So let me just say first that I have played the Halo series since Halo CE on the original Xbox and have been a big fan! Each new game released seemed a natural evolution on the previous but still stayed true to it’s roots and felt like “Halo”. Having had a good time to try out the new offering Halo 4, I have some mixed feelings about it!
The graphics in Halo 4 are amazing! However they do seem quite pastel/hazy rather than more clear cut/vibrant. The campaign is fantastic on solo or co-op. Spartan Ops is a nice evolution on fire fight. However co-op Spartan Ops is constantly lagging which takes away from the enjoyment quite a lot.
The sound of the game has lost some of it’s magic and loops are used too much rather than long fantastic scores. Even the weapon sounds seem quite flat. How can the Needler sound like an AR?
Matchmaking is where I see the main issues. There are a good variety of playlists but the game seems much faster than before with the shield being very easy to drop. It seems to me that the strategy is mostly gone and it mostly feels like a constant roll of re-spawn, run, kill, die. A lot of weapons are too over powered. It feels a lot more like COD than Halo to me. The great thing about Halo was that it was a more magical spin on the standard FSP. Now it feels too close to COD style play. Some great things are missing - when you kill someone there is no opportunity to tbag - arguably that was one of the funny factors in the previous games! The whole specialisations idea is too complex and there are far too many permutations.
Minor attention to detail is missing - like why is it so complex to change teams in custom games lobby when it was just left/right bumper before? Why remove something that was so intuitive? Some of the helmet designs looks pretty uncool! The game just doesn’t feel as polished to me.
Overall 343 have done a good attempt to follow on from Bungie but I think they have taken the game in a completely new direction rather than “keep and improve” they tried to “revolutionise” it a bit too much! For me the game didn;t need such a major change!
Feel free to discuss, but wanted to share my thoughts with anyone who takes time to read. Thanks for reading! 
MasterChiefBomb AKA Alex