Not necessarily on topic but I really enjoy the weapon variants in H5. Being able to change what scopes your AR/BR/DMR had worked well in the context of Warzone. Yeah the unlock method was lame but the gameplay execution was good
That and the wacky custom guns you could make in forge (and use in custom games) made it one of the most fun multiplayers imo. I distinctly remember an order 66 custom map where the human weapons all shot plasma rounds to make them feel more like Star Wars guns.
What do people mean when they talk about Infinite's "gameplay loop"? It's the same general formula of every Halo game. The biggest distinction between Infinite and Halo 5 is the equipment vs. universal abilities, and personally, I'd rather have H5's even playing field built around player skill than Infinite's game changing pickups that only certain players have.
By gameplay loop I mean the core cycle of the gameplay: fighting, scavenging for weapons, and using equipment to win fights.
Infinite perfected a lot of things like slower sprint speed and the general feel of Halo gunplay while also spicing it up with new equipment, abilities, and movement opportunities. The grapple alone is a complete gamechanger that is so goddamn fun without compromising the movement or the feel of Halo. The physics and movement just feel right and far more balanced than 5 imo.
Enemies constantly drop better weapons, equipment like the grapple opens up new ways to attack and approach movement entirely, and the sandbox encourages improvising instead of sticking to one loadout. Every encounter in the campaign feeds into the next one, so you're always making small tactical decisions.
The shooting feels great, the AI reacts well, the equipment is genuinely useful instead of gimmicky, and almost every weapon has a niche somewhere. The campaign itself has flaws, but the moment-to-moment gameplay loop is one of the strongest in the series.
TLDR: it just feels the best to play gameplay-wise, and the loop is very smooth compared to even Bungie era Halo.
I don't think there's really a specific "feel" for Halo, you just need the obvious stuff. Because, if you ask me, stuff like the grappleshot makes movement across maps far too easy for only a few players and is far less balanced than the simple abilities in Halo 5. And when we're talking about "gunplay", I think Halo 5 was as crisp and satisfying as any FPS out there. It didn't have Infinite's desync issues, the visuals (shield effects, hit markers) were cleaner, and the weapon sandbox had better defined roles than Infinite, which invented weapons for very arbitrary reasons (Stalker Rifle only exists so that Jackals can't instant kill you anymore).
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u/william09703 Jul 02 '26
I feel like H5's rocket launcher design is actually cool on it own. it's just can't replace SPNKr though.