Mountain Dew might have saved Halo Infinite
2023 going into 2007. A brief history on Halo marketing, a soda review and the state of Halo Infinite two years post-release
The Halo Infinite launch in 2021 was a bit of a mixed bag.
After several delays, the multiplayer release was dropped a month early as a surprise to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Halo: Combat Evolved.
This would have been awesome — except the game was clearly unfinished. Infinite’s multiplayer always had good bones, in this writer’s humble opinion, but was severely lacking in terms of content.
Little hype was left for Infinite’s release after several delays and a lackluster showcase. It’s surprise “early access” soft-launch killed whatever momentum it had left.
Although chaotic development cycles are a Halo tradition at this point (chaotic might be an understatement), Halo releases are typically a big deal. The amount of fanfare and excitement around Infinite’s launch felt abysmally low.
Two years later, the game is in a much better state with a healthy player-base. As someone who’s been checking in on the game periodically, I feel like the game is finally where I wished it was at release.
Adding content to a game is simple; it just requires time and work. Regaining lost goodwill and recapturing the attention of your fanbase is much trickier. Let’s take a look at how 343 Industries leaned on Halo’s past to get fans (including this writer) excited for its future.
The good ol’ days, circa 2007
Buckle in. It’s time for a history lesson.
Anyone who knows me knows that Halo 3 is a load-bearing pillar of my identity. To understand why, let me take you back, dear reader, to 2007. It had been three years since Halo 2 released, and the Halo 3 hype train was reaching a fever pitch.
Gamers across the globe were eagerly awaiting to “Finish the Fight” and bring a close to the trilogy that made Xbox a household name and revolutionized the first-person-shooter genre forever.
Digital storefronts and games were still in their infancy. Highly anticipated game releases were an event: midnight release parties at GameStop, Best Buy or even Walmart were common, and popular. Halo 2 made $125 million on its release day in 2004 — for reference, Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” (2002) record-breaking (and at the time, record-holding) opening weekend only grossed $114 million over three days.
Riding on Halo 2’s huge success and completely bonkers marketing campaign, Halo 3 was set to become the fastest-selling video game of all time. This article from a day before Halo 3’s release captures some of the buzz surrounding the trilogy’s final title. It went on to gross $170 million in its first 24 hours.
As a young and impressionable 9-year-old at the time, I was fully captured by the story of Master Chief and his fight to save humanity (it didn’t hurt that Halo 3 had arguably one of the best video game marketing campaigns of all time). The Halo trilogy, and Halo 3 especially, felt like a moment in gaming.
What does any of this have to do with Mountain Dew?
Being 9 years old, I couldn’t fully participate in that moment. I wouldn’t have an Xbox 360 for another 3 years, shortly before Halo: Reach released in 2010. I was watching from the sidelines, stealing away a few hours of Halo 3 at a time when I visited a friend’s house. While I was able to experience the co-op campaign and many, many matches of Slayer on Sandtrap, I didn’t get to participate in every aspect of Halo 3’s launch.
One of the things I missed out on was the inception of Citrus Cherry Mountain Dew Game Fuel. Introduced as a tie-in promotion for the launch of Halo 3, PepsiCo created a new, limited flavor of Mountain Dew to promote the launch of the game. Times were simpler back then — there was no downloadable content tied to purchasing the beverage. The new flavor and Halo 3 branding were their own reward.
The Halo community, with its love for the series deeply rooted in nostalgia, has long since made references to the coveted Halo 3 Game Fuel. It’s become a popular meme, with fans often using it as a sort of shorthand reference to “the good ol’ days,” when both the gaming industry and the gamers’ lives themselves were younger and less complex. It acted as a metaphor for youth and simpler times forever past — once taken for granted, the Halo 3 branded Citrus Cherry Mountain Dew left shelves shortly after the game released.
As a kid, I never had a chance to try the soda. Imagine my excitement when it was announced it would return this year, Halo branding and all.
The triumphant return of Halo Game Fuel
Citrus Cherry Game Fuel returned to shelves for a limited time starting in November. In trying to find some of the coveted soda for myself, I found myself falling into the Mountain Dew mythos deeper than I had thought possible.
As it turns out, the Mountain Dew Citrus Cherry flavor is held in high regard not only by nostalgic Halo fans, but also by the Mountain Dew community. In trying and failing to find the beverage in my state in the days following its re-release, I discovered Halo fans weren’t the only ones excited about the promo.
My search for a store led me to find the r/mountaindew Reddit community and the Mountain Dew Fandom, which has chronicled the history of the Citrus Cherry flavor through the years. Best of all was my discovery of the DDD — Dew Drinker Discord. Across all platforms, the Mountain Dew community (a phrase I never thought I’d write) was just as excited about the return of the legendary flavor as Halo fans were.
For the first few days of the promotion, I was a little worried I might not be able to even get my hands on the flavor. After a few days of searching, I was able to find some bottles and cans of the stuff.
As for the actual soda itself, it far exceeded my expectations. The best way I can describe the flavor is a hit of red Spree candy cherry with just a hint of citrus, similar to an orange Tic-Tac. It’s really good: the cherry flavor doesn’t taste syrupy or too-sweet, and the citrus flavor is perfectly balanced so as not to overpower or compete with the cherry.
10/10. I get the hype now. Honestly, Citrus Cherry might have just jumped ahead of Baja Blast on my Mount Rushmore of sodas. If you’re interested in trying it for yourself, don’t wait too long — dedicated Dew-heads on both the Mountain Dew subreddit and Dew Drinker Discord suspect the final shipments of the limited-time flavor will be arriving at the end of December.
Halo 3: Refueled rocks. Plus, Halo Infinite is finally fun.
Along with the return of that sweet, sweet gamer fuel, the promo has brought some in-game content to Halo Infinite. There are a few rewards earned by submitting codes under the cap of your Mountain Dews, and they’re all pretty cool looking. I’m a big fan of the neon-green visor that looks like it’s been splashed with a little bit of Dew. My Spartan’s rocking it right now.
More exciting is the introduction of the Halo 3: Refueled playlist. 343 lovingly recreated a few iconic Halo 3 maps (Blackout, High Ground, Narrows, Isolation, Guardian, Construct and the Pit) and even added a Mountain Dew-themed remake of a map from the Master Chief Collection (Athlon became Critical Dewpoint).
343 has recently announced that the playlist will be permanent, making a nice addition to the game’s multiplayer offerings. The new maps, alongside remakes of Valhalla and Rat’s Nest added to the game earlier this year, have really helped fill out the game and add some variety. It’s helped address one of my chief complaints from when the game released, which was the small selection of available maps got old, quickly.
The promo and several other updates to Halo Infinite have brought about a resurgence of goodwill toward the game from players. Launching in 2021 after a tumultuous development cycle, the game’s single-player campaign generally impressed reviewers while the multiplayer modes received more lukewarm reviews.
Even those who weren’t huge fans of the game on release (like myself) have started to come around. Once seen by fans as rushed and unfinished, new maps, an improved progression system, the series’ best yet Forge mode and the reintroduction of Firefight have all contributed to making Infinite a strong entry in the Halo series.
If you were at all interested in picking Halo Infinite back up, now is the perfect time. The game is on a streak of much needed wins, and is undoubtedly in the best state it has ever been since launch. Although the future of the series still remains unclear, the current state of the game has provided hope that things may be headed in a good direction.