Halo 5

Everyone knew this will happen and he was coming back. From Xbox One's announcement, it was always just a matter of time before the Chief reminded us all just what a real FPS looks like. The focus of Halo 5: Guardians is exactly that.

This is a game built from the ground-up to return Halo multiplayer to its first principles, and to the forefront of competitive shooters. "From the day we started working on this game," says executive producer Josh Holmes, "competitive has been the core of the experience."

OXM spent a day playing the Halo 5 multiplayer beta, which will be launched on 29 December and run until 18 January, and in the opening presentation Holmes and creative director Tim Longo ruined our carefully prepared questions. Almost every single aspect of Halo 4 that troubled fans is gone. Halo 5 runs on dedicated servers, there are no more Ordnance drops, armor abilities are out, loadouts are gone, flinching has flinched, fixed weapon spawns are back, hello to a sexy 60FPS and - sweet Cortana! - the whole thing's built around a skill-based ranking system.

We've got the skinny on all of it, but the first and most obvious question is why? After all, in an industry built on constant forward momentum it's unusual to see such a high-profile FPS hark back to classic multiplayer roots - and, perhaps, something of an admission that Halo 4 just had too much stuff going on. "A big part of it is just putting all players on an equal footing," says Holmes. "Making sure there's an equal playing field. Tim [Longo]'s been very passionate about making sure every player has the same set of abilities that they can employ and use as tools on the battlefield."

"Yeah, we've been really focused on keeping the skill gap pure, so it's learning about how to use all these toys," says Longo. "We kind of talk about it like peeling an onion's layers over time, so you might take a chance and start trying to learn how to use ground pound, then you go on to add this and you add that. But everyone has that suite of abilities and then it's just how you use it to increase your skills. That kind of return to form is the whole point of arena multiplayer."

So, for example, if you're in a firefight and push the analogue stick in a direction plus B, you'll activate a thruster-powered evasive dodge - which can also be triggered in midair to squeeze out a little more distance. If you're sprinting forwards and press melee, you'll perform the 'Spartan charge' - a forward shoulder-ram that we used on more than one occasion to send enemies flying over the side of levels. Zoom in on your target while jumping and thrusters will automatically activate to give your Spartan a little more hangtime - which balances the powerful surprise factor by also making you something of a sitting duck.