Months after Halo Infinite's final major update, Halo Studios releases a surprise PvE mode and the game's hardest challenge ever

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Halo Studios has thrown Halo Infinite a bone in the form of a new co-op survival mode, months after announcing the end of major updates for the shooter and months before the developer moves on to Halo: Campaign Evolved. For now, it's resisting those Halo Finite allegations.

"Seconds into your first match of Firefight: Gauntlet, you'll understand the name," a new blog post from the developer explains. "This deviously difficult PvE mode introduces upgradeable attributes, elimination objectives, and auto-scaled difficulty settings to a boss-filled Firefight experience designed to challenge even the toughest Spartans."

Firefight was already introduced in Halo Infinite years ago now, but what's particularly interesting about this new Gauntlet variant are the roguelike elements. Five maps are connected by a supply area, and between rounds you can upgrade your Spartans to try to prepare for the raging brutes and sticky-bomb-kamikaze grunts coming up.

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"Gather ammo and equipment, roll for power weapons, or level up your personal buffs (Speed, Resistance, Regeneration, and Damage) for the onslaught ahead." Then, each round crescendos to a boss fight that's already kicking players' butts.

"Halo Infinite's new Firefight Gauntlet mode is really damn fun," one popular content creator tweets, calling it "hard as balls but very very very fun" and claiming it should be used as "a template for a Firefight variant in future Halo titles."

Even Mint Blitz, a content creator who frequently goes viral for pulling off in-game stunts worthy of Master Chief's extended universe shenanigans, calls it maybe "one of the hardest challenges in gaming history," adding, "holy hell is this a challenge."

"Rumors of Halo Infinite's death have been greatly exaggerated," a popular reaction on the Halo subreddit reads.

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Should you be struggling to make a dent in those enemy waves, Halo Studios says you can retrieve an Oddball from a map called Harbinger to activate the mods you'd normally get from campaign Skulls. Doing this also boosts all four players' personal scores.

Halo lead mocks rumors that the studio is chasing Arc Raiders and Marathon with a PvE extraction shooter spin-off.

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Kaan SerinFreelance contributor

Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that's vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he'll soon forget.

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