Recent reviews by The Rat

This game isn't great, I don't even know if I can call it good.

It's free
Good mod support
Guns/first person hands look pretty nice.

Movement is clunky
Damage seems off - all the rifles feel the exact same in terms of power, it also feels like leg and body shots don't make a difference.
The audio isn't great, guns pretty much sound the exact same at every range
Gunplay is very basic, almost seems like the bare minimum for a modern shooter
Forced weapon sway feels horrible for every gun and most weapons are Irons/holographic so anything beyond short range feels terrible. Also trying to ID your target is horrendous at range
No Bipoding/bracing or breath holding, making Marksman and MGs just feel off
Optimization when in a multiplayer match is poor.
AI is very simple when pathing, but can engage at nearly any range with any weapon very accurately


All in all, this feels like it released extremely early even for an early access title. I have some semblance of hope that perhaps in the future the dev team will add in more basic features and fix some of the problems(and not pulling a Bethesda and essentially leaving the fixes up to modders). Right now all of the games it is trying to compete with are in significantly better states of being playable.

Perhaps in the future, this game will actually be able to compete with other shooters in the same market and If or when it does, I will more than gladly come back and change this review to reflect the changes.

I start this off by saying I wish I could review this as a mixed bag, but due to the nature of it I will rate it positively.

Starting off, a lot of things you will probably see scrolling through reviews point to the same thing; the battle pass.
While I do not personally have an issue with the battle pass existing, it is not free or (currently) obtainable for free through gameplay (such as earning low amounts of premium currency for gameplay/challenges). The unlocks for the free version of the battle pass are few and far between and the only way to gain XP for the pass is through completing daily and weekly challenges that seem to range from 100-250xp per challenge, but it takes about one thousand xp per rank of the pass and you may not get a challenge done per match.

A second much more minor thing is the lack of color customization. At the moment of writing this review, you only have a solid color option with some later unlockables having secondary colors/patterns that cannot be changed

Other than those two points, the game is solid. It runs well, the guns feel solid and it is a blast bringing me back to the old days of playing Halo on the xbox with friends. It is also free multiplayer, so even if you are on the fence about being worth the download, there is no harm taking some time and disk space to check out a new Halo game.