That’s right. I said it.
How could I possibly think something like that, you ask?
First let me say that I hated Halo 4. I played it for about a year before I realized that I wasn’t having fun anymore, and went back to Halo: Reach. But Halo 5: Guardians has given me a new appreciation for it.
I’ve been playing Halo 5 on and off since it was launched. I played 8,954 games in Halo 3’s multiplayer. 6,751 games across the board in Halo: Reach. Despite it’s problems, I still played 2,375 games in Halo 4. In Halo 5: Guardians, I’ve only be able to stomach 355 games since launch. Now let me tell why I quit Halo 5: Guardians 2,000 games earlier than Halo 4:
1. Excellent Campaign
I think it goes without saying that Halo 4 had a much better Campaign than Halo 5: Guardians. The story is among the best I’ve seen in a Halo game… and unlike Halo 5, the game was centered around Master Chief, a character we know and love, not around a bunch of random characters pulled from the novels.
2. Spartan Ops > Warzone Firefight
For the record, Spartan Ops could never possibly top Firefight as it was in Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach. But it was better than Warzone Firefight. At least in Spartan Ops I have the option of playing single-player and selecting the difficulty level; also, no bullet-sponge bosses to worry about. Sure, it can be long-winded and repetitive… but so was the Campaign in Halo: Combat Evolved. Also, if I choose to play on Legendary, I don’t get punished every time I die with a 30-second respawn penalty.
3. Multiplayer is decent.
Okay, I’ll admit; Ordnance drops and loadouts suck, and the networking is crap. But the core gameplay is better than Halo 5: Guardians. No getting Spartan Charged in the back over and over again. With the Motion Tracker set 25 meters, I can see where all my enemies are and even their elevation, so I have that element of strategy in the game that I don’t have in Arena. There’s a wider selection of gametypes than Halo 5, and no pay-to-win gametypes like Warzone. I don’t give a -Yoink- that there’s no ranking system; back in the Halo 3 days, Social was more fun than Ranked anyway. So I’ll take a Halo game that’s All-Social over a game that’s All-Ranked any day of the week.
4. Armor is unlocked through progression + better armor customization.
In Halo 4, when you grind hard to finish a commendation, it’s worth it in the end because you know exactly what you’re reward is going to be… and you choose which items you want to grind for, and which ones you don’t care about. But Halo 5’s armory is filled with reskinned weapons and ugly new armor sets that many of us will never use, and if you want some of the better armor sets in the game- like Mark IV/GEN1, Helljumper, Centurion, whatever- you have to grind through about 250+ armors and armor skins in the game before you get it… whereas in Halo 4, unlocking armor is as simple as pick a target, and take it out. Also, you can actually customize the armor you unlock in Halo 4.
5. Better multiplayer maps.
Say what you will about Halo 4’s multiplayer, the map design was actually pretty good in this game. Maps like Haven, Solace, Adrift, Longbow, and Exile were all pretty solid, and the DLC maps- namely those in the Majestic and Castle map packs- were excellent. Halo 5’s maps, including those in the base game and the free DLC ones are meh by comparison. The fact that they are built around frustrating gameplay doesn’t help.
That’s all I have to say. I stuck with Halo 4 for much longer before I realized I had more fun in Halo: Reach… but 343i went and dropped the ball again with Halo 5: Guardians, and now I find myself in that same spot again, thinking that maybe Halo 4 wasn’t so bad in light of what we have now.
On a side note, Halo: Reach is actually my favorite Halo game for the best all-around Halo experience, but I consider Halo 3 to have the best multiplayer.