I’ve loved Halo for what feels like a long time. My age means that that love only really began with Halo: Reach, which sprouted into reading the books, watching the shows and movies and playing the games on Legendary just to torture myself.
However, through all of that, since the very start there’s been one game mode that’s always had my heart: Firefight.
Firefight was where my brother and I would go on sprees of blasting waves and waves of Covenant, trying out different strategies and weapons to come out on top. It would also serve as a place for me and my friends to talk about any and everything into the wee hours of a school night while haphazardly beating grunts with a gravity hammer. Being able to play it felt so natural that it never seemed possible to have it taken away.
“Taken away” feels like a somewhat strong term — after all I could always go back, load up the 360 and dive back in, but as time went on and new games were released, my priorities changed and my focuses were redirected. Even still, I could never seem to find a game mode that could scratch that itch the same way that Firefight did.
I started playing Firefight in Halo: Reach, but I found that the Firefight mode in Halo 3: ODST had a certain rawness to it when I went and played it. Not being a Spartan meant there were more severe consequences to each time you got hit, and it made me rethink the whole “mindless blasting of Covenant” that I had in my mind from boosting around and armor locking in Halo: Reach. I had to use cover more appropriately, take more time to aim, and focus on who was coming from where and when.
That minor difference between iterations was something that got me excited for any new release of Firefight that would come afterwards. Maybe you’d play as an Elite and see how differently they act, or something interesting. Yet that game mode never came. Halo 4 came out, I loaded it up, and was bitterly disappointed to not see it as an option. Sure, I was moved by the campaign and spent long nights slowly getting better at the multiplayer, but there came to be a void.
Something was missing, and it was the unfiltered PvE that didn’t take you around a map going from objective to objective. Spartan Ops was a good time, but it really just felt like an extension of the campaign that had nothing to do with the campaign. I love the world-building, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t always want to pay that much attention to what I was doing. Deep down, I just wanted to play Firefight.
Halo 5 brought Warzone Firefight to the table, but I never really wound up playing it all that much. Part of it was that I was too busy with school and work to enjoy those late nights anymore, but it also slipped under my radar until a point where everyone I used to play with was as busy as I was. However, the winds of change blew again just in time for Halo Infinite, where I was able to play through the campaign refreshed and free, but unfortunately still couldn’t play Firefight.
Fast forward to November of 2023, when I first hear that Infinite will be adding Firefight. Sure, I was excited to give it a shot, but I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t apprehensive of their execution. By the time of the update, it had been a couple of months since I’d even really played Infinite so I didn’t fully know what to expect. King of the Hill had never been my favorite PvP mode, so I had a bad feeling that this might turn out to be the reason why I put Infinite down for good. Boy, was I wrong.
Between the disappointingly short campaign and often stagnating PvP, Infinite was seeming to rack up tallies in the “Miss” column, even though I still enjoyed the time that I spent in the game. I was worried that Firefight was going to turn out stunted in one way or another, but as soon as I loaded in and played through the first round, I was hooked. It felt like I was back on Reach blasting Covenant, but this time without Sarah Palmer chatting in my ear about some Sangheili warlord like in Spartan Ops.
While I wish you didn’t have to fill a four-person party for every match, I cant think of many things that I would want to change about King of the Hill firefight. You have a great mix of cannon-fodder enemies and bosses that you’ll never get bored from not fighting enemies, but you’re also not getting swamped at all times. There are a reasonable amount of waves per round, and the five rounds that were adopted from Halo 5’s Warzone Firefight make it a competitive challenge if you find yourself more overwhelmed than you expected.
Not only that, but to my surprise, the King of the Hill mode turned out to fit the format of Firefight better than I could have ever expected. It funnels your team and enemies to a single point so that you’re not spending time searching for enemies that are straggling behind, and you’ve always got something to aim at. The movement of the points themselves allows for you to explore the map a little more in-depth and get to know item spawns, making for more reason to keep going back match after match.
To say that the defibrillator was on its last charge feels harsh to say, but I can’t say that I would have had all that much reason to keep going back into Infinite unless it was to play with a particular friend. Firefight changed that, because I find myself not only thinking about it while I’m not playing, but I’m acting on those thoughts and actually going and playing the game. It’s the perfect length as to where I don’t feel the same time commitment that I do with MW3’s Zombies, but I also don’t feel like I’m in a lobby for as long as I’m in a game.
There’s something about nostalgia and the way it can change your perspective on a game, while distorting the way you look at new releases without even meaning to. I found myself apprehensive of playing Firefight instead of feeling excited, and that probably wasn’t fair to myself or the developers. I got too hung up on what the mode used to be that I almost let slip a fantastic game mode that will continue to entertain me the same as it had over 10 years ago.
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