Hello Halo 5

Hello? Halo?

If Titanfall 2 is being heralded as the COD killer, where will that leave Halo?  I recently, as were many others, able to download and play for free Halo 5 for 7 days.  I am giving the game a solid... 6/10 and I say that with a heavy heart.  Since the early days of the original Xbox, halo games have been huge and one of my favorites.  However the latest installment made me go, is that it? Where is the rest of it?  I waited for this thing to download for like 4 hours and this is all I get?  Now before I break it down, do remember that I am not a huge multiplayer online gamer.  There are few games that enjoy online and multiplayer and Halo is not one of them.  I am also a casual gamer so if you are looking at me to be the legendary bad ass whatever, that's not gonna happen.

The Bad:

1) Very short campaign.  Like seriously.  I was able to beat it in something like 8-10 hours.  It took almost that much time to download.  Granted the campaigns have never been to terribly long, but when I finished playing this I didn't even feel like any of the levels were overly fun and that I wanted to go and do them again (which I did like in 4).

2) Very shortened campaign story.  Now I've played Halo 4, but jumping in to 5 I'm confused.  I know why the Dr is where she is, but I think the whole covenant civil war hasn't been fleshed out very well, and what the hell is going on with the forerunners and chief.  Why is he even out there to start with?  Why did I only get to play as master chief 2-3 times.  I feel like there is a larger part of his story that I'm missing out on.  Don't even get me started on the rest of blue team.  Let's just add random characters and say they are from chiefs past and not give any of that story.

3) Cortana is back.  Sorta. I feel like this was what the game hinged on and it was extremely disappointing.  All Halo's to this point have ended with some sort of closure.  The big bad dead, the flood stopped, the covenant defeated, whatever.  What did we accomplish in this game?  Rescued master chief from probably the best place he could have been to setup the next game and make it awesome?  What big bad was defeated?  The Warden? A sub-character to the main supposed villain, with yet an even more vague history?  Sorry but basically the game's only purpose was to bring in the new Spartans, and appear to phase out master chief.  (yes I saw the legendary ending I know, I saw what Cortana was doing).

4) If COD deserves to go, so does Halo at this point.  COD has taken ridicule for going off base from its original title and not having original content.  Though Halo may still be set in its universe, switching to commanding teammates, poor controller tutorials (I was half way through the game before I figured out how to power slam), crappy side characters that are slow to get to the point (or spawn the vehicles for the mission) and the same weapons as always.  Halo 4 had at least improved upon the weapons both adding new ones, and remastering the old ones.  Halo 5 had the same weapons as 4 with minor reworking down sight viewing.  Slow tanks, shifty spartan sprinting controls that only some of the time worked correctly, Halo hasn't changed or added anything interesting this time round.  If I was going to buy it before, I'm definitely not going to buy it now.

5) Multiplayer.  I know I don't like multiplayer, but if you are going to make a game that's so heavy in the story you need to focus on the story.  I'm sure the 8 person hoard mode or whatever is awesome, I didn't play it, but I didn't want to either.  If there were further hints at the story in the multiplayer.  Idk, it didn't say.  Maybe I haven't done my "homework" enough for this game but I don't feel like I should have to search all over the internet and play every aspect of a game to be able to understand the story line.

The Good:

1) *Phew* ok so shaking off the bad.  What I did like, like most games now, is that it was beautiful and ran smoothly.  The cut scenes where excellent (except for Locke and Chief fighting.  I mean come on Chief would destroy Locke hands down).  I even liked that there were recognizable faces Locke and Buck, and not all of the extra characters from the previous games being dead or unused.

2) I really liked that I was forced to pick up and use weapons I don't usually use out of preference.  While I was playing no matter what you would run out of ammo and sometimes get creative when it came to finding a way to get more ammo or another gun.  However those guns haven't really changed much since... Halo 3 or earlier.

3) Though having other teammates with you was sort of different in this, it wasn't a completely horrible thing.  They didn't do much and sort of got stuck behind things a lot, but it was nice that if you got downed they could revive you, you could use them to distract hunters, and if anything got behind you they might kill it.

4) The new Spartans.  I'm not apposed to the new Spartans, I just wish I had more back story without having to buy the books, or wiki the story, or the tv show, etc.  I like how they seem more human than chief, and how Locke seems to have a thing for what's her face (Palmer).  Lasky or Roland is for some reason wanted by Cortana, maybe because of Halsey but my guess would be Lasky himself, because why have a whole tv show dedicated to Lasky.  

5)  There is a lot of room for new things.  New weapons, new threats, new characters and character dynamics, new transportation, new worlds, new multiplayer modes, etc.

I will end with this.  Halo.  You are stuck in the universe you are in currently.  You either need to embrace that and make it work to your advantage and push your story on into the future, or throw it away and jump full into the future where Chief is out for a really long time and recreate your universe.  You have AI but you don't really use it except for computers.  You have alien invasions, but no defense or defensive characters, you have space travel but don't really do much with it.  Something needs to change if you want your franchise to survive more than the next game or two.