Halo Infinite Review – The Grappleshot Return to Form

🪝 The Return of the King?

🪖 This review is part of the Halo Saga – play Master Chief’s journey in order.

After the divisive Halo 5, Halo Infinite carried a heavy expectation: this was supposed to be the game that brought Halo home — back to the classic feel, back to the iconic ring, back to the franchise at its best. It was 343 Industries’ big, careful swing at recapturing the magic, and the remarkable thing is how often it connects. The gunplay is the best the series has had in years, the new grappleshot is a stroke of genius, and stepping onto an open Halo ring under that familiar sky genuinely feels like coming home.

At Dadnology we rate Halo Infinite a strong 8.5/10. It is the best 343 Halo and the closest the studio has come to the Bungie peak. It is not a 10, and the reason is well-documented: it launched rough, thin on content, with campaign co-op and the Forge editor missing at release. But the core — the thing you actually play minute to minute — is excellent, and the game has only improved since. This is a genuine return to form.

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🎯 The Best Gunplay in Years

Strip everything else away and Halo Infinite nails the single most important thing: it feels incredible to shoot. 343 rebuilt the sandbox around classic principles — the pinpoint Battle Rifle, the satisfying weapon variety, the readable enemies, the perfect weight of a grenade throw — and the result is the most satisfying minute-to-minute Halo combat since the Bungie days. Every weapon has a clear identity, the Covenant and Banished enemies are fun and varied to fight again (a welcome return after the spongy Prometheans), and the gunplay just sings.

This is the foundation everything else is built on, and it is why the game earns its high score even with its launch baggage. When the shooting is this good, a lot is forgivable.

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Halo Infinite (Xbox Series X|S) (opens in a new tab)

The latest mainline Halo and the only one outside the Master Chief Collection. The campaign is the paid half; multiplayer is free.

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🪝 The Grappleshot: Halo’s Best New Toy in a Decade

The standout addition — and one of the best new mechanics the franchise has ever introduced — is the grappleshot. It is a grappling hook, and it transforms how you play. Swing across a canyon to flank an outpost. Yank a distant enemy off a ledge toward your fist. Pull a dropped weapon or a Warthog straight into your hands. Zip up to a sniper’s perch in a second. Stun a Brute with a grapple-dash and follow up with a melee.

What makes the grappleshot brilliant is how it multiplies the sandbox. It turns every encounter into a playground of vertical, kinetic options, and it pairs perfectly with the open ring — traversal becomes a joy instead of a chore. It is the most fun new tool Halo has added in a decade, the kind of mechanic you keep finding new uses for fifty hours in. Once you have played with it, going back to a Halo without it feels like missing a limb.

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🌄 Zeta Halo: An Open Ring Done Right

For the first time, Halo went semi-open-world, and it suits the franchise beautifully. The ring of Zeta Halo is a large, explorable hub — rolling hills, forests, cliffs, and Banished outposts — that you liberate piece by piece, freeing Marines, capturing FOBs to unlock weapons and vehicles, and taking on high-value targets, all threaded between more linear story missions.

It is not a sprawling, marker-bloated open world in the modern blockbuster sense, and that restraint is a strength. The freedom is Halo-shaped: it is really about giving you a gorgeous classic ring to drive a Warthog across, grapple through, and pick your own approach to each fight. Cresting a hill, spotting an enemy base in the distance, and deciding how you want to take it — that is the open ring at its best, and it recaptures the wide-open feeling of the very first game more than anything since.

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Xbox Series X Console (opens in a new tab)

Runs Halo Infinite at its best — 4K/60fps, near-instant loading, and free on Game Pass. The ideal home for the saga.

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🆓 The Free Multiplayer: Classic Halo, For Everyone

One of Infinite’s smartest moves: the multiplayer is free-to-play and separate from the paid campaign. Anyone with an Xbox or PC can download it and jump into a genuine return to classic, equal-start Halo competition — no loadouts, no pay-to-win, just the sandbox, the maps, and your skill. It was widely praised at launch as the best-feeling competitive Halo in years, and removing the price barrier means you can hand the multiplayer to a friend or an older kid at zero cost.

