Both of this year’s FPS blockbusters, Call Of Duty: Vanguard and Battlefield 2042, debuted with something up their sleeve: bugs. Even after some patching, these creepy creepy crawlies don’t get moved so easily. These games are plagued by crashes, glitches, and general instability, to the point where playing them can be as enjoyable as wading through a swarm of grasshoppers.
Halo Infinite, in spite of? The multiplayer component had a bunch of flight tests? Pretty sure. Sure, a few bugs and pairing issues, but for the most part, it’s the most consistent multiplayer FPS I’ve played this year. What is 343’s miracle pesticide? Time. As simple as. Something Vanguard and Battlefield 2042 are just catching up on.
in my Review Battlefield 2042, I said it was a game that “feels not ready”. Call Of Duty: Vanguard isn’t too shabby in terms of performance issues, but I’ll cover how “fragile” it feels in my Vanguard review. Actually, it’s funny how they both express their difficulties in different ways. Battlefield 2042 seems slow and sluggish. You will attach your seaplane to a wall and it will rotate into the stratosphere. If you’re too heavy-handed, the floor runs the risk of falling through or forming a geyser that could spew you out. God knows where. Before you know it, you’ll fall through the earth into an infinite expanse of land.
Meanwhile Vanguard is thinner. There’s just something about the game that’s light, almost to the point where everything seems like an empty stand or a projection. I trust that if you tap on your operator, your finger will go straight through them. I swear the game flickers for a second before it crashes on the desktop. And if crashes don’t work for you, other things will. For example, rotten insects.
I mean, just look at this:
Even a great game like Forza Horizon 5 ran into trouble at launch. Many people who pre-ordered Ultimate Edition on PC were unable to access the game as early as promised, either because it failed to start or crashed when loading the screen. And then, when it launches to everyone, cruising around Mexico with your friends isn’t as easy as rolling around in a four-door. Not that Forza Horizon 5 is as bad as Battlefield 2042, but you all need to park on a matchmaking ferry and hope it doesn’t derail. After a few fixes, things thankfully settled down, but man, it’s another blockbuster that came out with an unlikely landing.
Halo Infinite’s multiplayer, on the other hand? Incredibly powerful. Like the Master Chief’s dense metal frame, you can smash it with thousands of players and it won’t budge. I couldn’t make it to the premiere night because I had a badminton match to attend, but many of my friends attended. As I walked out the door, I was pretty sure I said, “Good luck with the server, guys, heh heh heh!” to myself as a sly villain, as they all gather in Discord for evening entertainment. I went back later and found that they had a long time and no problem at all. OH. Okay.
Everytime I get into the game, everything is as smooth as Master Chief nuts and bolts after the monthly oil increase. I team up with my friends and I hold flaming skulls and I have an uninterrupted time. We giggle, we scream, we watch our battle pass each step forward. God, that’s great. It’s a structurally good experience with matchmaking and servers as solid as Chief’s fist to Grunt’s enemies.
Thing is, Halo Infinite benefits from an extra year of development time. After Craig The Brute went public for shaving his hair off at E3, the game’s release window slide from November 2020 to December 2021. And while it’s hard to tell how much time they poured into the multiplayer of things, it almost certainly helped.
Not to mention some check ‘flight’ Halo Infinite has been available for the past few months. These gave interested Halo Insiders like myself the chance to test out early parts of the game’s multiplayer in carefully curated weekend sessions. While COD and Battlefield hold betas, Infinite’s offerings seem more substantial. Specifically, there are a lot of them, and they’re extremely receptive to feedback from some of their longtime fans. Again, this must have helped a lot.
And of course, covid happened, but developers like Sledgehammer and Dice are still under enormous pressure to meet deadlines. They must stick to the schedule or shareholders will be stuck in place. More and more we’re seeing these big games come out with puzzling issues and it’s clear that the people who are working hard to bring us these great things need more time. It’s time to address the issues – but it’s also time to see these organizations change their workplace culture in a much healthier direction.
I know this is not exactly a hot smoking way. This is not an earth-shattering revelation. I didn’t raise my hands and knees up out of a burned cave with a watch in my hand like I’d just discovered a crackling sound. I’m just reiterating what a lot of people have been championing for so long: developers deserve to come up with a game they’re proud of.
Without the luxury of time, I watched Battlefield 2042 desperately promise bug fixes. Over the next month or so, this is likely what we should expect, with community members providing most of the fun through their Portal creations. Meanwhile, Halo Infinite’s multiplayer can move upwards from the start, even if it lacks big features like Forge. Normally I’d be a bit like, “Man, the Halo package here is a bit thin,” but given the quality of this year’s releases, I feel blessed by Infinite’s simplicity and solidity.
