Halo 4 is incredible.

Games Other Halo
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This post has been edited by a moderator. Please do not purposely bypass the word filter.

*Original post. Click at your own discretion.

The amount of hate and viciousness streaming from ex-halo fans is stressful…not because I have a desire to troll, but more for the fact that it worries me to think 343 might actually give in to the rants of a handful of dissatisfied individuals. On that note, I would like to give praise, and credit where credit is due.

Halo 2. It was the -Yoink-. I mean, that game was absolutely legendary. Im not a cryin man, but i’d be lieing if I said I didnt consider it a time or two when I reminesce on the good ol’ mlg days of bxrs, quadshots, freak outs and controller smashing. After Halo: Reach, I was ready to give up on Halo entirely. I mean that with a passion. After about 2 days, I took the disk out and threw that -Yoink- across the room. I grew to accept the game, but from the horrendous campaign that singlehandely roflstomped halo canon, to the multiplayer that introduced that freakin awful armor lock (ever stick a dude across a map, just to have him armor lock?), it was apparent to me that Bungies time was over. I rejoiced when it was announced the newly formed 343 industries would be taking reign of halo 4.

Which, naturally, brings me to halo 4. Good lord, what a marvel. Initially pissed from the display of unexplained armor changes on master chief (im a halo canon nut), I thought back to Halo: Reach, and accepted the fact that it was time for a change. And 343 promised to do just that- bring change. So, I rolled with it. The first time I entered the campaign, jesus did I marvel at the graphics. I mean, really, these are the graphics halo had deserved, and the graphics bungie simply refused to give, for one reason or another. Crisp, bright, realistic, and deadly looking. Everything took on a more serious tone. Awesome. The campaign was fantastic, The music, the sounds the guns made, the constant presence of a visible visor, THE STORY, everything about it was superb. Except for the random introduction of spartan 4’s it was incredible. Then came the matchmaking. YES.YESSSS.YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. The first face paced, truly engrossing, competitive halo experience since halo 2 had arrived. Where halo 2 had the button glitches that made it so darn fast paced and exciting, halo 4 had introduced new, SUCCESSFUL, mechanics that made you feel like a real spartan.

It really gave you the ability to f#$k up multiple people at once, assuming you could use the mechanics efficiently… Just like in Halo 2. The maps, well, they are anywhere between decent and great. That might be the one semi-lacking aspect of matchmaking, the maps. The one installation-type map, you know, the one on the cliff side, with the multiple buildings and the little ramp-type thingy in the middle of the buildings and -Yoink-, that one is awesome. Oh god, and the dmr was done right. So right. Done so good. They got rid of that atrocious weapon bloom and replaced it with a much more modest one. The BR was fun, but honestly, if it’s not the halo 2 BR, the one you good double and quad-shot with, its just a BR. I still liked that they brought it back in. The little forerunner pistol, cant remember its name for the life of me, is AWESOME for a pinch. You pop a mother ****** with that thing right, and you’re on the road to a sick multikill. Going ape Sh*t on a ghost driver with that pistol is pretty great, too. Ever been chased down by a -Yoink- on a ghost, just to whip out that pistol, bop his -Yoink- with it, then melee the thing to death? You feel like a champ.

The last aspect of Halo 4, the parkour. with the unlimited sprint mechanic, dude, you can become quite the halo ninja. I love it. Anyway, my point is this… Im a halo maniac. A true “oldschool fan” or whatever the kids are saying these days. I adored halo 2, and mourned its passing(always called myself a semi-pro as a kid), had great fun on halo 3, amazing custom games of zombie, hated the F*CK out of Halo:Reach, and am in love with Halo 4. Thank you 343, for revamping an old title and bringing it back to the light. For ignoring people who wanted the same thing 4 games in a row, 10 years in a freakin row, and changing the game to something more modern. I love you all, 343. You’re all great, and i appreciate the work you did for us. I cant wait to play halo 5 and 6, whatever they should be titled, and truly look forward to throwing my money at you in the future. Great work guys. Peace.

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No offense but can I get a TL;DR version?

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Wow, someone who praises H2 AND H4 in the same post! I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before.

You are one of a kind!

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> No offense but can I get a TL;DR version?

