Halo: Fireteam Raven

Halo: Fireteam Raven Combat Evolved setting spoilers; avoids the arcade campaign's ending. There is a Halo arcade game where you can sit down with other people, grab the gun controller and fight your way through the original ring from an ODST squad’s perspective. That alone is a pretty good reason not to leave Fireteam Raven out of a conversation about the series. This is a very different setup from putting a controller in your hands at home. It’s a dedicated arcade shooter, built around the cabinet and the people playing beside you. The screen, the gun controllers and the noise are all part of what it is. Fireteam Raven arrived in 2018, developed by Raw Thrills and Play Mechanix in partnership with 343 Industries. It takes place during Halo: Combat Evolved, on Alpha Halo. While Chief and Cortana are dealing with the events of that game, this team of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers is fighting through its own part of the same disaster. I like that perspective. We spend so much time following Chief that it’s easy to forget what an encounter with the Covenant would look like for somebody who isn’t him. ODSTs are elite soldiers, but they aren’t Spartans. Putting them on the ring gives the fighting a different starting point, even when the enemies and surroundings are familiar. And Chief is still part of the wider battle. You’re fighting alongside the UNSC during the same events, rather than being dropped into an unrelated arcade shooting gallery with Halo pictures pasted over it. The setting matters. These are people trying to survive the place we already know is far more dangerous than it first appears. The campaign runs through six levels, with Covenant forces and the Flood among the threats. That gives it a compact shape. It doesn’t need to be a full-length console campaign to take you through a series of battles and give you a reason to care about the squad making its way through them. The original large cabinet supported four players with mounted guns. There are other versions now, including two-player cabinets and tethered-gun designs. So if you’ve seen photographs of an enormous machine and then find a smaller Halo cabinet somewhere, that doesn’t automatically mean you’ve found a different game. The current Raw Thrills lineup includes gun controllers modeled after the Halo assault rifle. That’s such a natural fit for an arcade version of Halo. There’s an immediate appeal to holding something shaped like a weapon you recognize while the action is taking place on the screen in front of you. Playing beside somebody also changes the social side of it. You can see the person you’re working with. You can point out an enemy, react to something happening, or laugh at a mistake without talking through a headset. I like having games in a series that allow for different kinds of time together, rather than assuming everybody always wants the same online setup. It also means Fireteam Raven needs to be explained on its own terms. Somebody asking where to download it shouldn’t be handed a link to MCC and told it’s in there. It isn’t one of the MCC campaigns. And a normal Xbox achievement walkthrough isn’t the right thing to promise for an arcade cabinet. The useful guide would cover the stages, the encounters, what the controls do, and the things a new player should pay attention to before spending a stack of credits. It should also distinguish the cabinet types. How many people can play together is a fairly important detail if you’re making a trip with friends. Availability is the practical catch. The 2018 launch included Dave & Buster’s, but that announcement doesn’t tell you which individual location has a working cabinet today. I’d check the actual arcade before going out of the way for it. The same goes for old account-linking and reward instructions; a feature advertised at launch isn’t something I want to promise without checking it still works. Fireteam Raven is a reminder that there are other ways to spend time in this universe. Chief’s campaign is happening, the ring is falling apart around everyone, and there are other soldiers down there trying to get through it. Giving a few of them their own arcade game is a pretty good idea.