Fans of the popular wave defense-based Firefight: King of the Hill mode in Halo Infinite will be happy to hear that the latest update for the game, Operation: Blue Team, has brought even more co-op PvE goodness to matchmaking in the Xbox and Windows PC live-service shooter.
It comes in the form of Firefight Classic, a returning version of Firefight that brings back its original rules from 2009’s Halo 3: ODST and 2010’s Halo: Reach. In Firefight Classic, you and a team of three others fight to last as long as you can against endless waves of increasingly difficult enemies, with five waves to a round and three rounds and a low-stakes bonus round to a set. Your squad shares a limited pool of seven lives, and lives can only be earned by completing a set or for every 1,000 points scored during bonus rounds.
The one notable difference between old-school Firefight and Halo Infinite’s Firefight Classic is that the latter gives you the option of ending the match after a set if you want to; two of the team’s four players have to enter an extraction zone that appears after a set is completed to initiate this. If they don’t, the next set will begin.
Accompanying Firefight Classic is a suite of Forge maps, including new arenas as well as returning ones from past Halo games. These include remakes of Halo 3: ODST’s Alpha Site and Security Zone and Halo: Reach’s Courtyard, along with an expanded version of the official House of Reckoning stage and a lush level set in overgrown ruins called Forest Firefight.
If you ask me, the addition of Classic Firefight is definitely the highlight of this Operation update — as much as I love Firefight: KOTH, I also missed having the classic ruleset as an option and have wanted it to return for ages — but it’s not the only thing that makes it worth checking out. Another new game mode, Hot Swap, has come to Halo Infinite with its arrival as well.
Hot Swap is a pretty weird one; it’s standard 4v4 Team Slayer, but the twist is that every 30 seconds, everyone on both teams is given an identical loadout selected from a pool of 13 that are available. In one second, everyone could be fighting with Battle Rifles and wallhack-granting Threat Sensors, but in the next, you might suddenly find yourself wielding Heatwave shotguns and the mobility-enhancing Thruster equipment.
The mode will mostly be played on Halo Infinite’s standard Arena map rotation, though there is one new one that’s been added to the list: Nemesis. Based on the image of it shown in Halo Studios’ Hot Swap explainer article, it looks like an aging Forerunner facility nestled between several pieces of mountainous, craggy terrain.
From now until April 8, players can also progress through a free 20-tier Operation Pass that includes cosmetics inspired by Blue Team — Master Chief’s legendary Spartan squad, and the namesake of this Operation. At the end of the pass is the HERMES-class Mjolnir armor worn by Blue Team member Kelly-087; by upgrading to the event’s Premium Pass, you’ll get Kelly’s Wintergeist armor coating, an extra Challenge slot to boost XP gains, and bonus XP given directly as well.
The rest of Blue Team’s armor that featured in Halo 5: Guardians, including Linda-058’s Argus kit, Frederic-104’s Cohort suit, and Master Chief’s Mark VI MOD GEN2 armor, is available from a Blue Team Bundle in the Halo Infinite microtransaction shop. Also included in it are additional cosmetics like the Nornfang sniper rifle skin, an Inferno skin for the Bandit DMR, the mythic Wyrd Aura visual effect, and multiple armor pieces and coatings.
A very welcome Halo Infinite update
All in all, this is a great new Halo Infinite patch that’s added a beloved classic mode, a creative new one, fresh maps to enjoy, and a nice little collection of free-to-earn cosmetics along with some premium purchasable ones (check out the full developer overview). While the 2021 free-to-play shooter ultimately failed to take off and has struggled to grow over the years, it’s great that Halo Studios is at least still supporting it with fairly major updates like this one. Granted, a lot of it is made possible by the developer leaning on community Forgers, but still.
At this point, with Halo moving to Unreal Engine 5 — a decision that sparked optimism in me for faster and better updates in the next game — it seems clear that Halo Infinite’s life cycle is nearing its end. Even so, I’m happy that it’s still getting regular patches, which I’m sure the game’s small-but-dedicated player base appreciates greatly.
Whatever’s next for this iconic Xbox franchise remains to be seen, but at least we’ve got a pretty darn solid game to enjoy until it comes. Halo Infinite has improved greatly over time, after all — far more than its player count metrics suggest.