“Change is fun” and I agree with him whole heartedly there. Where I’ve enjoyed Halo 4 the most (loadouts in multiplayer, the campaign, new forge) is where it is different from its predecessors because, as “beloved” and “cherished” as they are (by a community with a lets just say suspicious interesting in promoting the “legacy” of this franchise) the old Halo games were wobbly misfits trying to play king in a genre far deeper than itself. Halo 4 set itself up on slightly more stable ground and was able to deliver a better playing, more interesting, game despite the baggage imposed by us for what Halo is supposed to be.

Next game lets just hope 343 takes bolder steps towards finally delivering a sequel to CE that lives up to what that cobbled together wonder of accidental engineering could have been.

The campaign.

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This post has been edited by a moderator. Please refrain from making non-constructive posts.

*Original post. Click at your own discretion.

Yeah, Halo 4 is incredible to YOU. It’s not to the 75%+ that left after launch.

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Tl;dr

OT: Halo 4 didn’t live up to its expectations. 343 even admitted that they had messed up. All the criticism and negativity toward Halo 4 happens for a reason.

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>

Gasp you have population survey data covering a significant random sample form the “left” players? My god man you must share that with the world because it would give keen insight into the population demography operating within an aging FPS franchise. Please tell me you also surveyed all those that left Halo Reach, Halo 3, Halo 2, and Halo CE so we can compare changing population characteristics with time!

What’s that? You’re only guessing what the population thinks based on what you and a few dozen folks around here have been maintaining as the “truth” about Halo 4? Never mind…

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^^^ yes clearly they all left due to the game being so awesome it blew up their consoles…eye roll

im glad you liked it op but the overwhelming consensus shows not many feel the same as you do. the numbers really dont lie, if it were better, more people would be playing.

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> yes clearly they all left due to the game being so awesome it up their consoles…eye roll

Or that it was devious -Yoink- piled onto them by an underhanded dev that paid off the critical press to create the illusion that Halo 4 was, “in fact” a good game.

Could it just be that people just don’t want to play Halo for as long as they used to? Would make a hell of a lot more sense considering how painfully old this franchise is especially compared to other shooters (when Halo 2 shipped the most it had to contend with on the platform was MechAssault 2 and Unreal championship), and it would spare the effort of performing all sorts of mental gymnastics to try to explain how the game could have still pulled considerable sales figures and review scores (in an industry that absolutely relishes the chance to eviscerate a pretentious failure, see. Duke Nukem Forever or Colonial Marines) in spite of its supposedly severe shortcomings.

Maybe you should look at your own agenda before ascribing motivations onto a group body which you really don’t know anything about. Again without real data there’s nothing to say about population except that it changed. Could have had something to do with “quality”, but there are other, far simpler explanations that should take precedent when shooting from the hip about just what the hell Halo 4 was to all of us.

> the numbers really dont lie, if it were better, more people would be playing.

Like how they’re all playing Half-life 2? There’s a hell of a lot more to deciding to play a game besides its apparent quality and there’s a hell of a lot more to that quality besides the sheer number of people who end up playing it. That’s what we call “-Yoink- backwards” or more simply circular reasoning.

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you have neglected the other part of my post.

if it were a better game more people would be playing.

to say that the quality of a game dropping in no way effects the population dropping at the exact same time is ridiculous.

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Hey, another 138!
And yes. To me, H4 is a wonderful game. It’s got ups and downs, but what game does not?

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I loved halo 2, Im not such a fan of halo 4. It has some silly game play issues but the real problem is the online community. When halo 2 was out there was no party chat. you wanted to talk to your friend you had to talk to everyone. This allowed for players to make new friends and find a like minded halo team. The fact that you were then playing with people that come together for the love of the game and who also were just exploring online gaming on a console for the first time led to epic friendships.

The players you met and played along side where your brothers in arms. You would play for hours at a time on this game and share war stories about the battles that were had. Now we live in the day on online gaming peaks. where everyone has xbox live and you tend to only play with friends because the people that don;t play with friends do so because they have no friends, mainly because they are -Yoinks!-.

I would play halo 4 if it had that halo 2 community feel but that is gone and I don’t think that will ever come back. Halo 4 is a good game but so is battle field and gta and that is where my friends are, this means I will play that because there is a small chance of community

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> you have neglected the other part of my post.
>
> if it were a better game more people would be playing.
>
> to say that the quality of a game dropping in no way effects the population dropping at the exact same time is ridiculous.

