Today's game is Halo Infinite. I picked it up while it was on sale (along with gifting some copies of MCC to friends). I mostly got it for Campaign, but me and my friend also played some of the multiplayer too. It's interesting. I can't say i'm a fan of the battlepass or micro transaction system, but the gameplay is a bit fun. I think the older games are my favorites still because Infinite feels a bit too like all the other live service shooter with all the flashy stuff and high paced speed, but it's still a lot of fun. The maps look cool and some of the new weapons are cool.
We played some of the campaign today too. It's a bit like Far Cry. Honestly, if they were going to try to do something different, it's not the worst thing to try. I found myself gravitating to the reliable battle rifle and AR combo though. Me and my friend went straight to legendary for the campaign, i think this might be the easiest we've done though (though we've been able too bring a tank with us everywhere so that might be what's making it difficult).
The hardest things so far has been the boss fights, we fought this guy who turns invisible. We ended up using the shock crates to stun him and then sticking the fuck out of him. It worked really well and once we broke his shield we just ran at him and started punching him.
Overall, i'm really enjoying it though. I think i'll stick to MCC for multiplayer for now but i might pop in for a few games of infinite every now and then
Absolutely no player moderation infrastructure whatsoever. It's as if they never made a halo game before.
I recall some streamer lady getting relentlessly harrassed via lobby voice chat at the beginning of infinite's life cycle. Zero recourse; there's no in-game reporting function (the game directs you to the halo waypoint website, it's a fully manual process, you supply the offending player's name, you're even expected to manually capture infractions via the (still) broken in-game theatre mode).
As for betrayal booting, I have a kind of roundabout theory. 343 in their infinite wisdom decided to disable player collision and friendly fire in the sandbox by default.
On one hand, this is behaviour in-line with contemporary shooters to prevent griefing. On the other hand, it's entirely detrimental to sandbox immersion and can lead to bad habits when it comes to player positioning.
I suspect this change lead to the oversight of any player booting mechanism, though it's still possible to team-kill via vehicle collisions.