The Grifball chaos is back, ready to lob, launch, earn glory, and get even better. Operation Legacy has launched with the newest update to Halo Infinite, bringing with it two versions of the said chaotic sport—Classic and Octane with thrusters. The curveball is: you get to romp around in this madness both in first- and third-person across ten new arenas! What? Well, hammer-wielding madness has gone absolutely versatile now.
But here is a little breakdown before storming into chaos: Grifball is one of those things that is practically rugby meets gladiator fighting through Halo. You grab the bomb (or ball), head to the enemy’s goal, and hope you don’t get hammered in the midthrust by the gravity hammer. The classic mode is just keeping it old-school; the octane mode just gives an extra slight shoving for a little more unpredictable gameplay.
But the real kicker is the presence of a third-person view. Half of the player-base love the new view, while the rest abhorred it. One player, CMcSchwifty, spoke out with something obvious about the problem: “The gravity hammer makes a HUGE blind spot in third-person and it’s annoying.” Another said in agreement, blocker “miserable to play.” Yikes.
Then there’s the big old question of matchmaking: Another guy said how he had been choosing the default first-person mode yet was being thrown into third-person matches.” It’s happening to all my friends as well,” he tweeted in utter dismay. Kakoyeet weighed in on the conversation, saying if he was really sure he had filtered out the third-person mode, it could often just be user error. But if a whole lot of people are experiencing this, maybe there really is a bug in the system.
Still, these are minor annoyances. Weighing heavily on nostalgia. TomWolf(05) remembers all those all-nighters doing Grifball in Halo: Reach days and he calls them “good times.” And jammy put it in perspective: “Grifball got more lore than half these Netflix originals and somehow still hits harder.” We can’t argue with that one.
Speaking of, of course, no Halo update is ever complete without the community demanding more. LordFriezah and WortEliteChief were both asking for Prop Hunt—a hide-and-seek mode where players disguise themselves as objects from seekers. Fair enough: If we can get Grifball back, we can get anything.
Then the wild “maybe” Planter: a collaboration with Dead by Daylight (yes, someone actually tweeted that) and, uh, Johnson Halo? Whatever that means. But the most pressing inquiry actually came from Paul Martin Cruz, demanding a PC split-screen online to really relive all those glorious moments with his dad. “PLEASE I BEG,” he wrote, “I was crushed when I realized this wasn’t going to be an option for Big Team Battle.”
Thus, should Grifball be played? Absolutely—if you can live with third-person blind spots and matchmaking glitches here and there. Mad chaos, mad nostalgia, mad Halo fun. Just stick with first-person unless you plan on having fun blindly flailing the hammer. Who knows? 343 Industries might consider adjusting their camera angles from feedback.
Until then, grab that gravity hammer, get your striggers together, and let the matches pop. For the experienced Grifball warriors looking to reminisce their glorious past or the ones who want crumbs of chaos, Operation Legacy will surely provide. But we totally would not take responsibility if you suddenly realize all your time was lost in those are-nighters.
