Halo Infinite removes weird melee element that didn’t make much sense

Halo Infinite’s second season has begun, bringing a clutch of new maps, modes and tweaks to the game—including, oddly enough, making the Warthog 170 pounds heavier. Some of the more notable changes that will change-up the game’s feel are in melee, and there’s one change buried in the patch notes that is weird in its own way: seven months on from launch, Infinite is changing one of the principles of up-close combat.

This is easy to miss because 343 doesn’t really get into it in the patch notes, merely noting that “‘Traded’ melee kills will occur more often now than in Season 1.” That is, when both players melee at once, more often now both will die rather than just one.

The reason is that Halo Infinite had a deliberate kink in the melee system relating to trades. Essentially, if two players melee-d at the same time and would usually kill each other, the one with the higher HP wins the encounter. That seems on the face of it… pretty unfair?

The counter-argument some players would make is that this is a system that is rewarding players who get a few good shots in before the beatdowns start. You can kind of see where that’s coming from but, for me, if my melee attack should be killing a dude then it should kill a dude. It’s not like any weapon outside of the dedicated melee tools can one-shot players anyway, so just running around thwacking people will never be an especially effective Halo tactic.