Let me ask you a question: are people robots? Do they play games because it matches a pre-set quality parameter? No, the process of choice is a lot more complicated than simply “which game is BEST.” Case and point, Half Life 2, one of the ambassadors of the sci-fi FPS genre but consider how much its played and you might come to some pretty depressing conclusions. Or for a Halo analog you might consider Unreal Tournament, one of the games which defined and perhaps perfected the multiplayer shooter format. Look at UT3’s population. It’s not good (especially on the xbox 360.)

You might be considering “well they’re just older games” but that’s exactly my point, OTHER FACTORS besides some objective measure of quality often decide entirely whether or not someone plays a game. I for example might see that a lot of people think GTA V is well worth the time, but it just doesn’t appeal to me. I might also think Section 8 Prejudice is one of the best shooters of all time, but I hardly play it more than once a week despite how much I still enjoy that game. Likewise, I like Halo 4 (perhaps most of all in the series) but after Reach, 3, 2, and 1 I don’t need to spend hours upon hours a day grinding matchmaking and that’s a pretty basic human response to an aging entertainment product. Time breeds familiarity and what once was great and novel territory becomes hum-drum home soil.

Even with an utterly magnificent game, 343 would probably not see a proportional uptake in population or a meaningful improvement in forum banter because objective quality is pretty much moot to the individual, hence why the first few games could have done so well despite some pretty severe quality problems (balance, level design, depth, networking, QA ect.) and why its probably not an issue now. Motivation is the key and that has all sorts of other dependencies besides how good one feels a game is.

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> > yes clearly they all left due to the game being so awesome it up their consoles…eye roll
>
> Or that it was devious Yoink! piled onto them by an underhanded dev that paid off the critical press to create the illusion that Halo 4 was, “in fact” a good game.
>
> Could it just be that people just don’t want to play Halo for as long as they used to? Would make a hell of a lot more sense considering how painfully old this franchise is especially compared to other shooters (when Halo 2 shipped the most it had to contend with on the platform was MechAssault 2 and Unreal championship), and it would spare the effort of performing all sorts of mental gymnastics to try to explain how the game could have still pulled considerable sales figures and review scores (in an industry that absolutely relishes the chance to eviscerate a pretentious failure, see. Duke Nukem Forever or Colonial Marines) in spite of its supposedly severe shortcomings.
>
> Maybe you should look at your own agenda before ascribing motivations onto a group body which you really don’t know anything about. Again without real data there’s nothing to say about population except that it changed. Could have had something to do with “quality”, but there are other, far simpler explanations that should take precedent when shooting from the hip about just what the hell Halo 4 was to all of us.
>
>
>
> > the numbers really dont lie, if it were better, more people would be playing.
>
> Like how they’re all playing Half-life 2? There’s a hell of a lot more to deciding to play a game besides its apparent quality and there’s a hell of a lot more to that quality besides the sheer number of people who end up playing it. That’s what we call “-Yoink!- backwards” or more simply circular reasoning.

half life 2 is a terrible example. its a good game but is 10 YEARS OLD. find me one great AAA title that no one is playing a year or less after release and i might be able to take your stance more seriously.

we have been over all the faults of halo 4. they are numerous. the class based direction, ordnance implementation, etc. we can only hope halo 5 will hit the mark and 343 will listen to the feedback.

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halo 4 is my favorite game of all time! the other day I put in halo 3 just to see what it was like, man that game stinks compared to halo 4!

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> half life 2 is a terrible example. its a good game but is 10 YEARS OLD. find me one AAA title that no one is playing a year or less after release and i might be able to take your stance more seriously.

With respect to each game’s 1 year post-release window, Gears of War Judgement, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, and I’ll throw Space Marine (WH:40k) up there too because there’s no standard for AAA quality which it doesn’t meet (though I suspect a typological thinker like yourself is going to exclude it merely on the weakness of its PR.)

> we have been over all the faults of halo 4. they are numerous. the class based direction, ordnance implementation, etc.

No, there have been a few forum posts trying to link displeasure with specific gameplay elements. This isn’t a discussion of quality, its merely drawing the shortest line between two mental points. A. “I don’t like Halo 4” and B. “I don’t like new feature/change X, Y, and Z.”