The progression and content cadence were a sore point early on, but the underlying multiplayer game has always been excellent. As a free, classic-feeling Halo arena that anyone can play, it is a genuine gift to the community.

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👨 The Dad Angle

Halo Infinite is rated M with the saga’s clean, gore-free sci-fi tone, and for dads it gets two big things right that Halo 5 got wrong. First, co-op came back — both online and split-screen campaign co-op are supported (post-launch), so the couch Halo tradition lives again. Second, the free multiplayer means you can get a kid or a friend into Halo without anyone spending a cent.

It is also wonderfully suited to the dad schedule. The open ring lets you knock out a single outpost or high-value target in a short session and feel like you accomplished something, the grappleshot makes even a fifteen-minute play session pure fun, and on a Series X it loads near-instantly and is free on Game Pass. As the current, ongoing Halo, it is the easiest entry point for getting back into the saga today.

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⚖️ Infinite vs the Bungie Classics: Has Halo Come Home?

The whole pitch of Halo Infinite was “Halo is back,” so the fair question is: back to what, exactly, and does it match the originals? On pure gunplay, Infinite stands toe to toe with the Bungie greats — the weapon feel, the enemy readability, the satisfying weight of every encounter is the closest the series has come to that magic since 2007. In that one crucial respect, yes, Halo came home.

Where it still falls short of the perfect trilogy is completeness and consistency. The Bungie games were tight, hand-crafted, content-rich packages from day one; Infinite is a brilliant core that launched half-dressed, with a story that opens strong and then leaves its biggest threads dangling, and an open ring that turns a little repetitive in its back half. The grappleshot is a genuinely new idea the classics never had, which is a point in Infinite’s favor — but the classics never shipped missing their co-op, either. So the verdict is nuanced: Infinite has the best foundation of any post-Bungie Halo and moments that rival the originals, but it does not yet have their flawless, complete-package discipline. It is the sound of a studio rediscovering what made Halo great, and very nearly nailing it.

🔄 The Live-Service Question and Where It Goes Next

Infinite was built to be a platform, not just a game — a live-service Halo intended to grow for years through seasons, new modes, and a steady content drip. That ambition is double-edged. On one hand, the game today is far richer than the one that launched: co-op and Forge arrived, the multiplayer matured, and the content cadence improved dramatically. On the other, the slow early rollout damaged the game’s reputation at the worst possible moment, and it spent its first year fighting an uphill battle for player goodwill.

For a dad weighing whether to jump in now, that history is actually good news: you are arriving after the rough patch, to a game that has been steadily improved into the state it should have launched in. The free multiplayer is healthy, the campaign and co-op are complete, and Forge is one of the most powerful creation tools the series has ever shipped. Whatever comes next for the franchise, Infinite proved the core is sound — and that is the most reassuring thing a long-time fan could ask for.

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Xbox Wireless Controller – Carbon Black (opens in a new tab)

A second pad for Infinite's co-op campaign, which arrived after launch. Couch and online co-op are both supported.

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❓ FAQ: Back on the Ring

Is Halo Infinite a return to form?

Yes, largely. Halo Infinite has the best gunplay the series has had in years, the grappleshot is the most fun new tool Halo has added in a decade, and the semi-open ring recaptures the classic Halo feeling. It launched rough on content, but the core experience is excellent.

What is the grappleshot?

The grappleshot is a grappling hook tool that lets Master Chief swing across the open ring, yank enemies toward him, pull weapons and vehicles to his hand, and stun foes with a melee dash. It is the standout new mechanic and reinvents how the sandbox plays.

Is Halo Infinite open world?

It is semi-open. The ring of Zeta Halo is a large, explorable hub with outposts to liberate and side objectives, connected to more linear story missions. It is not a fully open world like other genre giants, but the freedom is a big change for Halo and it works well.

Is Halo Infinite multiplayer free?

Yes. The multiplayer is free-to-play and separate from the paid campaign, so anyone can download and play it at no cost. It is widely praised as a return to classic, equal-start Halo competitive play.

Was Halo Infinite's launch really that rough?

The core game was strong, but it launched missing features fans expected, including campaign co-op and the Forge map editor, both of which arrived later in updates. Content rolled out slowly at first. The game is in a much better state now than it was at release.