Let me get this out of the way and say this is pretty long. If you can read it all I applaud you.
First off, let me get my complaints towards the campaign out of the way. I found the plot of the story to be just dull and simple. No missions really stuck out to me to be my favorite. I mean, in all the other Halo’s I always had a favorite mission that I just loved to play for fun, but in 4 none of them stuck out to me as unique.
Back to the plot. You start off on the Forward Unto Dawn, which was completely remade? I mean, you got a brand new cryo bay, a random bridge that was never there, and oh my favorite a brand new missile court yard! Not to mention the ship is like 2x bigger than before. I guess Cortana had some free time on her hands and manifested to add all those new features huh? Sarcasm aside, I just found those changes to be just downright disgraceful, to alter such a notable ship like that is stupid. To the chief’s armor, I’m fine about how it looks, but it bugs me that he just randomly acquired a new set of Mark IV armor out of no where. I would have enjoyed it more if he just changed into the more newly updated armor on the Infinity.
Back to the plot, after you get into a battle with the covenant who are now your enemies (Don’t get me started on how they look) you find yourself crash landing on Requiem, fight a bunch of battles, and then help save the Infinity. After that, you get some Marines to help you! But the sad part is, they are just soooooo stupid! I mean, In Reach the Marines were pretty smart, actually knew how to drive a hog and take out an enemy. On the missions like Requiem and a few Spartan Op’s missions, i’m surprised they know how to pull the trigger. After your done playing with the mammoth (1 time deal no fair )= ) and the rest of the time your just shooting stuff and activating stuff with the basic same construct that’s just everywhere that was made specifically to inject an A.I. chip in with a hologram projection in each one. Then your back on the Infinity trying to tell De Rio about the new enemy that they have to stop and instead of obeying such a memorable hero, he decides to snap and try to have him arrested. What a great Captain he proved to be, just seemed like he was in the game to cause trouble. You are then in a Pelican which has some new features on it, like it can shoot lasers now and has a turret on each side. Safety first after all. And you just fly the Pelican to 3 objectives as if your going grocery shopping. Skipping ahead, the Didact escapes again, Infinity leaves you, and you somehow manage to slip a ride on a covenant ship while it went into slip space. Then your on Installation 03 which you find to be well guarded indeed (Not). This is post-war, shouldn’t the UNSC up their defenses on these Installations? Everyone dies, chief lives, fight continues, you find a new aircraft, maneuver through the Forerunner ship, and end up head to head with the Didact. The boss battle was just awful, boring, and simple. You just press the buttons that appear on the screen to defeat him. A minute long battle. Fun. Then Chief sets of a nuke and Cortana somehow manages to save him, and then she somehow was able to manifest into a physical form. Not sure how a computer program can do that but whatever, thought they were gonna kiss to add more to the romanticism that has been going on through the story but tough luck.
Some other things on my mind. I’m kind of surprise the Chief didn’t talk himself to death during the whole campaign. Chief was known to be the somewhat quiet type, so why make him more talkative out of nowhere? Oh and when they reached Earth, where in the hell was Earth’s defense? No ship’s protecting Earth, and where’s the Mac array system?
Last BIG thing that seriously pissed me off to the max. If you guys didn’t know about the legendary ending then let me inform you. In the legendary ending they somewhat show John’s face, not all of it, just everything in the mid section of his eyes. That’s just a big no no. Halo has always been about keeping the Chief’s identity secret, never show any aspect of his body during any of the games. This one blew it, I don’t care if its just his eyes, 343 messed up.
Now onto multiplayer, the worst multiplayer to come to Halo. Ever. Let’s start with the new additions they’ve added. You now got load out’s, perks, ordinance, and specializations. Why on earth add these? You have intentionally killed competitive gaming with these changes. Teamwork and map control is just dead. You’ll barley ever find yourself nearby your teammates, your always trying to lone wolf it. It has always been a Halo tradition to control parts of the map and to find the power weapons. Now, If you can’t seem to get a kill but manage to score a bunch of assists, then the game will reward you a power weapon right to your position! Just run to a safe spot and call it in and tada!..
Competitiveness is what made Halo, so why get rid of it?
Moving onto weapons and vehicles. Holy blam, I have never seen such unbalanced weapons in my life. The bolt shot is exactly like carrying a miniature shotgun. Why make a pistol that is a 1 hit kill? That’s ridiculous! And then there’s the DMR, which seems to be able to just mess anyone up from any distance. And ordinance is just deadly, but hey it usually gives you power up weapons which should be OP, but not too OP where you can’t even avoid it. The gun that probably get’s on my nerve the most though is probably the bolt shot, that thing is too OP. And not to mention the sniper, its pretty hard to counter attack a sniper when they don’t un-scope anymore when hit. That is very VERY stupid. With vehicles, what in the hell happened to all of them? Your missing a human air craft which you could have easily have chosen between the Hornet or Falcon. No extra covenant vehicle either, it would have been nice to see the return of the revenant. And i’m surprised I haven’t seen any appearance of scarabs in the campaign? Sad to see they haven’t returned.
With ranks, what was 343 thinking? What the heck is this? SR? That is just terribly boring to play with, I mean the game is again about who plays the most, does not represent skill whatsoever. 343 said they were gonna add a 1-50 ranking system, but apparently its only visible on your halo waypoint profile. Another kick in the balls to us competitive players. I honestly would have preferred Reach’s ranking system more, at least it was more creative than this. And then theirs the armor, such boring armor indeed. I, for the life of me, can not tell what someone is wearing when playing in-game. They legit all look alike to me, and I play on a 48in HDTV. And even though I can’t tell other’s apart, the armor isn’t as great as everyone thought it was. All the armor look very similar to one another, excluding the helmets obviously, there’s no armor that distinguishes you from the rest like in Reach. You can barley even customize your armor like you could in Reach! When you bought a helmet, at least you had the option of buying different parts to it so you there was a lesser chance of someone wearing the same helmet as you. And what happened to utility, wrist, and those big -Yoink- shoulders/chests?
