343 Industries and Microsoft have been teasing the Firefight: King of the Hill mode for Halo Infinite for quite a while, with good reason considering how much Halo Fans love Firefight.
Tomorrow, it’ll be finally time to sink our teeth (and energy swords) into the mode, which will launch tomorrow, December 5, with the December update.
The mode was originally born in 2009 with Halo 3: ODST, prompting group of four friends to tackle hordes of enemies in co-op. It was then evolved and tweaked several times in following installment of the franchise.
The new Firefight: King of the Hill is entirely PvE, prompting fireteams of four spartans to face wave after wave of bloodthirsty Banished.
Yet, there’s a twist. A hill spawns at the beginning of each match, and players have to first take it, and then defend it to the end, as the enemy waves become more and more challenging.
After a while, a boss wave will spawn, and if you defeat it, you’ll get some time to rearm and regroup before the hill spawns in another location and the cycle repeats.
Each round will have five hills, and capturing at least three will grant you a win. This is because you get a point per hill captured and one per boss wave defeated. Winning requires five points.
Wiping means instant defeat, but other Spartans will be able to revive teammates by default. This can be turned off optionally, if you prefer more traditional gameplay, and you can also pick the option that restores the old lifepool if you so wish.
You can see the mode in action below.
At launch, there will be nine maps in the playlist, three of which are by community creators.
- House of Reckoning
- Behemoth
- Deadlock
- Launch Site
- Live Fire
- Oasis
- Exiled (by Epetr0, SandoChokUN)
- Kusini Bay (by Mr Kwatz)
- Vallaheim (by HaiseOz)
On top of the new mode, tomorrow’s update also brings Repair Field equipment, Forge updates, and Ranked and Custom Game Browser improvements.
If you’d like to learn more about Halo Infinite, which is currently available for PC and Xbox, you can read our review, in which our Andrew Stretch awarded the game with an 8.5 out of 10.
