GameSpot scored Halo Infinite's campaign 9/10. Co-op wouldn't ship for another 8 months.

The review is titled 'What If Master Chief Was Daddy' and scored 9/10. This is not a parody. This is a real GameSpot review, published December 6, 2021, for a game whose co-op mode wouldn't ship for eight more months and whose Forge mode wouldn't arrive for eleven. GameSpot evaluated approximately 60% of a Halo game, called it 'Superb,' and put a nine on it. The math ain't mathing.

Let's count the words spent on missing features. Co-op — present in every mainline Halo title since Combat Evolved in 2001: zero mentions. Forge mode — a franchise staple since Halo 3 in 2007: zero mentions. The phrase 'not available at launch' appears exactly zero times across 1,200 words. The review does dedicate space to Master Chief's 'more fatherly energy,' which is load-bearing context for the headline but not for a 9/10 score. That's the editorial trade-off: zero coverage of two missing franchise pillars, one paragraph on Chief's paternal vibes.

Here's a comparison that should concern someone. GameSpot scored Halo 4 — a complete, co-op-present, feature-full game — an 8/10 in 2012. They scored the campaign-only, co-op-absent, Forge-absent portion of Halo Infinite a 9/10 in 2021. By GameSpot's own scoring logic, a partial Halo game outperforms a complete one by a full point. Co-op arrived August 2022. Forge arrived November 2022. The review predates both by up to eleven months and mentions neither.

Halo Infinite's Steam concurrent player count dropped over 90% from its launch peak within two years — by which point both features were finally in the game. GameSpot also published a separate multiplayer review the same week scoring it an 8/10. Add them together, divide by two: 8.5. That's still not how reviewing works, but it's at least directionally honest. The campaign review is still online, still scored 9/10, still titled after a question no one asked. The math ain't mathing.