I play a lot of games on PC and rarely plug in a controller. While it initially takes quite a bit of time and effort to adjust to mouse and keyboard, once you get the hang of it, there’s (mostly) no going back. Even games that specifically recommend using a controller like Hades now feel remarkably more intuitive this way - WASD and a five-button mouse? I’ve got more clinical precision than Phil Taylor after 12 pints.
Not Halo, though. No, no - throw my keyboard in the bin and call me Chief, I’m a controller man when it comes to gun-punching Grunts. Perhaps this is why, then, that after spending approximately five minutes playing this weekend’s Halo Infinite technical preview using mouse and keyboard, I very nearly, almost definitely maybe picked my monitor up and used it as a gravity hammer against my own face. For what it’s worth, I did not actually do this. I merely wanted to do it.
Playing Halo with mouse and keyboard feels like driving a car with no steering wheel. You can make it go and stop, but there’s very little finesse involved - especially if you want to turn, which requires a sufficiently impressive degree of creativity that you should probably stop playing your Nintendos and do the next Mona Lisa. What’s that? Halo isn’t a Nintendo game? No, reader, all video games and, by extension, all video game consoles are Nintendos. Them’s the breaks.
Halo just feels right with a controller, like Master Chief’s limbs have been consciously designed to be mapped to analog sticks (they have) and the guns have been created with haptic feedback in mind (they also have). A to jump, X to reload, B to crouch - map melee to right analog click, you cowards - Y to change weapon… It’s the classic Halo formula. F to punch someone with your gun? There’s no F on an Xbox controller mate. Eejit.
In all seriousness, it’s worth remembering Halo’s status as the Xbox series. Master Chief is essentially synonymous with Gamer Green, so it stands to reason that playing Infinite on an Xbox controller feels much better than using a Super Razer Gaming Power Mouse X10000. However, it also goes further than basic compatibility - Halo’s floaty movement marks it as distinct from the vast majority of other FPS, most of which I would argue are far more fluid with mouse and keyboard. Doom Eternal? Mouse and keyboard. Half-Life 2? Mouse and keyboard. Metro 2033? Mouse. And. Keyboard.
Halo is more of a black sheep in the wider FPS oeuvre, an ugly duckling that is actually not ugly whatsoever and is only labeled as such by envious competitors who wish they could give Chief a run for his money. Yeah, there have been a few stinkers over the last decade - cough Halo 4 and Halo 5 cough - but as you’ll know if you read my Halo Infinite impressions piece from the most recent insider flight, this year’s highly anticipated Warthog outing is shaping up to be a bona fide FPS phenom. I’m all for using mouse and keyboard when it comes to most shooters, and I can recognise the fact that pretty much every single major esports tournament on the planet is PC-based.
My point is simply that when you’re playing Halo at a non-professional level, using anything other than a standard Xbox controller is blasphemy. If John Halo found out what you were up to, he’d probably lump you in with the ring-worshipping prophets from the original trilogy, which means that yes, now you have a seven-foot-tall super soldier on your case - and for what? To defend some vainglorious notion of controllers being inferior to mice? You come into my house on the day of the Halo Infinite flight and ask me to accept that playing Halo with mouse and keyboard is acceptable? That is not justice. Your controller is still alive.
Halo is just better with a controller. It always has been and always will be. From hurtling headlong across lurching bridges in a Mongoose to rocket-jumping your way to a Killimanjaro medal, Halo is one of precious few games that is designed to specifically be played with a controller and nothing else. From The Duke to the latest Xbox Series X pad, there has never been a wrong way to play Halo until it came to PC. As I’ve just spent the last 700 or so words arguing, that is no longer the case.
I’m not usually one to tell anyone how they ought to do something, but if you’re playing Halo on mouse and keyboard… Let’s just say it’s worth weighing up your options, yeah? Get yourself a nice Xbox pad and try it out for size. I am telling you now - Halo is designed to be played on a controller. Any other way won’t feel the same - not now, not ever. Remember that time Master Chief said “Wake me when you need me?” Well, get the bucket of water out and throw it over him. When he jumps up and puts a gun to your head, ask him, “Mr. John Halo, should I use a controller or mouse and keyboard,” at which point he will lower the gun and say, “Holy shit, thank The Flood you woke me up for such an important query - the correct answer is controller. Phew. Alright, wake me when you need me. That was a close one.”