Back in 2014, Halo: The Master Chief Collection suffered quite the horrific launch. Complaints were aplenty across platforms such as Halo Waypoint, Reddit, and just about everywhere else on the internet where you could type “Sort it out, Halo!” as players waited hours on end for a single game to start, if they could connect at all. So when last year’s Halo 5: Guardians came around, a seamless launch of online gameplay seemed like nothing more than a pipe dream, with fears that history would repeat itself from the year previous. Yet not only did Halo 5 release with far less issues than the collective MCC of 2014, it brought an array of content that would change the way we approached Halo completely.
Unlike the sandbox style of say Battlefield in terms of online map size, Halo tended to stick to more enclosed arenas as Spartans hopped around maps blasting each other to smithereens.. Though Halo 5: Guardians maintains the usual multiplayer modes of SWAT, Slayer, and the new, yet stylistically familiar Breakout, the game expanded far beyond the confines of these standard modes with a big team battle mode known as Warzone.
And Warzone is BIG. With two teams of 12 and a bunch of AI-controlled enemies to boot, players clamored for control points while scaling large maps, and also indulging in the new REQ system, a feature in card form that rewarded players depending on how much time they spent playing the game. So needless to say, Halo 5 was doing a stand up job overall as an online shooter, regardless of whether you had indulged in the series before or not. Yet at its core, Halo 5 was ultimately still an online shooter, in an industry saturated by games of a similar nature. With the likes of the previously mentioned Battlefield, Call of Duty. and Titanfall all releasing new entries this year, how does Halo attempt to stay up top with the big boys a year later?
Enter Anvil’s Legacy. The ninth free update is now available for Halo 5: Guardians, and its a big one. It is the most feature-filled addition to date, and marks an exciting new chapter to the franchise. Here’s a list of its features and how it manages to keep Halo 5 fresh a year on amongst massive online shooter releases.
