Halo Infinite - the next Halo game

[The Decline]

It seems the campaign alternates between boring open world section which features nothing interesting to find or see (everything is generic looking and samey), and indoor closed off missions which feature identical copy and pasted indoor environments.

I can't tell if you are talking about Infinite or the original Halo.

 

[aweigh]

Man, this franchise is a fucking waste of time.
I feel embarrassed about even developing an interest in it.

This is basically the Seinfeld of military science fiction, its a franchise about nothing. And loads of people are buying it.

It used to be about Cortana's tits and ass but the SJWs took that away too, now there's nothing.

 

[aweigh]

Campaign runs like shit for me, on an RTX 3070 and a Ryzen 7 3800x. It mostly has to do with horrid frame pacing issues (I'm very sensitive to this kind of stuff unfortunately), even though the average framerate holds out decently well in the 80ish range at 1440p, there are frequent spikes and it just feels like shit a lot of the time.

The game's automatic resolution scaling also doesn't work properly if you don't engage the ingame vsync (as opposed to using an external limiter like RTSS), which is atrocious and makes the frame pacing issues even worse.

I hadn't played a Halo campaign since Halo 3 and liked the combat scenarios even though the open-world stuff feels like Ubishit. Halo enemy AI is pretty decent compared to other popamole shooters.

In any case, I refuse to play something so shoddily optimized. Obviously all of their optimization efforts went for their closed box (Series X or whatever), which despite having significantly inferior specs apparently runs the game at a locked 4k/60 or 1440p/120.

I might play once a few patches smooth things out, but then again, maybe not.

Try uninstalling the 'High Resolution Texture Pack', that helped me out on my end. I'm on an i5 8400 with an RTX 2060 Super, and I'm currently playing it at 80% of 1440p (so almost 1080p) with a mix of Medium and High settings. Uninstalling the HRTP and lowering Textures down to 'High' fixed most of my stuttering during the open world, but the performance is still subpar. I have most of the heavy settings on Medium, with the only High ones being the CPU-related ones, and frankly it should run and look much better than what it currently does.

I can un-ironically say Cyberpunk 2077 looked and ran better on release on my rig.

EDIT: Oh, I also have the in-game VSYNC disabled, and using NVIDIA-forced G-Sync + V-Sync ON; and using RTSS to limit to 60FPS.

 

[J1M]

Campaign runs like shit for me, on an RTX 3070 and a Ryzen 7 3800x. It mostly has to do with horrid frame pacing issues (I'm very sensitive to this kind of stuff unfortunately), even though the average framerate holds out decently well in the 80ish range at 1440p, there are frequent spikes and it just feels like shit a lot of the time.

The game's automatic resolution scaling also doesn't work properly if you don't engage the ingame vsync (as opposed to using an external limiter like RTSS), which is atrocious and makes the frame pacing issues even worse.

I hadn't played a Halo campaign since Halo 3 and liked the combat scenarios even though the open-world stuff feels like Ubishit. Halo enemy AI is pretty decent compared to other popamole shooters.

In any case, I refuse to play something so shoddily optimized. Obviously all of their optimization efforts went for their closed box (Series X or whatever), which despite having significantly inferior specs apparently runs the game at a locked 4k/60 or 1440p/120.

I might play once a few patches smooth things out, but then again, maybe not.

There's no chance the Xbox runs anything at native 4K. Console marketing is the reason that upscaling was invented.

 

[Great Deceiver]

There's no chance the Xbox runs anything at native 4K. Console marketing is the reason that upscaling was invented.

You're right, the game uses dynamic resolution scaling on consoles, and ostensibly on PC - except it doesn't work properly unless you engage the garbage ingame vsync.

I'll try aweigh 's suggestion of deleting the hi-res texture pack and see if it makes a difference regarding the stutter. I also have a gsync display and use RTSS.

 

[aweigh]

You're right, the game uses dynamic resolution scaling on consoles, and ostensibly on PC - except it doesn't work properly unless you engage the garbage ingame vsync.

I'll try aweigh 's suggestion of deleting the hi-res texture pack and see if it makes a difference regarding the stutter. I also have a gsync display and use RTSS.

