So, I’ve been analyzing everything in Halo 4, and it’s really disappointing in many aspects for a Halo game.
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The environmental textures are bland up close and some of the far textures like the outside view of the Forward unto Dawn when you go to fire the missile look just as flat. The lights are also really prebaked. I ran into a wall that had a green light coming out of nowhere. After some experimentation with the plasma weapons. I also determined that they do not properly emit light onto the floor or wall like in previous games. Especially the prebaked and placed lights all over the game.
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The effects are really basic. Everything from the plasma weapons, to the regeneration field, and even the green grav lift on the new Covenant ship show a lack of detail. Most of them are basic green or blue lights/filters. They don’t properly radiate light onto the environment as said above. There are barely any sparks/cinders or shadows in relation to these effects either. Sparks do not bounce off of objects and fall straight into the floor or disappear, and shells from the human turret are flat out flat before disappearing within half a second. Bungie may have forgot shadows for Forge objects, but they got most of the other stuff down right in the previous games.
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The AI is still in the Halo mark, but misses out on the improvements from Halo 3 to Halo Reach. Enemies do not take cover as often as they should, and some stand out in the open for huge amounts of time. Bungie corrected this problem with the Brutes when moving from Halo 3 to Halo 3 ODST, the Elites seemed to show these improvements in Reach. Rag doll physics seem to be lacking, and death animations for the Jackals trigger too often. This leads to the same repetitive death animation. In fact, character behavior seems lacking even on Legendary with the lowered difficulty. The new enemies are great, but also lack this variation of behavior. I also found that the enemies would give up and continue their generic behavior if the player went into cover for 30 seconds, despite seeing where the enemy went. They do not pursue, and they do not search for the player. Instead they reset to patroling the area as if the player was never there. Not to mention that weapons disappear if you drop them for half second. So think twice before hoarding good weapons into a pile, or even just leaving your binary rifle on the floor for a couple of second to prevent wasting ammo.
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The sound effects and music. Now Halo Reach may have failed to recreate Halo gameplay in a new way, but the sound effects and music were still great. I can say with glee that the sound effects were the most visceral weapon sounds in the Halo franchise since Halo Combat Evolved.Halo 4 tries everything new, and makes the same mistake Halo 2 and Halo 3 made using toned down versions of more modern military weapons. Halo 4 never gets so bad that any of the weapons sound like the popcorn popper SMG, but they lack the oomph you would expect from an action game. Reach was a huge step back in the right direction for sound effects, and the new soundtrack was a good variation of familiar themes without sounding too samey. Halo 4’s music is ambient, but repetitive during missions. The themes are more forgetable than something as classic as Marty’s magic.
Overall, I like Halo 4 despite these issues. I just find it hard to believe that a majority of critics and Halo fans alike have completely overlooked all of these little things. The game may have great character models, smooth animations, and run at native 720p, but I have no clue how everyone missed everything else that made Halo look great.