I’ve loved playing Halo campaigns from the start, but Reach was my first experience on Live matchmaking. I’ve heard that H3 multiplayer was better, but the graphics of Reach spoiled me so I couldn’t appreciate H3 matchmaking like a lot of you guys do.
While H4 may bring back some familiarity of matchmaking that made H2 and H3 the players’ favorites, Reach Babies like me might have a hard time appreciating the look and feel some H3 veterans like about H4.
As a big Halo fan, it bugs me that I don’t enjoy this game. While trying to put my finger on why I can’t seem to get on board with H4, I came up with this list of 9 reasons:
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The Ordinance Drops, combined with the need to earn Loadouts is a bad idea. This completely undermines any attempt to balance the multiplayer experience and requires that we place even more of our battered faith in 343i to actually provide skill-based matching. This game feels less like Halo and more like CoD; a more accurate name for H4 would be Duty of Halo: Combat Synergized.
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I dislike the look of the Spartan so much that I find myself secretly wishing mine to just die. This is a problem, since his survival is key to victories and good stats. It’s even worse when I see your Spartans, since I just can’t seem to accept a toy robot soldier as a serious threat. It just reminds me of how cool it was to see The Little Green Army Men hobbling around in Toy Story. I just don’t understand how I can get past this issue without dumping some serious cash into therapy.
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While the graphics are awesome when you stop to appreciate them, the overall game play visual seems to lack a certain 3-D “shine”. It’s hard to really pin down what’s missing (or changed), but I feel like I’m playing a Saturday-morning cartoon and can’t get immersed like I can in Reach.
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With few exceptions, the menus are way too cluttered and I hate not being able to see my friends on the Main Matchmaking Lobby screen.
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As many have pointed out, H4 requires no skill. I don’t know if it’s because I was first matched with noobs before I was assigned a BPR or what, but it seems like 343i gave everyone an aim-bot mod. To be clear, I’m not bragging; my Reach BPR is 48. So if I think the bullets are magically attracted to heads, then I guarantee you that most of my Halo friends (who are much better than me) are probably playing one-handed just to challenge themselves by now.
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No Forge. No, really; and don’t tell me that those 3 dinky maps are Forge, because they aren’t. Those are actually Edit Screens that allow us to cut, copy, and paste our way to Custom gaming creativity; as long as it looks pretty much like any other matchmaking map. With H4, 343i has reinvented the Sandbox to give us the sand without the box. Experts refer to this as an ant hill, which is only fun to play with if you have a magnifying lens. (Disclaimer: Fun ant melting is cruel and generally not condoned by hippies and others that can’t find better things to care about. Warning: do not focus light in such a way towards your TV unless you are looking for an excuse to buy a new one, as it doesn’t actually harm your ugly Spartan because he is safe in the Cloud while you rage about 343i ruining your life).
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Master Chief gets all the credit for my hard work. I’ve played all the campaigns and loved them, but I think H3 wrapped up Chief’s story very well by the end of H3. I was happy to see ODST and Reach open up the universe to other characters and plots. Plus, there is something extra satisfying about my own customized Spartan incorporated into the Reach campaign. It also helps that (in my opinion, of’ course) the Reach storyline was the best, with Halo CE coming in as a mildly distant second. In contrast, and for whatever reason, the H4 campaign held my interest for about 2 levels (so someone please tell me if I’m just getting to the good part).
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I like how 343i ditched Firefight (A.K.A. “The Bungie-sanctioned Boosting Tool”) for Spartan Ops, but I feel like I should finish the campaign before continuing the story with SO, so I haven’t tried it yet (maybe I’m misinformed here).
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Earning promotions of real, named ranks does matter to some of us. In the U.S. Army, the rank of Major is also known as O-4. However, you probably won’t hear many officers refer to themselves an O-4. That’s because he’s a Yoinking MAJOR, and the Major wants you to know it. Sir yes sir, Major Sir. The rest of us couch potato gamers appreciate earning a Halo rank for the same reason; not because it says we’re necessarily better on any given day, but because it says we’re dedicated and have put in the time to earn the title. Assigning a number is only relevant for payroll, Chinese products, and WoW players. I went from SR1 to SR20 in the span of a dozen or so H4 games before I realized that I couldn’t care less about reaching SR30, 40, 1000, or whatever. Call it a physics thing: values without context are abstract, arbitrary, and ultimately useless. For me, striving to earn a numeric value is about as satisfying as playing a game ofGuess What Number I’m Thinking Of.
So I think I’m just going to stick with Reach for now. It kind of sucks since my Halo friends are all playing H4, but whatever. Maybe I’ll give it another try once 343i releases some updates and see if it works for me then.
Anybody else have a list of pros and cons comparing H4 to previous installations? Please share!
Enjoy your slow gameplay, overpowered grenades, terrible maps, and foreign hosts.