Why? Why simply choose the items of most convenience (ex. the deleterious effects of Loadouts, Ordnance, Perks) rather than of greatest significance (ex. overly simplistic level design, gross imbalances between weapon categories, increasingly anachronistic format)? Because again quality doesn’t matter. Consider, with each game what has been the popular response on these forums? “I don’t like X, Bungie/343 change X!” Its a demand to exercise group authority, and though you may have individual attempts to satisfy the question “just what this game does right/wrong” the underlying group motivation isn’t so noble as to discover and improve. It’s simply to be a mob. We might think “well with a diverse population there will always be whiners” but that is certainly not a universal case, for certainly not every game has the same group social dynamics at work producing largely the same types and tempers of posts quite regardless of the issue at hand.

Its merely the case when a game has or had a sizable population behind it, providing a sizable prize in terms of power and control to the community sub-group who can most strongly influence the dev to provide for their own interests.

What we have “been over” is that casuals and COD fans are ruining Halo, and what we should all expect is for 343 to listen to OUR feedback and make the game more suitable for US. That should say it all, we haven’t really said anything (the issue of sampling bias and the word “we” not with standing.)

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again my point stands. you threw out gow judgement a game roundly bashed for being terrible just as halo 4 is. ghost recon which was a very average game at best, and space marine which may have done the best of all of em if it werent for its admittedly poor pr.

all those games were not quality games that people love especially gow judgement (coming from a big gears fan as well). if halo 4 is “incredible” as op put it, it would have people playing.

again, find me a great AAA title no one plays. good luck seeing as how good games get played by more than a handful of people.

and yes this forum has been filled with topics about all the issues in halo 4 including the ones you yourself listed. it all leads to a game no one really wants to play.

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I love this thread, absolutely love it. I freaking love it. Literally, my favorite post of all time on halo waypoint, not even kidding.
Thank you OP, for posting something that I also feel. Except I liked every halo, including reach unlike you lol.
I also love Duncan Idaho 11, I love your arguments! I feel like I literally connect with you two, you people are by far some of the only people on these forums who have a mature, realistic, and not “on the bandwagon” behavior (by not posting the same exact crap all these other “halo 4 dislikers” are posting every single day), are not afraid to speak the truth that isn’t based on your opinion, and are all up in these halo 4 dislikers faces!
I love how you guys aren’t afraid to speak up on here against the “norm” I guess if you want to call it that.
Please, accept my friend requests, I would like to invite you to some of my custom game nights on halo 4 sometime as a sign of my appreciation for you’s being you’s. For not being like the other people who sit on here all day and just spew negative threads and comments.

Anyway, on topic, OP, I agree with you, 343 did an amazing job for their 1st complete game. If halo 4 didn’t have the title halo 4, this would be a very solid game in almost everyone’s eyes I bet. Think about that. 343 will learn, which is even more exciting then playing halo 4 because the next halo will be EVEN better.
Don’t get me wrong, sure there are things that I don’t like infinity slayer, but that’s easily fixed by voting for team slayer. This game has improved dramatically and you all know it.

Love this thread and those two dudes… Love em.
-Enaemaehkiw

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> all those games were not quality games that people love especially gow judgement (coming from a big gears fan as well). if halo 4 is “incredible” as op put it, it would have people playing.

Why are you posting if you haven’t bothered to really read anything I’ve written? (it makes me feel very sad and underappreciated.)

There’s more up there than key words “Half Life”, “Better”, and “Space Marine” (which I’ll have you know is one of the finest shooters to have ever graced the home console. GO PLAY IT NOW (or simply again, you surely missed the point of it the first time 'round)). My point is that “quality” and “playing the game” are two quite often unrelated concepts. Repeating that “nuh uh, people will always play the good games because they are the ones people always play!” doesn’t really get us anywhere, its just repeated posturing to advance within group status (see above point about nothing really being said on a forum).

But then again yelling at a parrot “You are a parrot!” won’t spur it into real conversation (this is not by any means intended as an insult, just a statement of people will be people and there’s probably no sense in trying to force a change of viewpoint on them.)

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i have read your responses however you have not really backed your argument.you just simply say that its a quality game people dont want to play. so if its such a quality game why is it not being played?

i understand tastes differ however if its such a quality game why does no one want this type of quality?

in regards to what is being said we have seen quite a few well thought out posts regarding what people dont like about the game. they straight up say for those reasons they have stopped playing said game. your only response is “well they dont talk about anything they just like to hate”.

im going to end this conversation here as we are just going to go in circles. you like the game i dont and thats not going to change any time soon.

good day sir, good chat.