One unexpected standout is the Suppressor, a Forerunner assault rifle that’s mediocre in Halo 4. Old favorites like the battle rifle, Spartan laser, and trusty assault rifle look and feel great, and work in new ways with the new hover mechanics. Halo 5 also has the most satisfying arsenal in the series going for it, thanks to returning classics and design facelifts for guns that used to feel worthless. so it’s frustrating when they inconsistently decide they don’t want to take one for the team. At the same time, when they sometimes decide to let me bleed out, it’s game over. I get it: If I run out into the middle of the enemies, die, and need to be revived, that’s a dumb move on my part and no sane teammate would want to make the same mistake. The one issue I had with squad commands is that sometimes teammates just didn’t listen. Watch a full multiplayer match of Halo 5 above. The targeting command is useful for taking out elusive enemies, especially if you and your teammates are spread out and have different angles on the same area. I spent very little time waiting for allies to jump on my Warthog’s turret, or getting them to hop into a spare Ghost for some extra firepower and mobility. In addition, they seemed to know what I wanted them to do. This is a great quality-of-life improvement over past Halo games, where the only communication you could have with your NPC helpers was “Gimmie that gun you’ve got.” When playing solo, the new squad commands for your AI-controlled team (mapped to the D-pad) are about as simple as possible: stand over there, get in that vehicle, or shoot that enemy. There are many more options available than “point four guns at the thing and shoot.” You and your friends can spread out, grab a variety of weapons, and use these levels to their fullest – maybe have one person sniping priority targets from the high ground, another sneaking off to activate auto-turrets, and the other two people engaging the rest of the enemies in mid-range fights. This kind of design makes Halo 5’s campaign ripe for replaying, and well suited for the convenient drop-in, four-player (online-only) co-op it’s clearly made for. Halo 5’s levels often aren’t physically as big as areas in, say, Halo 3, but they’re so dense with things to discover that I didn’t miss the breathing room. After a battle, I’d wander around Halo 5’s diverse locations looking for the thoroughly hidden skulls and realize I hadn’t even seen whole other rooms, hidden pathways, weapons, vehicles, and more. It’s surprising the characters’ backstories weren’t worked into audio logs or something, considering how dense the seven-hour campaign is with other important stuff and secrets I missed at first glance. 343 has released an animated Fall of Reach series alongside Halo 5 that explains the origins of Blue Team, but it’s only included with pricey special editions. What should be a meaningful reunion for Chief – a chance to again fight alongside the few who truly understand him – feels like business as usual, except with three extra guns behind his back due to lack of context. If I didn’t know them from Halo’s expanded universe, I’d have only a weak idea about who Fred, Kelly, and Linda are, where they came from, or why I should care about them.

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