Gaming Age 100
It’s a well-crafted Halo experience with enough new bells and whistles to turn around even the most jaded Halo fan, and feels exactly like what you’d want a next-gen Halo game to be. There’s a hefty amount of content to explore here across the campaign and multiplayer modes, with a large map variety at launch and an enjoyable story to uncover. And it all looks and sounds absolutely gorgeous, with fantastic enemy and map designs on top of the excellent technical groundwork behind it all.
BestGamerEver 5/5
In short, Halo 5: Guardians is in my opinion at least, a real return to form for a franchise that felt like it had lost its way ever since Call of Duty took the multiplayer crown on Xbox Live. This is a game that now proudly wears its roots on its sleeve, and plays to its greatest strengths. The multiplayer is fresh and exciting with the new movement options and feels like a true evolution for the series. The campaign is a confident, well told, galaxy spanning adventure with a huge amount of replayability on a scale we’ve never seen.
Game Over Online 95/100
Halo 5 is an outstanding game and one of the finest first-person shooters ever made. Its design is versatile, and it’s the best-playing entry in the series so far.
Polygon 9/10
Halo 5 feels like it knows its obligations. The campaign's narrative is likely to prove controversial, though its biggest sin may be its familiarity. Otherwise, Halo 5 excels under the pressure, providing one of the most welcoming, competitive, balanced and fun games of the year — and providing my personal favorite Halo multiplayer since the series began.
Gadgets 360 9/10
As it stands, Halo 5 is near perfect. With slick gameplay, a fantastic campaign, and seemingly ambitious multiplayer, it gets little wrong. If you own an Xbox One or plan to buy it, this is why you're doing so.
Wegotthiscovered 4.5/5
Halo 5: Guardians, is, by all accounts, the total package. The gameplay is immensely satisfying and leaps and bounds ahead of previous entries, which is saying a lot. And while I wasn’t terribly engaged by the plot and felt that the campaign was slightly more underwhelming than some of the series’ other games, I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t have a blast playing it.
Attack of The Fanboy 4.5/5
Any worry that Halo might be in the wrong hands with 343 Industries has been wiped out by Halo 5: Guardians. The campaign has some story issues, with Halo 6 promising to really deliver the goods, but the design is impeccable, and will certainly warrant multiple playthroughs.
Gaming Instinct 8.5/10
Overall, Halo 5: Guardians is a good Halo game that has the best gameplay in the series, and that is a bold thing to say for a franchise that’s been running for 14 straight years now. However, the technical sacrifices and image quality losses are a little too much this time around. It hurts me to say that Halo 5: Guardians is not a game of the year material because I know many people expected it to be.
Escapist 4.5/5
Multiplayer is really where 343 needed to prove themselves and regain some of that goodwill from Halo fans, which is fortunate, because multiplayer is where Halo 5 shines brightest. Forget everything you knew about Halo 4's multiplayer. 343 wisely went back to the drawing board and scrapped nearly everything about Halo 4's widely criticized multiplayer offerings.
Giant Bomb 4/5
There will certainly be some players who find that the specific omissions in Halo 5 are extremely disappointing, and you'll see a rough edge or two, but all in all there's a fantastic big-budget shooter in Halo 5 with lots to see and enough multiplayer options to keep you going for quite some time.
US Gamer 4/5
As a package, Halo 5: Guardians is a very solid offering. While the campaign mode has its ups and downs – and to be blunt, doesn't take particularly long to complete – it's nevertheless enjoyable, even if it can get a little relentless and repetitive at times. But its highs definitely outweigh its lows, and if you play it on the more challenging levels – and especially if you play it in co-op mode – it's entertaining enough.
Halo 5 is beautiful, at times a lot of fun, and at times disappointing. It’s also not yet officially released and is dependent on its multiplayer working well on a large scale. So we’re holding off on a review until well after the game’s October 27 launch. For now, some impressions of one of the Xbox One’s big fall exclusives.
