On October 27, the much anticipated Halo 5: Guardians was released on Xbox One. I had pre-ordered it, being a longtime Halo fan, and started playing immediately when it was released.  Overall, Halo 5: Guardians is a decent successor to the games that came before it.

 

As to storyline, I want to avoid spoilers as much as possible, but I liked it. As in all games of the Halo franchise, Halo 5: Guardians is action-packed. It is a story of two Spartan teams coming together to defeat a new and unexpected threat, even though one of them had been ordered to capture and arrest the other. One team, Blue Team, is led by the iconic Master Chief, and the other, Fireteam Osirus, is led by a new character, Spartan Locke. As it was hinted at in trailers, the artificial intelligence Cortana, formerly thought to be deceased, plays a major role in the story.

 

There are fifteen missions, all of which have collectables to be found. Collectables include audio recordings left behind by various individuals, some of which are revealing in regards to the story and the game world, while others are just funny. There are a few missions that do not involve any combat, but there are only three of them, and none are very long. The end, though I will not specify exactly what it was, was a bit of a cliffhanger, and should leave everyone anticipating Halo 6.

 

The multiplayer, though less than I expected, was pleasing. There are seven different playlists, five of which have up to eight players in the match, the other two having up to 24 players. There is a playlist for team objective-based game types, one for team death-match, one for a new single life per round game, one for free for all game types, and one for SWAT, a high skill game with precision weapons. Those are the eight players per game playlists.

 

The 24-player games are something new entirely. Two Spartan teams battle to control three bases, thus earning points. There are also random computer-controlled bosses that spawn which will award points to the team that defeats them. If a team holds all three bases, the opposing team's home base will become vulnerable and one can destroy their core to win the match. That particular mode is very chaotic.

 

As one would expect in a new game on a next gen console, the graphics are of very high quality. There are some multiplayer maps that look as if not much time was spent on their texturing, but overall graphics are very good. There were a few general gameplay changes as well. Now one can aim down the sights of any weapon, and use it while doing so; however, one cannot use the sights while taking damage. Also if one aims down the sights in midair one will hover in place.

 

The player also has a few new abilities. He can at any time evade in any direction, but he must wait a few seconds before being using it again. One can, while sprinting, press the melee button, to do a shoulder charge that does more damage than the base melee attack and has knockback properties. The final ability is a ground pound. To perform it, one holds the melee button while in midair and choose where one wants to go. A circle will appear on the ground to indicate where one is landing and is perfect for doing a lot of damage. A final general change was in the way certain weapons work, the addition of special variants of certain weapons, and a few new enemies.

 

One thing that bugs me is that there is currently no map editor mode. However, it will be released at a later date and will include far more features than in previous games with over 1600 different items available. I look forward very much to its release in December.

 

There is, however, one truly bad part about Halo 5: Guardians. It has no split-screen function, which has always been one of Halo's selling points. I myself didn't find out about this until I tried to plug in a second controller, and when nothing happened, I did some research. 343 Industries stated that it had removed split screen to allow for better graphics and more frames per second in a larger game world, and that split screen would be impossible to add into Halo 5: Guardians in an update. This is a desecration of Halo tradition. Many parents enjoy playing split screen games with their kids, and now they can't do so on the newest and most advanced shooter currently out. That is just one of the many examples of a negative effect the removal of split screen causes

 

In conclusion, I give Halo 5: Guardians a rating of 7/10. As I stated before, it is a decent successor to the games that came before it in the franchise. I liked the story, and found the multiplayer generally pleasing, if a bit frustrating at times. The graphics were amazing, and general gameplay was great. However I must ask, were these nice new graphics at 60 frames per second worth sacrificing the time-honored feature of split screen? I think not.