343 Industries’ Halo Infinite‘s single-player campaign is just around the corner, and critics have near-unanimously showered the game with praise for its implementation of an open-world environment, among other things- but it’s not all roses.
A recent technical analysis conducted by Digital Foundry has revealed numerous flaws with the experience, such as issues with the game failing to hit 120 fps in its performance mode on the Xbox Series X, alongside similar problems with the game’s resolution targets across various modes. Digital Foundry also took note of the fact that facial animations in cutscenes run at half-rate across both modes, and other issues with the game’s lighting.
“Performance mode aims for 120fps with a max resolution of 1440p but minimums can drop beneath 1080p when things get heated,” Digital Foundry writes. “With the exception of occasional frame-drops, the quality mode is fine running at 60fps, but performance is far more variable in performance mode. Normally, the system’s variable refresh rate support would handle any resulting stutter but in my experience, it doesn’t work with Halo Infinite – something that needs addressing.”
The article also brings up issues with the way the game handles shadows. It reads: “Tthe main issue is the way in which shadows are handled. Currently, Halo Infinite leans primarily on cascaded shadow maps and some screen-space ambient occlusion and that seems to be basically it. Problem is – there are a lot of huge vistas in this game where you can see miles into the distance. The shadow map cascade distance is relatively aggressive so as you move away from objects, you’ll see shadows disappearing and there’s no fall back for anything other than large scale distance shadows. Compare and contrast with, say, Red Dead Redemption 2’s open world and the difference is vast.”
There’s also a mention of the game temporarily freezing, which might be stemming from memory leaks, presumably, according to the report. It reads: “Several time during my gameplay experience, Halo Infinite would freeze for a short while for seemingly no reason. It looks and feels like a crash, only the game comes back and works just fine several second later.”
While these problems with the games are certainly a letdown, there have been little to no reports of game-breaking bugs and glitches up until now, which is a relief. 343 Industries has already stated that it will at least fix the facial animation issues in a post-launch update, alongside some other things. That said, it’s also been reported that Halo Infinite’s physical release doesn’t have the full campaign on its disc, which, too, is a disappointment, to say the least.
You can read our thoughts on Halo Infinite’s multiplayer through here. Check back soon for our review of the single-player campaign.
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