You can imagine how excited I was when I dropped into my first Halo Infinite ranked match and saw my only weapon was the BR. I love the BR so much that when Halo 4 offered the DMR as a loadout option for SWAT matches, I scrolled over it to equip my trusty battle rifle. Headshots are extra-lethal, so SWAT players became surgeons with the three-round burst weapon, and I became chief surgeon on call. SWAT is a game mode where you have no shields, no motion tracker, and just a precision weapon like the BR or a handgun at your disposal. It's in the spotlight, exactly where it needs to be.Īs far as the Halo rifle debate goes, I chose a side back in my Halo 3 days, when I was a religious player of Team SWAT. Interestingly enough, removing the DMR from the equation, and upping the quality of the AR (which absolutely shreds in this game), means that Halo Infinite effectively clears the floor for the BR. The Commando is by no means an actual swap for the DMR, as it feels more like a weapon sitting somewhere between the AR and the BR.
Halo Infinite replaces the DMR with the VK78 Commando, an automatic rifle that is unwieldy at a distance thanks to a fairly heavy recoil that includes substantial muzzle climb. And Halo Infinite makes it very clear where it stands on the rifle debate: it deleted the DMR from existence. Unlike the AR, it could hit targets at a distance of more than a few meters, and unlike the DMR, it could hold its own in close-up firefights. Here is where BR supremacy started to take shape, as players found the retooled rifle to be universally useful in multiple situations. That's why Halo 5 kept all three, but attempted to adjust them slightly so that the BR felt more decidedly like an option halfway between the AR and the DMR. As fair as performance goes, all three rifles existed in a kind of murky middle area, where using one rarely felt substantially different than using another. Halo 4 included the AR, the BR, and the DMR, all of which were primary weapon options, expanding the rift between rifles. It felt like an attempt to tick all the boxes of what made Halo multiplayer so attractive, but unfortunately, a lot of ticked boxes resulted in a convoluted mess. Then came Halo 4, the first game made by new developer 343 Industries.