I also found that, for whatever reason, I get camera-stutter if I disable the "Minimum Framerate" option, so for now I have it at '30' and Maximum Framerate set to '60', with a 60FPS lock in RTSS and NVCP Gsync + Vsync ON.

Setting Min Framerate option to 'Off' immediately casues camera-motion stutter, like when the FPS/Hz are un-synced, regardless of what combination of vsync/gsync/whatever is being used.

 

[JDR13]

Apparently, you're supposed to play Halo Wars 2 to figure some stuff out about this new threat you're fighting in Infinite. I do kinda like Halo, but not enough to play fucking Halo Wars or read some stupid comics. What a shitload of fuck!

Fuck that. That's what YouTube recaps are for.

 

[King Crispy]

Wow, this game is a mess on PC right now in terms of performance. As soon as you actually step foot outside watch your framerate horribly plummet.

Even with my 10900K and 3090, on Ultra settings in 1440p it goes from a smooth 120+ fps during the indoor introduction to a stuttery mess of 95-100 outdoors. You would think that 95+ fps would be just fine, but there's a bizarre desynchronization occurring that introduces severe frame skipping or something. And it's not microstutter. Something is fundamentally wrong with the way the game is being rendered.

Oh well. It seems p. boring anyway, so it's probably not even worth waiting for a fix, if one is even possible.

 

[randir14]

I mostly got rid of the stuttering by putting both min and max fps at 72, and also a 72 RTSS cap. Vsync disabled in game but forced in NVCP, and I'm using a Gsync monitor. Already uninstalled it though, I think the campaign sucks.

 

[Belegarsson]

The game has really bad frame pacing, it did improve somewhat from the beta but combined with 30fps animations and the whole thing never feels as smooth as contemporary PC games.

 

[King Crispy]

Okay I have a little good news to report on this.

For me, so far, Nvidia GeForce drivers 497.07 (Dec. 1) appear to have stabilized framerate outdoors. I'm now running full Ultra everything and easily sustaining 120fps smooth, but I've only run around a little bit so far. But it looks way better.

Also, per Tom's benchmark article on the game, enabling Asynch Compute in the settings may have also helped, but I tested that before upgrading the drivers and at that time it didn't seem to do anything.

Anyone else also morbidly curious about the performance of this turd like I am, see if you're experiencing the same gains by upgrading to 497.07. I fully recommend a proper DDU cleaning first.

Full disclosure: I've done just about everything else to my system to optimize for performance, including enabling Resizeable BAR, etc., so your mileage may vary.

Update: Okay, it's definitely much better with 497.07, but still far from perfect. The very weird thing is that just looking in different directions outdoors can still cause the framerate (for me) to dip to about 105 for a moment, but then it almost always pops right back up to 120. Running around still causes the maddening frame skipping issues and those are still present in any cutscene.

It's really weird because clearly the engine is capable of sustaining constant framerate, but something's going on that keeps interrupting it. It reminds me of the problems that Rage had when it was first released, which were never really solved.

This game really needs a performance patch.

 

[Removal]

Apparently, you're supposed to play Halo Wars 2 to figure some stuff out about this new threat you're fighting in Infinite. I do kinda like Halo, but not enough to play fucking Halo Wars or read some stupid comics. What a shitload of fuck!

It's just a retreading of Halo CE with some open world stuff added in, fighting the not-covenant who are awakening an ancient forerunner enemy who are even "more evil and powerful than the flood" and are strong enough that firing a halo array doesn't effect them

Spoiler

then the game ends with time traveling and shit

 

[lycanwarrior]

Single-player campaign is getting top scores in mainstream media despite the game basically being a Ubisoft version of Halo. Also runs like shit for what it offers.

I've heard similar criticisms leveled at Biomutant and even Ghost of Tsushima and Breath of the Wild.

Since Ubisoft is king of open-world "sandbox" gaming, a lot of games in this genre are going to end up with many of the same traits as well as its shortcummings.

