Halo Infinite’s Battle Pass Is Totally Fine, You Guys , by Ari Notis

One refrain—and it is legit—is that, the way Halo Infinite currently works, there’s very little incentive to play to win. If one of your challenges tasks you with racking up 15 gravity hammer kills, you’ll naturally focus on finding a gravity hammer over securing the ball in a round of oddball. To that end, some players have suggested granting a small victory bonus—maybe you’d get 75XP or 100XP for winning a match, instead of the typical 50XP—which would both speed up the leveling process and potentially spur players to focus on actually winning the game, rather than their own personal suite of challenges.

I don’t usually talk about video games at length here, so let me just say that my quibble with Halo’s leveling system is not that it’s too slow, but that it’s just as fast if I do great in a match or if I do terribly. It feels like getting a participation trophy each time rather than seeing my good games rewarded.

That said, Halo Infinite has hooked me unlike any shooter in the past few years.