And before the end credits roll, you'll have driven and flown a handful of different vehicles and ships. In Guardians, you'll use a seemingly endless amount of weapons, all varying in shapes, styles and stopping power. Rarely will you stop and camp out at a spot in a mission. It's quick and forces you to keep moving throughout. Maybe try a harder difficulty? Or perhaps complete it in co-op mode? Most players will get through the campaign in 8 to 10 hours, but I'm not sure they'll find much to go back and replay. There are a handful of collectibles scattered throughout each mission, but they don't add up to much. Guardians is fairly linear and straightforward as far as modern first-person-shooters go. I touched on the game's amazing environments and locales, but there's little incentive to explore these areas. The visuals are better, the controls refined, but it's still Halo. I'm not going to pretend I want Halo to evolve into some kind of action-adventure shooter, but it seems the game's most significant innovations have all occurred when you stop touching the buttons. But then the cutscene ends and you're stuck with the same set of basic principles Halo has touted for over a decade. You'll watch in awe as the protagonists tumble down a mountain, just barely outrunning a crashing warship, all while vaulting over enemies and performing intricate melee maneuvers - just obliterating everything in their paths. Locke and Chief are lethal acrobatic hand-to-hand killing machines, but you never get to perform the over-the-top awesomeness that happens during cutscenes. The campaign is expertly molded and delivers the peaks and valleys an epic space action demands, but there's definitely a ceiling on gameplay. There's a satisfying amount of player customization too, which has been par for the course in Halo multiplayer for a while. Of course that could change when 100,000 players decide to jump on at once. The maps feel good and the online experience was solid with no signs of lag or drop-off. These are modes I'm definitely going to play and attempt to become competitive in when the game goes public. At the same time, Warzone can feel a bit overwhelming, so I'm glad I really wound up liking the 4-on-4 Arena mode offerings in the game - the Slayer and other classic styles I mentioned above. It marks a significant evolutionary step for Halo's multiplayer arsenal and will likely stand out as Halo 5's legacy. Testing these modes with an early final version of the game wasn't easy, but the few matches I did get to play were frenetic and exciting. Mainstays like Slayer (team deathmatch) and Capture the Flag remain, but now players will be treated to new modes like the 24-player Warzone in which battles can last up to 30 minutes. Setting the campaign aside for a moment, a new set of multiplayer modes debut with Halo 5 that are sure to whet the appetite of an already salivating online community.
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