By: Drew Beausoleil

Master Chief gone rouge? We are masked with so many concerning question's. Why? Has our beloved hero turned? What truly happened? How could he have turned, or did he turn at all? Does he have something of bigger importance that we just don't know about?

All these questions and more are what Spartan Lock is determined to find out, as he and his team of Spartan 4's are tasked with the mission of bringing the Chief and Blue Team back in for all the answers we're looking for. This is going to be anything but easy. Spartan 117 and his team will not come willingly and this is where the story between the Chief and Lock become an interesting twist of cat and mouse. There is no doubt that Chief has his own motives of doing whatever that may be for his mission, but not only does he have his mission to worry about he also is being chased by Lock and his team. There's an interesting dynamic between the two.

As we play through both stories and they do intertwine with each other I wanted to play more as Chief. I wanted to understand more of why he's running, what are his motives? Instead, we play a large portion of the game as Lock and getting more of his story. Don't get me wrong, Lock actually has a pretty good story. I like my time playing as him but it was the quest Chief is on and what is happening with him that had me wanting to play from our hero's side.Those that are concerned about playing as Lock should not worry. 343 knows what they're doing and has me wanted to play Halo 5 Guardians all the time. I don't want to put the game down. It's what you come to know and love about Halo. Great game mechanics! Each weapon and character is excellent. The weapons are so unique, each has their own personality with the weight and feel of each gun or vehicle we drive or fly.

New is the ability to command your Spartans, the ability to send them ahead into battle or focus on one specific target is done really well and very helpful at times. Don't want to control your Spartans, then play online with 3 friends in co-op and play through the entire campaign. Halo 5 Guardians has definitely advanced the series forward with new mechanics like the dash move that comes in handy offline as well as online. But its also the huge graphical leap that help create such a stunning vista that I found myself stopping my game just to look around the world that 343 has created. Halo 5 is absolutely beautiful. Massive views that are just awe inspiring with incredible landscapes, huge rock walls and so many moving mechanical structures, 343's team has truly outdone themselves.

Warzone is easily my favorite multiplayer mode. Huge levels with massive teams and each team with faced with taking over a teams base pushing them back to another base and you and your team work together in collecting or defending each of the bases. After the Master Chief Collection, many were concerned how the multiplayer would work for Halo 5...It works great! There is great connectivity with no drops or being booted from servers. There is no lag and I had no problems finding a match. The new Arena mode is fun with short quick bursts of high intense action as each team tries to eliminate the other 4 players while all battle to capture the flag that is centrally located in the middle of the smaller map.

Halo 5 Guardians may have had many questioning 343's decision of introducing another main protagonist, but I feel the choice to add Lock into the mix was one well worth their choice but just now well balanced. Playing as Lock for nearly 80 percent of the game, well fun was also a missed opportunity with most gamers looking to play as their hero, Chief once again. However, Halo 5 Guardians is an almost perfect game with fantastic gameplay mechanics, beautiful vista's with an incredible sense of verticality that expands the level design and finishes off with one of this years best multiplayers to come to any console.