Halo Infinite (2021)

Best: The campaign’s semi-open world. Halo Infinite opens with a series of traditionally linear levels before dropping you into an open-world area you can explore at your own whim, full of quests and activities and secrets. It’s not perfect, and indeed, parts of the world make you long for more. The east side of the map is almost entirely barren, suggesting there was potentially room for a bigger game. But the freedom you get from grappling through forests like a 26th-century Spider-Man is nigh unmatched.

Worst: The rocky rollout. Halo Infinite launched last year absent many of the features that defined the previous seven games. It didn’t allow you to replay missions (that’s coming later this summer). It still doesn’t have cooperative play (a recent technical test rolled out earlier, but only for online players; there’s still no hard timeline for local co-op). Forge is MIA (players reverse engineered access to an early build and have been leaking creations all summer long; it looks sick). Some cosmetics that were free in previous games cost money in this one (Halo Infinite’s multiplayer is free-to-play, but also, c’mon). Altogether, it gives the sense that Halo Infinite launched incomplete, which has spurred some pessimism in the community. But I see it a different way: There’s only room for growth. 343 Industries did it previously with Halo: The Master Chief Collection. They can do it again with Infinite