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Leading the assault on Xbox One's belatedly rising sales this Christmas is the return of Microsoft's console-selling specialist Master Chief in Halo 5: Guardians, continuing the mega money-spinning sci-fi shooter's second trilogy of games - and this time he's brought a few friends along for the ride.
The iconic space marine may have had his reputation sullied slightly by Halo: The Master Chief Collection's fumbled launch, but this time he's joined by not one but two squads of super-soldier Spartans in a story that leaps from one team to the next.
They're also kitted out with new abilities – including, at last, some Call of Duty-style aiming down sights. We grabbed two missions at the controls and here's what we found.
1. Playing Halo is no longer Groundhog Day: The Game
Thanks to the way Halo saved your progress, it was at times often like a game of American football that rewound itself every 30 seconds.
You'd enter a fight against incredible odds, going through a tense and dazzling dance of exchanging gunfire before dying spectacularly - before an auto load would kick in and you'd be exactly where you were a moment earlier, and you'd go through it all over again (and again) until you got it just right.
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In Halo 5: Guardians, when you die, you don't instantly restart. Instead, you wait for a team member to run over and revive you. Instead of playing 'Groundhog Day: The Game', it feels like any other shooter, and while it's not a bad thing, it certainly changes the tempo - it's not a cycle of continued 'do or die' experimentation, allowing you to pace yourself a little better.
That said, you can still die in a single blistering headshot - or a team member might struggle to reach you after all - so expect to still have those challenging moments of repeated gunfights.
2. Halo 5 kinda plays like other shooters now
Another trademark of Halo's combat was its firing-from-the-hip gunplay thanks to the series stubbornly avoiding copying the likes of Call of Duty in not letting you aim down your weapons for more accurate headshots.
Halo 5: Guardians at last introduces iron sights to weapons, but does it in its own way. While being able to squeeze the left trigger lets you zoom in and aim that little bit easier - making long-distance battles something to add to your wheelhouse mid-skirmish - if you get shot while zoomed, you're instantly snapped back to your normal viewpoint, punishing you for camping from afar.
Not every weapon has a proper zoomed in option, either, so don't expect to be popping out of cover like every other shooter - you'll still be bouncing around the map and dispatching foes from the hip, and it continues to feel great.
3. The new shoulder charge and ground pound will take getting used to
Maybe it's due to our muscle memory of playing Halo games over the years, but we didn't really use many other new combat additions in our short time with the game. The game teaches you how to do a rocket-powered charge so that you can progress through certain walls, which you can then take into combat to smash headfirst into towering Brutes - though we admittedly rarely did.
You can also 'ground pound' by squeezing the left trigger (aiming your weapon) in the air, aiming the reticle with your right stick as you hover, before crashing down to earth. It's great for groups of enemies, but again, while effective, wasn't something we remembered to add to our combat repertoire, sticking to tried and tested ways of clearing the battlefield.
This is a good thing, though - we never felt forced to use the abilities because they were there. Something we're very grateful to see added, though, is the ability to sprint whenever you like. We're not quite sure how we survived without it!
4. You're now always playing as a team, even when solo
When playing alone in Halo, combat often felt like you were up against overwhelming enemy odds, a lone gunner against an entire army and (after many retries) living to tell the tale. Multiplayer was always an option, but felt like an extension of this philosophy and feel.
One of Halo 5: Guardian's biggest changes is always having another three Spartans with you - whether you're playing with humans or not. The result is a story that feels more like a team-based shooter in its presentation and story, adding conversation to slow elevator rides and quiet corridor walks.
The impact on combat, however, after two missions is hard to say. It certainly makes combat feel more active and busy, with other Spartans letting rip with charges and pulling grenades around you, while one particularly neat moment saw us run through a hallway before a corpse of a tiny Grunt comically rag doll flew into our path, the result of a computer-generated skirmish elsewhere.
And while staying near your allies so they can revive you may help, you're still welcome to go it alone and do your own thing, breaking away from the pack without worrying about propping up others - nor will they steam ahead and play the mission for you. Who knows how this feels in other scenarios, or with actual human allies to play with, but as far as we're concerned, it looks like you can just play your way.
5. This is absolutely still a Halo game - and that's great
The occasional face-to-face natter with ever-present teammates and looking down sights will be initially unusual to adjust to for long-time Halo fans, but beneath the new additions, this is absolutely still a Halo game.
Moment-to-moment you're still fighting the same as you always have, chipping away at enemy shields before following up with a quick elbow in the face to finish them off; chopping and changing between weapons mid-battle as new enemies come out of the woodwork.
Best of all, you're still climbing into vehicles on a regular basis, with one mission seeing us fly a Banshee around a huge interior of a ship, dog fighting with other spaceships as battles continue to take place on the ground below, before crash landing and securing the objective before it blew to smithereens. And it's all still brilliant fun.
Having teammates and shiny new abilities change the approach and feel of things in some ways, but in the end, this is still very much a Halo game - and that's exactly why we're excited to play more.
Halo 5: Guardians is available on Xbox One from October 27.
