Halo 5: Guardians is far from ideal, however, the way it is told leaves many doubts, even for players familiar with the series. 343 Industries has considerably expanded the Halo universe and, therefore, has not been able to handle the size and amount of content so well.

Master Chief, for example, is little used in the plot – it is possible to count the stages led by the master –, despite having a fundamental role. On the other hand, Locke has a poorly explored personality, and demonstrates that he only cares about "accomplishing the mission". In this context, it is somewhat difficult to care about the actions of the leader of Osiris during the campaign.

The game's campaign ranges from 7 to 10 hours in length, separated into 15 long missions. In addition, of course, to the traditional phases in which the player must shoot everything that moves, Guardians has exploration activities, whose objective is to collect data, in addition to talking to NPCs at strategic points on the map. As much as the dynamics of the activities are not innovative, exploring the scenarios is a good way to relax between one shootout and another.

If you play alone, team members will be controlled by game intelligence. However, it is possible to order the squad's actions with the directional buttons on the Xbox One controller. Want the team to focus on a single enemy? The player is able to command the team's strategy as he sees fit. When Spartan Locke is downed, any one of the three party members can bring him back into battle.

However, there are some frustrating issues with the game's intelligence, where your teammates often fail to recognize your calls for help, meaning they will simply ignore you to continue shooting at enemies. In coo-op mode, naturally, no similar situation happens, since the partners are controlled by real players.

Regarding gameplay, Halo 5: Guardians underwent several drastic changes. Now, Spartan is able to run non-stop, super jump, dash and even use special abilities to annihilate opponents by surprise from the air.

Fortunately, 343 Industries managed to modernize Halo 5 with elements of contemporary shooters without leaving the essence of the franchise aside. For the first time in FPS history, weaponry has a zoom scope on the “LT” button, which is a welcome addition to conform to today's standards.

As well as the sharp changes in gameplay, the graphical look of Halo 5: Guardians also evolved a lot (literally). The cutscenes, for example, are shorter than usual, but remain technically impeccable, with minute details of faces, convincing expressions of characters and composition objects.

The environments themselves do not have a large number of objects, which is the already known feature of the franchise, but they all have impressive lighting effects. O neon of the futuristic installations is reflected with great realism, while the explosions of Warthogs, Pelicans and Mongooses cause an incredible light show.

The action scenes with different elements on the screen give a show of their own, thanks to the new camera angles that further enrich the spatial confrontations with a cinematic tone. Halo 5: Guardians runs at 1080p and 60 fps and during our review on Xbox One, we didn't see any fatal performance dips that could affect the gameplay experience.

As expected, Halo 5: Guardians was fully dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese, with voices and subtitles in our national language. The translation work, once again, it's neat and well above average compared to other recently released blockbusters. Incidentally, the Halo franchise has never disappointed in terms of voice acting. In addition, the noises of gunfire, the heavy footsteps of the Spartans and the explosions that act as the background are jaw-dropping.

In terms of complements, the online multiplayer of Halo 5: Guardians is separated into two main modes: Arena and Warzone. In the arena, the user can venture into five well-known modes, such as Team Arena, Assassin, Escape, Released for All, among others.

unlike The Master Chief Collection, the matchmaking of Halo 5: Guardians manages to organize battles very well in a few minutes. This is because there are servers dedicated to online confrontations, that is, there are no more connections – P2P.

In addition to everything, the War zone is the new icing on the franchise's multiplayer cake. popularly known as Warzone, the mode offers two distinct modes for up to 24 players. The maps are huge, have a wide variety of vehicles and are still inhabited by opponents controlled by the game. It feels like being in a real colossal war of the titans.

And you, what do you think of “Halo 5: Guardians”?