 

[Israfael]

Played a bit (in a free demo, of course), it is almost as disappointing as what nu-shadow warrior 2 was to nu-shadow warrior 1. This game is a bit too easy on legendary (only the first boss delivered some troubles and he has probably the most OP weapon in the game sans the hammer), and it's graphix:fps ratio is horrendous. While I don't get any stutters and other problems that people with nVidia GPUs seem to experience, it's only pumping out 70-80 fps at high settings outdoors which is probably the lowest I experienced in years (especially if you consider that the view here isn't better than it is in Halo 2 Anniversary). If I were a Halo fan, I'd be aghast at how they butchered the game by basically turning it in an unholy mix of SW2 (or borderlands, not sure, never played but heard that SW2 was inspired by that pile of dren) and ubi-Farcry. Infinite outposts, I guess, was the working title of this 'masterpiece'. Stunningly empty levels for a project that was in the making for 7 years or whatever time they spent on it. Currently it looks like (visually) Rust and the other eastern european shovelware sandbox / survival games but without the toolkit and gameplay of those games.

 

[King Crispy]

Another update: Setting the minimum framerate to 120 seems to have further stabilized things. I'm only seeing dips of about 2 - 3 fps even while rapidly roaming about and even in combat, further suggesting that this isn't a fundamental problem with the engine.

I'm going to keep progressing further in the game to see if this stays consistent, for science's sake, of course.

Is the minimum framerate setting in this game some form of DLSS?

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Just play the game you faggot.

 

[Ivan]

As someone without much Halo history, I dabbled a bit with the multiplayer in 2 and played some fan mod of Halo 1, this was a mixed bag. The shooting is solid: the audio design is well done, the enemy AI is active and has a lot of personality, the movement is solid, I was not expecting the navigation mechanic allowed by the hookshot to be so damn satisfying. I loved navigating the arenas however I wanted by using the hookshot. I liked that you could use it offensively against enemies and to pull explosive barrels toward you. What ended up killing my interest in continuing the game was the game structure. It's set in an open world that feels very reminiscent of the Far Cry 3+ gameloop. Most of the time you'll be clearing outposts and traversing a boring landmass. I found myself skipping the combat encounters that weren't marked on the map b/c I didn't want to bother to waste the ammo (reminding me of the issue Breath of the Wild has: why engage with trivial encounters and use up munitions). I didn't like that the game would spawn dropships whenever it wanted, b/c they, along with the snipers, deal an incredible amount of damage. I found myself fatigued quite quickly from the world structure and bounced off soon after the game started crashing.

Again, the base combat loop is GREAT, it's the Far Cry-esque world structure that soured the experience and turned me off.

 

[BLOBERT]

BRO SO I DOWNLOADED THIS SHIT

I LIKED HALO REACH WHICH I PLAYED THIS YEAR

IF I CAN TAKE A FUCKING BREAK FROM NIOH LOLLLLOL

 

[ferratilis]

Game Informer named this game as their GOTY
https://www.gameinformer.com/feature/game-informers-top-10-games-of-2021

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Geeh what a surprise

 

[Squid]

Not surprising. Don't know how the campaign is but the multiplayer isn't too bad (could be better or at least on par with Halo 3 but this is the best 343 has done so far). I'm sure there are worse choices that a big magazine like that would choose for GOTY.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Helps that a briefcase full of cocaine, money, and digitally altered sexual blackmail came with the review copy.

 

[baud]

Helps that a briefcase full of cocaine, money, and digitally altered sexual blackmail came with the review copy.

nah, just mountain dew and doritos, that's enough for the journalists working there.
(or maybe the Microsoft ads on their website)

 

[Magnum]

Single-player campaign is getting top scores in mainstream media despite the game basically being a Ubisoft version of Halo. Also runs like shit for what it offers.

I've heard similar criticisms leveled at Biomutant and even Ghost of Tsushima and Breath of the Wild.

Since Ubisoft is king of open-world "sandbox" gaming, a lot of games in this genre are going to end up with many of the same traits as well as its shortcummings.

Far Doom where MasterPredatorDoomChiefGuy grapple hooks between hell bases killing demons.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

This seems like a cool, honest review:




Must say I was kinda surprised by this

 

[Zlaja]

Obligatory: