First impressions are key, and since six years have passed since Halo 5: Guardians, for a lot of people (like myself) Halo Infinite will be the first Halo multiplayer experience they’ve played at launch – especially since Infinite’s multiplayer is free to play and accessible to everyone with an Xbox or PC. And what a launch it’s been! With its tight 4v4 matches and more chaotic 12v12 Big Team Battle on expertly designed maps, Infinite revives and reinvigorates the glorious sci-fi action that once made Halo king among multiplayer FPS games. Riding high on that thrill, Halo Infinite’s multiplayer has dash-slid into the first-person shooter scene and meleed the competition off the map.

Halo Infinite looks absolutely gorgeous. The environments within each map are so detailed and pretty that I’m now looking forward to the campaign even more. The lighting, settings, and overall look of Infinite bring the futuristic world of Halo to modern-day glory. On PC, it can run at 144Hz easily (and there’s a 120Hz mode on Xbox Series X), and the most severe technical issue I’ve seen has been some server desync and stutters every so often. It wasn’t enough to really mess things up but it was noticeable and made some fights slightly harder than they should have been. I’ve only experienced one crash in my 20 hours of playtime, so my experience has been pretty steady.

Ahead of the beta “test flights” in September, one of my biggest concerns was how Halo Infinite would be able to court new players in addition to pleasing Halo veterans who have a lot of set-in-stone ideas of how Halo should play. But to my surprise, Infinite does a stand-up job of bringing novices up to speed with its Academy mode, in which you can try out different weapon drills or jump into a Training session against bots with customizable match settings. Training mode allows you to try out different power items (such as active camouflage and the grappling hook) that you may not have been able to get hold of much in PvP matches, and it also helps you learn the maps as you explore at your own pace. You can also join matches against bots if you want to test your skills before facing other players – and these are some of the most human-like bots I’ve ever seen.

When I did go up against real opponents, the intimate 4v4 Arena playlist’s fast-paced matches gripped me immediately and had me queuing again and again, for hours on end. The only complaint I have about the playlists is not being able to choose which mode you want to play – you can’t just check a box to pick Slayer or Strongholds, you have to queue for all five game modes: One Flag Capture The Flag, Capture The Flag, Strongholds, Oddball, and Slayer. While they aren’t revolutionary, they are undoubtedly fun and infinitely replayable, and have formed the basis of some of the most enjoyable multiplayer arena shooters of all time. As they say: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Slayer is the traditional team deathmatch, Strongholds has teams fighting to control three capture points on the map, and in Oddball you’re battling over control of a skull. But among the 4v4 modes, my favorite remains plain-old Capture the Flag, which stays fun and competitive no matter how many times I’ve played it. Coordinating with my team and making mad dashes for the enemy’s flag while also chasing down the jerk who stole ours fuels my spirit, and scoring a capture is incredibly rewarding. Playing either defensively around my flag or offensively in trying to steal the enemy’s feels good, and due to the small team sizes no one is unimportant in a match.

The only unconventional mode in that list, One Flag CTF, sounded a little odd to me at first because each round has one team defending a flag and the other team has to capture that flag. But it’s actually a lot of fun – there’s only one map for it, Launch Site, but it has vehicle spawns and easily makes for chaotic and fun gameplay with vehicular Spartan-slaughter as one team attempts to raid the other’s base. All of these game modes are excellent – and much more so when you’re communicating with your teammates.

I do have a few gripes, of course. For one, barely being able to hear a seven-foot-tall, heavily armored Spartan run up behind you for a one-hit melee kill is incredibly frustrating. It’s an odd misstep (see what I did there?) given that the weapons and effects all sound great. I don’t want heavy footstep sounds like in CS:GO, where you can tell where people are from pretty much all the way across the map, but the number of times I’ve been run up on – not even crouch stealthed – and killed is kind of ridiculous. Also, cloaked enemies being silent makes sense since the Active Camo powerup requires you to walk or crouch to stay invisible.

A big part of the reason Infinite’s matches work so well is that each of the seven maps for arena matches are incredibly well designed to allow for you and your team to fluidly rotate through them, grabbing key weapons and items as they spawn and sweeping out enemies. My favorite map from that playlist has to be Streets, thanks to its flashy neon signs, dynamic lighting, and freshly rained-upon pavement. It’s a perfect example of readability being key when it comes to map design, favoring bold, angular architecture instead of over-detailed environments that come at the cost of instantly spotting enemies and objective markers.

It's Strongholds mode that really shows off Infinite’s superior map designs, however, since in this capture-point mode you really need to be able to rotate from point to point with a specific flow to keep an eye on the locations you already control. While the maps in Infinite are smaller than those in most FPS games, the distance between points is just enough that you can easily get from one spot to another. At the same time, you can also get caught out by yourself and eliminated, which encourages you to move as a team. This is where the flow of maps really comes into play.

In general, you can run from one side of a map to the other quickly enough that they don’t feel all that large for 4v4 matches, but they’re big enough that you don’t get there too fast or feel like they’re too cramped of a space, either. There are lots of platforms and objects stacked on top of each other that you can use to perfect your rotations, so you aren’t restricted to going down one hallway just to get to a specific area – we actually have a lot of options in these spaces thanks to the ability to vault up to ledges and the absence of fall damage. I’m impressed with how the map designs take all of this into consideration, especially on this smaller scale.

Even with Big Team Battle, the three maps are evenly balanced for 12v12 matches. BTB showcases expansive arenas with enough space for close-range mayhem, long-range sniper plays, rumbling Scorpion tanks, and flying Banshee fighters. I like how, unlike Call of Duty’s breakneck-paced 12v12 matches, BTB allows for you to catch a few moments of breathing time before you engage in a heated fight. The weapon spawns are spaced out enough to give everyone a chance to run for them and the vehicle spawns are mirrored on each team’s side, making for awesome vehicle runs. Power weapons and items are always a risk to play for since they’re placed in the middle of maps, and that makes balancing feel just right.

All three BTB maps feature multiple terrain types that give their layouts variety in height and sightlines. In Behemoth, there are a lot of platforms that let you get higher positioning at the risk of getting sniped from across the way, since the higher levels are more exposed. However, if you’re lower on the ground you may not spot the enemies above your head. The flow in BTB maps feels great – it never takes too long to get into a fight but there’s also enough space that I’ve had no trouble with spawn camping at all. After yet another year of Call of Duty’s notoriously bad spawn system, that’s been a breath of fresh air.

You can play all of that casually, but Infinite also includes a Ranked playlist, available off the drop, which is a great competitive mode for those who want to surround themselves with equally skilled players. You knock out 10 placement matches before you’re given your initial rank, then you can grind out some matches in that Ranked playlist to move up. The tiers are reasonable (going from Bronze to Onyx with six levels within each tier) but the one thing I’d want more clarification on is how you’re graded on performance to move up or down tiers. Right now that’s a bit mysterious.

In terms of gunplay, the weapons feel decently balanced, with some distinctive quirks to them. The Time to Kill (TTK) is certainly longer than in most other games and took me a bit of time to adjust to, maybe a few matches at most, before I was no longer surprised that a target was still standing after I’d unloaded most of an assault rifle’s magazine into them. It probably takes a couple of shots more than I’d like to down an enemy, and that does make it a little harder to win 1v2s here than in faster games like Apex Legends or Call of Duty. But Halo is very much a game about team play, so if you’re smart you won’t be trying to take on multiple adversaries too often since that usually means you’re overextending by yourself.

I have to say, it’s very weird that the MK50 Sidekick pistol is stronger than the MA40 Assault Rifle. While I understand that Halo games have had this balance as the meta going all the way back to the original and the AR is the strongest it’s been in any game in the series, it just seems weird to have a pistol outgun a big, chunky AR. Meanwhile, a few of the weapons you pick up out of dispensers on the walls feel a bit weak in their damage per second (DPS), especially with guns like the VK Commando which sounds and looks like a beefy gun that should knock a target flat but actually takes quite a few extra shots to kill an enemy, even with headshots.

That said, the weapon variety is pretty generous, allowing you to pick your choice of pistols, burst rifles, and shotguns. The Mangler, a precision-based revolver, is one of my favorite pistols to use since it rewards you for careful shots and can be used at close or long range (once you learn to compensate for the projectile drop). The CQS48 Bulldog is my favorite shotgun (much better than the fancier-sounding Heatwave) because of its tight spread that can take down a target quickly with accurate body shots. Also, the fan-favorite Needler feels especially rewarding when you’re able to stick a full stack of heat-seeking needles into an enemy and watch them explode after a short delay. Overall, the weapons feel satisfying to use and nothing is wildly overpowered – not including Power Weapons, of course. However, there are a few weapons that I find myself avoiding, like the Plasma Pistol and the Pulse Carbine – I just don’t like the rate of fire of either of them and they don’t output the amount of DPS needed in a close-range fight.

The Power Weapons, such as the M41 SPNKR rocket launcher and the Gravity Hammer, are limited to a few shots to keep things from getting out of control when you snag one. However, the Energy Sword definitely seems to have three to four charges too many – that could be toned down a bit, since right now the only thing keeping it in check is the fact that you have to close in to melee range to score a kill with it.

While the weapons feel as great and handle as we’ve come to expect from Halo, one thing that feels disappointingly inconsistent is the melee. Standard Spartan melees are a two-hit kill, which feels fine, but the range and damage rarely seems to work the way I expect. It doesn’t help that Infinite uses soft collision, meaning you can pass through another player, instead of hard collision, where you bounce off of each other. While soft collision keeps people from griefing each other by blocking doorways, a side effect is that the way people can phase through each other means melee strikes don’t feel right. Sometimes you’re able to get a “backsmack” instant kill while facing your opponent and other times you completely miss by phasing through their body and they get the opportunity to kill you. Also, I’ve seen what appear to be direct melee hits to the face do no damage, even when the enemy is a sneeze’s worth of health away from dying.

Something you can always count on, though, is the classic Halo grenade plays. Calculating the timing on a grenade throw and counting the bounces before it goes off and kills an enemy is one of the most rewarding experiences in Infinite’s multiplayer. Being able to throw a ‘nade behind enemy cover and then push them backwards into the explosion is so satisfying, and sticking someone with a plasma grenade is always a hilarious way to earn a kill. In this game, grenades are an art form.

Infinite also makes smart use of its gadgetry. The Grappleshot is my favorite, and I use it to reposition myself around enemies in active fights. It’s also great for a quick disengage from close-range fights to heal up before grappling back in to finish the fight. I also really enjoy the fact that you can grapple enemies and catch them off guard, and even throw in an elbow punch to the back of their heads when you get right up to them. I’ve even come to love the Thruster – it took a while to grow on me, but now I’ve found ways to get creative and dash past enemies, then turn and backslap them during heated fights where they were trying to keep their distance.

The Drop Wall still isn’t my favorite equipment item, but that’s purely based off of my aggressive playstyle – hunkering down behind a deployable shield just makes me feel like grenade bait. Active Camo is much more my style, since its invisibility allows me to get multiple stealth kills in a row literally before they know what hit them. I also love the Repulsor, which reflects projectiles back at enemies while also pushing them back from you. Using it to throw enemies off the map was probably not what it was intended for, but it’s a ton of fun to mess around with equipment and weapon combos like that. Having that creative freedom is important, and Infinite does a great job of allowing you to have fun while slaying.

And all of that comes at just the right time. In fact, Microsoft couldn’t have chosen a better moment for Master Chief’s comeback, with Call of Duty: Vanguard's multiplayer feeling like more of the same and Battlefield 2042’s main modes leaving much to be desired. Infinite’s long-absent style of team-based multiplayer is the shot in the arm the shooter community needed right now.

Spoilers follow for Episode 8 of Marvel’s What If…? For more, see our review of the previous episode of What If.

For all the loose plot threads dangling in the many worlds of What If, it was surprising to see this week’s episode immediately pay off last week’s cliffhanger: Ultron arriving on the scene with a full set of Infinity Stones. The murder robot is still dead-set on fulfilling his programming and wiping out sentient life, so the only question is whether humanity has the will to stop him. Well, that and “is the Watcher finally going to move his melon-on-a-toothpick head and help out?” As we near the end of the season, What If is more forthcoming with answers to questions like these, leaving this week’s alternate sequel to 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron as one of the clearest displays yet of What If’s strengths and potential for extrapolating worthwhile stories out of MCU canon.

What If has done well at choosing specific, interesting points to diverge from the stories we know, and continues that trend by explaining that this universe saw the Avengers fail to recover the vibranium android body that would become host to Vision, giving Ultron (Ross Marquand) an organic, invincible shell with which to destroy all mankind. And destroy all mankind he does! The Watcher’s (Jeffrey Wright) retelling of Ultron’s victory is surprisingly bleak and sober, which sets up the stakes for the rest of the story nicely. Episode 8 does a good job keeping the themes of Age of Ultron at the forefront by centering the story on the lone human survivors of Ultron’s nuclear holocaust: Black Widow (Lake Bell) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). It’s always valuable in MCU stories, with gods and Celestials and Eternals and so on, to remind us just why the “normies” like Natasha and Clint belong at the table. Often joked about for their lack of powers, they’re an obvious choice as a longshot last hope, but in the context of Ultron’s inhuman legion, focusing on them feels appropriate.

Bell fares far better as Natasha this time out, mainly because the setting keeps the character more grounded and less jokey than she was in Episode 3. More attention is given to Clint’s story, who’s struggling to fight on after losing his family, and Renner brings that daunting challenge to life well through his performance. Clint’s wavering will to survive serves as the argument against Ultron’s philosophy in microcosm, well-captured in a stunning shot of a solo Clint going up against hundreds of Ultron drones at once. This episode feels the most cinematic of any What If installment yet, which goes a long way towards making it feel like a continuation of the events of Age of Ultron.

What If doesn’t spend much time on deepening our understanding of Ultron, with his more nuanced, personal motivations taking a backseat to his broad “peace in our time” directive, but with his father figure dead at this point, finishing the job he started is good enough incentive. Marquand goes two-for-two on subbing in for MCU villain actors, capturing James Spader’s sneering superiority well, though his Red Skull has a touch more fidelity to the original performance than his Ultron. Ultron’s aptitude for universal slaughter leaves him in the same situation as Strange Supreme, alone in all of creation with only The Watcher to keep him company. But a complete set of Infinity Stones is the only key Ultron needs to open the door to the multiverse, and the confrontation between the two beings sends the episode into mind-bending territory.

The Watcher’s choice to abandon passivity and actively engage in the story he’s narrating has been telegraphed since the very start of What If, and it was a little disappointing to see that decision was driven not by a moral resolution, but by self-preservation after Ultron broke his door in and waved the Infinity Stones at him threateningly. The Watcher and Ultron’s multiverse-traversing battle calls to mind Doctor Strange and Kaecilius’ Mirror Dimension duel and goes for broke on gonzo visuals (including a killer Galactus nod!), but does suffer from the show not establishing what The Watcher is capable of in a fight. Because we have no way to know how strong The Watcher is, especially relative to a complete set of Infinity Stones, we spend most of the fight asking “what can The Watcher do?” rather than “how will The Watcher win?” The answer to both appears to be “whatever the writers need.”

This sequence ends up being less effective than moments where Ultron drones are closing in on Clint and Natasha, as the cost and likelihood of their failure is clear and easy to connect to. Balancing action and plot, and understanding which stories benefit from that focus shifting one way or the other, has been one of What If’s biggest challenges and this week is no different. While the Ultron/Watcher fight works overall, the Ultron/Captain Marvel showdown on Xandar felt like a diversion engineered to add one more fight scene. Age of Ultron works best in its quiet moments pondering heady existential questions. The same goes for Episode 8, which aside from occasional stumbles, does a decent job balancing big ideas and big brawls.

Update: Amazon sent a statement to IGN after the publication of this article, noting that the characterizations of Asto's performance in the recent report were "simply inaccurate."

Amazon's full statement follows:
These characterizations of Astro’s performance, mast, and safety systems are simply inaccurate. Astro went through rigorous testing on both quality and safety, including tens of thousands of hours of testing with beta participants. This includes comprehensive testing on Astro’s advanced safety system, which is designed to avoid objects, detect stairs, and stop the device where and when necessary.

The original story continues below.

Amazon's newly announced home robot Astro, might not be ready to roam around households, a new report claims.

Originally reported by Vice, one source who worked on Astro reportedly called the smart robot a "disaster that's not ready for release." Another developer is alleged to have said Astro is "terrible," noting that the robot is not reliable for accessibility purposes as Astro will "almost certainly throw itself down a flight of stairs." Amazon notes on Astro's store listing that Astro has intelligent motion, meaning it should be able to move around objects with no issue; this includes avoiding going up or down the stairs, which the company also notes it cannot do either.

The report also notes that leaked documents and videos of developers' meetings obtained by the outlet show that Astro did a lot of surveillance with a reliance on facial recognition systems; this includes a feature where Astro will follow unrecognized people around. When a user obtains Astro, there's an optional feature that allows you to "enroll" your face and voice of everyone in the home so the robot can learn who lives in the house.

Yet, sources that spoke to Vice note that Astro is unfortunately not great at detecting people. This scenario could cause a potential headache for residents in the home that Astro is constantly bugging in the form of following them around or bumping into their ankles.

Although the article raises a lot of questions about the overall quality of Astro, preordering the robot is currently not available publicly. You can submit an application expressing interest in the chance to buy the robot for $999.99. After the device becomes more widely available to purchase, it will retail for $1,499.99. When you are filling out an application, Amazon asks you a series of questions that give a better idea of your home, which may determine your chances of getting a "Day 1 Edition" of Astro. In either case, the possibility of spending over $1,000 on a robot that may break does not seem ideal.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Windows will soon let you download the Epic Games Store as an app as it announces a significant update that will allow third-party apps to be discoverable on the Microsoft Store. As detailed as part of a wider blog post, the Windows team says that both Amazon and Epic Games will be bringing their apps to the Microsoft Store and that it is looking forward to welcoming further stores in the future.

In a similar fashion to apps on the store, third-party storefronts will have a product detail page that allows their customers to check out user reviews and notable information about an app before installing it. Windows has said that the decision to bring in third-party storefront apps shows its "commitment to being an open store for an open platform".

While the arrival of Windows 11 on October 5 will bring with the public launch of a new Microsoft Store, third-party storefront apps won't be rolling out immediately. Despite the fact that Epic Games and Amazon will act as the first companies to bring their storefront apps over to the Microsoft store, this will take place over the next few months.

As for the free Windows 11 upgrade, Microsoft has confirmed that the new version of the operating system will be phased in gradually. The company previously said that new eligible devices will be offered the upgrade first, with support for other models rolling out thereafter. Although this may mean that many people won't be able to access Windows 11 until the beginning of next year at the earliest, all eligible devices are expected to be offered the upgrade by mid-2022. For those unsure about upgrading to Windows 11, don't panic, for Windows 10 is expected to still be supported until October 2025.

For more on Windows 11, make sure to check out this article detailing a range of new features that will be coming with the update including Windows widgets, auto HDR gaming, and a new and improved experience for tablet users. Alternatively, for those looking to check out the system requirements needed to run Windows 11, you can do so here.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Nostalgia is a funny thing. It can be a comforting sensation, but it sometimes makes things from the past seem better than they actually are. Unfortunately, the latter is the case with Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania, which compiles over 300 levels from previous Super Monkey Ball games and updates them for modern consoles. I have fond memories of playing the GameCube versions with friends nearly 20 years ago, so I expected Banana Mania to be a welcome return to those carefree nights staying out past curfew and rolling down increasingly difficult courses. Sadly, rollin’ just isn’t as fun as it used to be.

As the name implies, Super Monkey Ball is a series about monkeys in balls rolling their way through hundreds of stages and avoiding increasingly difficult obstacles – and yes, it’s exactly as silly as it sounds. The GameCube-era graphics have gotten an overhaul that makes the cartoony art style more vibrant than ever, and I found it hard not to bop my head to the arcadey theme music. It’s always refreshing to see games that don’t take themselves too seriously in this era of increasingly realistic graphics and serious subject matter, and Super Monkey Ball is anything but serious.

