Game review: Halo 5: Guardians

It's one of the biggest game releases of the year, but is Halo 5 living up to its predecessors? Chris Schulz finds it does, for reasons you may not expect.

My eyes are watering, my hands are like claws, and a glance at the clock tells me it's 2.24am. I wasn't meant to be here. I wasn't going to do this again.

Damn you, Master Chief. Damn you, Halo. Damn you, Xbox. Damn you all to hell.

The sleep-stealing Halo franchise has returned with a fifth instalment that has the weight of first-person shooters on its shoulders. Previous Halos raised the bar so high it took years for others to catch up.

Whether Halo 5: Guardians does the same depends entirely on the success of its multiplayer options, and as the servers weren't switched on in time for this review's deadline, we can't comment on them here.

A scene from the video game Halo 5: Guardians.

What we have seen certainly looks promising, especially the all-new blitzkrieg mode of Warzone, but it's just too soon to tell.

Instead, we're focusing on Halo 5's single-player campaign, and rest assured, it's very good indeed.

But it might not be for the reason you're expecting.

What the heck is going on? I couldn't tell you. Halo 5's story is a confusing jumble of Halo lore, new characters, enemy-blasting action, planet-hopping missions, something about colonisation, and a really mean scientist called Catherine Halsey. For some reason, Nathan Fillion is thrown into the mix.

It starts with an extraction mission, Master Chief goes AWOL, someone called Locke gets a turn at blasting those aliens, and suddenly all hell breaks loose. Nathan Fillion is really awesome though. Isn't he great?

Maybe it helps if you're a Halo superfan. But I'm not the kind of guy who writes Halo fan fiction, wears Master Chief outfits to Armageddon, and shines my Halo collectibles in my spare time.

I'm the kind of fan who likes to blast sweet weaponry at creepy aliens while giant warships hammer away in the background. I like tossing grenades at groups of foes and watching them get blown to smithereens.

And I really enjoy surprising enemies with a sweetly timed shoulder charge, then blasting them with plasma bolts and submachine guns. The simple stuff, really.

On that front, Halo 5 delivers. I got lost in its world unlike any first-person shooter in recent memory. After an opening cinematic that would leave Michael Bay's jaw on the floor, Halo's slick graphics left me stunned, its sweet animations held me in awe, the incredible weaponry made me feel like a kid in a candy shop.