Halo 5: Guardians Warzone Firefight Impressions

Despite only being included within a couple of the Halo titles, Firefight has certainly been one of the big fan favorites and is always requested when a new Halo releases. Many were disappointed not seeing it in Halo 4 or Halo 5: Guardians at launch, but at around six months later it's now finally available for beta. It's only being tested at the moment though I thought it would be nice to take a look at how it's shaping up. I certainly enjoy getting the monthly releases for Halo 5 though it's still odd to see the Halo title broken up into so many pieces as they're usually very robust at launch experiences. That limited amount of time they spend on the various areas (new content each month) does somewhat show within Firefight as they've taken the existing Warzone environments and just shrunk the player size while adding some more enemies into drop-offs. Those that have played Firefight int he past will feel somewhat at home here though the experience is much more accelerated than in past Halo titles with less focus on survival and more on just eliminating bosses. The games are split into five rounds with a time clock and essential bosses to kill or the squad fails.





This aspect works alright in keeping the pace up, but some of the fun with Firefight is grinding through the areas to survive or like in Reach just having a more out there time which this also doesn't aim to do. It's just eight players not communicating and going their separate ways to eliminate a shot down pile of enemies. The location of where this pile of enemy troops whether that's the Covenant or the Prometheans just switches to keep you moving which feels a bit too focused as I like Firefight constantly trying to throw fire at you from all angles. The eight players is a nice tough though like I said there's less of a focus on teamwork or even communication to work efficiently with players immediately ditching each other. I did find the array of Spartan colors and customization to be great as it's something rarely seen within the title. Being a variation of Warzone REQ packs are available in high gear with constant REQ points being earned so you see a lot of higher class vehicles in this mode. In one match I saw two Scorpions and a Mantis together against the Warden Eternal which was intense. Still, despite their efforts I felt like this just took aspects from Warzone and tweaked them into what resembles Firefight instead of trying to create something unique that fans have been asking for over these last two titles. It's still nice to see that someone at 343 was thinking about Firefight, I just want a bit more out of it. I'm sure many will still find this fun as it was great working together against the AI, it just didn't hit the same notes as the original Firefight mode. We still don't have an official release date for Firefight and it could very well change quite a bit as it's just in beta, want to make sure that was noted.

Impressions Made on Halo 5: Guardians during the Warzone Firefight Beta