Because Banana Mania is a mash-up of several previous Super Monkey Ball games, there appears to be an almost overwhelming amount of content at first. There’s the Story mode originally seen in Super Monkey Ball 2, which is less a cohesive campaign than it is about 100 levels across 10 worlds loosely stitched together with brief, dialogue-free animated cutscenes. Challenge modes from the first two Super Monkey Ball games appear as well, although the separate modes have some startlingly similar courses. And of course, Challenge mode doesn’t feel significantly different from Story mode gameplay-wise because the only twist is that you can’t pick up where you left off — you have to get through all of the challenge stages in a single sitting. So it’s more a challenge of endurance than anything else.

The problem with both the Story and Challenge modes is that, after 30 or 40 levels, they both begin to feel like a slog. The difficulty in Story mode really ramps up around the halfway point, going from light and breezy to a frustrating exercise in failure very quickly. Early levels might challenge you to make your way around a winding path or keep your momentum going long enough to clear a gap; later on, you’ll be thrust into the air by spring-loaded platforms and fail the level before you even have a chance to adjust the camera to see a hazard you didn’t know would come at you from that direction.

That’s exactly what happened in one of the levels that made me want to pull my hair out: before me stood a towering theme park ride made up of platforms connected to a pole in the middle. Because you can only tilt the camera up so far, I couldn’t see where the finish line was — instead, I had to roll onto a ground-level platform that thrust my ball upwards and try to figure it out in the air. The first time, I was thrown directly into a connecting pole and bounced off the map before I even had a chance to move. Other attempts ended after I landed on one of the higher platforms and bounced right off again. When I finally managed to land in the right place and stay put, it didn’t feel like I’d mastered the obstacles of that particular level; it felt like a lucky run that I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to replicate. If only a few levels were designed like this it’d be easier to dismiss that feeling, but after the halfway point most of them start to feel this way.

And while the environments and backgrounds might be fun and colorful, much of the playable level design is repetitive and uninspired. The more I played past a certain point, the more it felt like a chore. What’s especially draining is that after finishing a particularly difficult level, there’s no satisfying adrenaline rush that accompanies overcoming a challenge — just a sense of relief that it’s finally over. Super Monkey Ball could’ve learned a thing or two from Peggle about dispensing serotonin.

It’s telling that the developers actually included a couple of ways to deal with particularly tough levels. There’s a Helper mode that doubles the time limit and provides a visual path to the goal, which can be useful but usually doesn’t negate the bigger issues. It’s usually not a matter of understanding where the end goal is — getting there through trial and error or dumb luck is the problem. I can’t tell you how many times I just blindly rolled forward as quickly as possible, hoping that it would get me closer to the end, because every other strategy ended in failure. There’s also the option to skip a stage entirely, which is especially nice because it ensures that you’re never stuck on one frustrating level for too long – assuming that you don’t run out of the points you need to pay your way.

You can earn points in various ways, but the most prominent are simply beating levels and completing certain challenges, like collecting all of the bananas in a stage. The Point Shop is where you’ll use those to unlock new characters, adding to the initial six-character roster of AiAi and his monkey menagerie. (Every character plays the same, but at least they look different.) You can even unlock a few non-monkey characters from other Sega games, like Sonic the Hedgehog, Jet Set Radio’s Beat, and Kazuma Kiryu of Yakuza fame, and playing as one of them even changes the bananas on each level to items from their respective games — rings for Sonic, spray paint cans for Beat. It’s a thoughtful touch, although the flipside is that these special characters can’t be customized with new outfits like the monkeys can.

Looking back at my personal experience, the Super Monkey Ball games have always been at their best as party games, and that continues to be the case with Banana Mania. Party mode has a dozen mini-games, and most of them are genuinely fun and have surprising depth when played against other humans; for example, the Mario Kart-esque Monkey Race game has 12 tracks and multiple gameplay modes, and Monkey Golf has regular and mini-golf variations. Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania is one of the few games to offer same-system multiplayer in a time when almost everything is online-only, making party mode easily its most redeeming quality.

As a solo experience, however, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania falls flat. More than once, I found myself wondering why I had liked these games so much when they first came out. Playing on PS5, I even turned on motion controls to try to replicate the magic of the early Wii game Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, but that was a complete disaster. The simplest tilt of the DualSense controller had stages careening to the left or right, sending my monkey balls flying. It’s a shame that Banana Mania didn’t live up to the Super Monkey Ball experience in my memories, but times have changed; maybe it’s time this series touched a strange black obelisk and evolved, too.