Thoughts on Halo Infinite and Forza

 Been playing a lot of Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 lately.

For the core part of Halo Infinite that is out right now, the game plays fine. Sure the event RNG might be sketchy at times, but that is RNG in that game mode. I have had no problems playing the game and am having fun in it.

The problem comes with the battle pass. It is such a grindfest to get levels, that it more or less makes you get the paid pass. The event going on right now has pretty short matches - about 10-20 minutes at most, and you get 50xp per match. To level, you need 1000, or 20 matches (not counting weekly challenges). That requires about 200-400 minutes of game time at most, not counting loading, to level up one level - and the pass has 100 levels. The weekly challenges do help - and the event specific ones seem to be really easy, but the event ones are limited, as you can't even max out the event pass in one go since it is divided up into 3 separate week events. The difficulty/RNG on the weekly stuff is varied. You can get one weekly to get 3 wins in a specific game mode in BTB (which is RNG since you can't select the specific game mode to queue). You can also get one weekly to just play 2 BTB matches... for the same xp. Just a small rant, but I feel like the pass needs more fine tuning. Obviously you want to push the paid experience, but it shouldn't negate the free version entirely.

On the Forza side, I have been seeing some posts about players getting banned due to some liveries. Some I can see, but others I hope they are just exaggerating. Other than that, haven't had issues aside from a crash or two. Horizon Arcade needs to be addressed though. It either needs to change how the groups are formed, or have challenges that scale down based on the number of people participating since it is almost impossible to get to and finish the third challenge in my experiences.