Although Microsoft and 343 Industries pushed back the Halo Infinite launch to next year, players won’t necessarily need to wait to get a feel for the game.
A level creator who goes by handle Ducain23 says he spent 30 to 40 hours re-creating the Halo Infinite gameplay footage Microsoft revealed at its Games Showcase last month. Now, players who want to check it out can download the level from Halo Waypoint and play it inside Halo 5: Forge.
The Halo Infinite gameplay centers on protagonist Master Chief taking on enemies inside the Halo universe. It features a variety of familiar enemies and weapons, all of which were used in the Ducain23 demo.
Soon after the footage aired last month, Halo fans criticized Microsoft and developer 343 Industries for delivering gameplay that didn’t look as graphically advanced as they had expected for a next-generation title. Microsoft responded by saying that the game was a work in progress and improvements were coming. Still, the criticism persisted.
Microsoft announced earlier this month that it had delayed Halo Infinite from its expected holiday launch to 2021. Microsoft blamed the delay on a variety of factors, including complexity around designing a video game in the middle of a pandemic. The tech giant didn’t, however, acknowledge the graphics concerns players had brought to light.
Still, those concerns may have been warranted. In addition to launching the Halo Infinite level, Ducain23 also published a side-by-side video to show the differences between the games. Although Halo 5: Forge launched in 2016, the graphics on both versions of the demo are not drastically different. And the actual gameplay, including weapon use and movement around the map, look awfully similar.
But with Halo Infinite now delayed to 2021, Microsoft says it will now have more time to get the game right and ready for the Xbox Series X. However, exactly when it will launch next year — and how it will look when it hits store shelves — is still unknown.
The Halo Infinite demo inside Halo 5 is available as a free download. Players can choose two options when playing — an “aesthetic” version they can explore and a “race” map that lets them do a “lap” around the level.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.