This is a halo 5 review. The purpose of the thread is to give my perspective on halo 5. I'm not going to rate it. Or state one way or the other on wether it's good or not. I'm going to preface this write up by stating that I'm a long time halo fan. I played LAN parties of Halo CE when I was pretty young. Still to this day Halo CE is my favorite halo. Halo 2 and reach frequently flop between my least favorite. I've read a few of the books and have beaten a mythic run through all halo's barring halo 5 and halo wars. This particular post is only going to touch majorly on the multiplayer aspect. I will however give my short but brief opinion on halo 5's story at the end. Anyway I felt compelled to write this since i've been playing halo 5 again more recently. Post launch I spent a majority of my experience playing warzone and lately i've been diving into the arena. Warzone is all good and dandy but it's not the core halo experience. It isn't the closeness and detailed feeling that you get from 4v4's in arena. As I dived into arena for a few hours I began to become frustrated. See i'm mainly an FFA player. I'm used to taking things slowly and methodically. Using precision weapons pretty much exclusively. But I was struggling in halo 5's FFA. My pistol wasn't cutting it. Most of the maps felt closed in like I was always on high alert. I'd never know when someone could be just around the corner. I can't even imagine how worse this felt when it was originally 8 players instead of 6. I was completely ready to give up and admit that halo 5 had failed. But I finished my match and sat for a second playing back the last match in my head. What was I doing wrong? Am I simply not as good as I used to be? Or is the multiplayer too chaotic now? I soon realized that halo 5 hadn't failed me. I failed it. I was getting frustrated because my old ways THE old ways of playing no longer worked. And in this sense halo 5 is a new type of halo. You can't simply take a nice stroll around the area and land headshots easily. The game now rewards more aggressive play. The assault rifle and shoulder charge serve you well on most maps when it comes to FFA. the pistol being favored for slightly larger maps where combat is slower and farther in between each skirmish. I noticed though that once I started playing against players around my level of skill combat changed. Blindly charging in with an automatic trying to land a good shoulder check would often get me killed. in this encounter I had to slow to my standard movement speed. Strafing was far more present and banking nades as well. This was the halo I was used to. And thrusters added a small layer on top of that adding more moments where you tense up. Allowing bigger reactionary plays. This is where I got my title "where old and new meet." Halo 5 feels to me like the correct way to move halo forward after 3. Reach went too hard on armor abilities which changed too much. Jet pack broke maps. Armor lock broke combat flow. and sprint's implimentation actually caused jump height and strafe speed to be lowered in order to seem worthwhile. Which changed basic combat. And then we had bloom. Which rewarded spammers and punished pacers. Halo 4 was closer to what we needed. But the ORD system took away basic map control one of halo's key features. and loadouts while interesting created a bunch of samey weapons and occasionally advantages VIA traits that players could simply not see. Creating a level of unpredictability. Where as halo 5 keeps us all on the same footing with abilities and weapons. The spartan abilities add in my opinion, more depth to the movement pillar that is halo. This time around sprint isn't as huge of an advantage and your punished for playing aggressively with it. Clamber and stabilizers allow new paths to either get to combat or finish it. No weapon seems over powered or redundant. Map control is back. In the past you merely had to master a single type of play. In halo 5 you must be a master of old halo and new halo. and you have to be able to use and flip between them when appropriate. This is only further cemented when you look at the recent halo 5 tourny. Pro players often switched from their old ways to playing more aggressively. Halo 5 manages to keep that old halo feel but add to it as well. That's not to say halo 5 is without faults though. We are still lacking a decent amount of gametypes. A proper fileshare system and really no social outlet for multiplayer..just to name a few. I'm personally confused on why certain things are called out on the map but other power weapons/abilities don't. I also really think REQ's need to be re structured. Warzone is only 2 modes at the most. Arena has more game types. yet players who only play arena have to wait potentially longer for cosmetic items that they want because they also have to earn warzone things as well. I think this can easily be changed by giving a weapon pack, vehicle pack, and cosmetic pack. maybe also allow us to buy the gear we want directly at a higher cost? I'm also bothered by boss stealing in warzone. and I don't think the cost on req points was done properly. Getting an ONI warthog which shoots explosive rounds and can take a severe beating costs the same amount as a base warthog. But that's really it on my complaints. I don't know how I honestly feel about halo 5. I like it sometimes. and can also get very frustrated. But I'm like that with every game. So who knows. All I can say for sure is that out of all 3 games that changed halo in a big way (reach, 4, 5) halo 5 is probably the best way to take the series. As for the story...I think they did good. Granted some missions could have been made into cutscenes or slapped in with a previous mission. And we could have benefited from a little more detail. (like how cortana is alive and made it to the domain. Or even how the domain is still intact) etc. But I was very moved by the campaign. Reache's deaths never made me flinch. except for noble 6. which ironically had no depth to him.