Halo 4 is 10 years old, here's some errant thoughts

Games Halo: The Master Chief Collection
1

I guess it’s been 10 years since Halo 4, huh.

Look. I have… a lot of very complicated feelings about Halo 4. It is at least half the reason we are where we are today with Halo.

I can’t blame 343i for trying to do something really different, and they did. They put a LOT of effort - in a very short time - into redefining what Halo was, bringing stuff to the forefront that Bungie never cared to, but… in doing so, made a lot of mistakes, hiccups and, wrote some fairly boring sci-fi here and there too.

I do not think 343i is bad for making Halo 4. I do think parts of it were carelessly made, while other parts are borderline artisanally crafted. It is pretty damn amazing that the game even ran on Xbox 360, though some parts showed its age for sure.

I’ll never forget the features that were removed, limited, and otherwise torn out. How much less variety there was in vehicles, how… Extremely ignorant of what made Halo, Halo many parts of 343i were, and how they were proud they hired people who hated Halo, to work on Halo.

It was annoying.

And it shook my love for the franchise pretty hard.

The campaign and story is alright. The multiplayer is bad. Spartan Ops just wasn’t Firefight, but Firefight sure as Hel wasn’t Spartan Ops, and Forge… Was generally improved, but again, never reached the highs of even Reach.

It was a low point for the series, but it definitely had stones.

So, you know. It’s a mixed bag.

2

Sad to say, but Halo 4 was 343’s strongest outing. Only 343 title to launch with Forge and a PvE experience (which still sucked). Campaign was 343 at their best in terms of writing and it’s major cardinal sin was the art style change.

Every subsequent game took the series lower.

I’m thankful for the MCC and the team’s effort to add and restore to each title within the collection. It’s funny to think that for 8/10 of Halo 4’s years it has occupied within the MCC. In retrospect I am glad it was included in the MCC especially how easy it could’ve been to write off as a ‘too recent’ entry for a collection.

Praise Kornman. Praise slugman.

3

Hard disagree here. It was a massive step in the right direction after the low point that was Reach. I found the campaign very engaging and interesting, the characters interesting (Lasky is a great character and I was disappointed by him not being in Infinite beyond a few lines in audio logs), and really enjoyed Chief and Cortana’s relationship. Spartan Ops was, rough. I think with some work it could’ve become something special, but I can understand why they never proceeded to do a season 2. Multiplayer was fantastic. Not as good as CE or 2, but a million times better than Reach and frankly better than Halo 3’s.

Art style was a step down (art style and the various armor designs was the one thing Bungie did in Reach that was really good, everything else was a major step down from ODST and Halo 3), although I actually really like the redesign of Chief’s armor, but it wasn’t awful.

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4

Personally I think Halo 4’s MP is on par with both Halo 2 and Reach. But I agree, vastly better than Halo 3’s MP.

H3 was my first Halo game owned, so naturally I spent a large chunk of time on it, but after Reach, I never looked back, to this day, Halos Reach, 2C, 2A, 4, and 5 are my go to games forMP.

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5

Firmly disagree, Infinite is what I think their strongest is.

6

I respect the choice, but admittedly I’ll never understand it. Even if Infinite reaches a “content complete” state the game doesn’t offer me much. A big part of the Halo experience for me is customization and unlocking everything in the armory. For now Infinite is pretty rudderless even with the Season 3 details.

Huzzuah to Halo 4 for reaching the big 10. Square Enix’s online battle royale couldn’t make it past 1 year. For such a large emphasis on online multiplayer it’s a miracle that Halo has made it this far with every title still having a supported version.

7

I just never liked 4, always felt bad to play no matter the mode. Infinite at least feels good, IMO.

But I respect Halo 4, kinda’.

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8

Overtime I’ve grown to prefer H4 over Reach when it comes to multiplayer. Don’t like the campaign though.