NOTE: There is a bit where I refer to Halo 3 as “not being spectacular.” That’s in reference to its Campaign, which, imo, wasn’t too amazing. The Multiplayer, on the other hand, basically put the Xbox 360 on the map. I won’t deny it; it was amazing. This is just to clarify some confusion people have in my little ramble.
OK, guys. Please, PLEASE don’t turn this into a flame topic, because that’s not what I want. My pure intention is simply a retrospective on Halo 4. Is it gonna contain some hate on Halo 4? Yes. This game had problems. This game HAS problems. You need to address that. However, it does some things really well, which I think we need to also point out. This isn’t gonna celebrate Halo 4 or hate Halo 4 or anything - these are just my thoughts on Halo 4, having played it since roughly Christmas back in 2012, and stopping around September of this year (having gone to college).
Now, I’m gonna start with how I started Halo 4: with the Campaign. Yes, I know many people play Halo now for the Multiplayer (since Halo 3’s wasn’t that spectacular and Halo Reach’s was either really middling or absolutely abysmal, depending on who in the community you ask), but beside that point, the Campaign. Now, I’m kinda disappointed that they put back the Covies (even though it’s explained in the lore), because I thought the whole point of Halo 3 (especially the last Covenant level, appropriately title The Covenant) was about the fall of the Covenant, killing off the rest of their theocratic leadership and leaving them in tatters, left to completely die off on the Ark. Aside from the Easter Egg Grunt, the only Covenant left in the game are Infected, showing that whatever remained of the once great Covenant force was either dead or fled following Truth’s death. However, I do admit that Elites and Grunts are a bit of a mainstay in the Campaign, and it’d be hard to create enemies that were like them without just directly copying the formula, so 343i just said “-Yoink- it.” and brought them back.
My real issue here is with the Prometheans. OK, I’m gonna level with you guys. imo, the Prometheans are NOT FUN. The Knights are like the Brutes from Halo 2 - bullet sponges that don’t die and kill you because you used up all your ammo killing them. The Crawlers are modeled after those “crawling dog things that every FPS player hates because they’re annoying to kill and chip away at your health.” The Watchers commit the grevious sin of all FPSs, shielding the bullet shields (like they need help) and REVIVING stuff you kill. The Prometheans are not challenging - they’re designed to be as hard as possible. Now, depending on who you are, a challenge is gratifying. Nintendo Hard is something that exists, and there are plenty of people that play games because they’re unbearably difficult (Demon’s Souls, Touhou (which I’m a fan of), etc.), but the Prometheans are hard simply because they don’t play by Halo rules. In Halo, all the enemies were susceptible to the Plasma Pistol Headshot combo, and higher difficulty play practically REVOLVED around this like a religion. The Knights have added head armor, which just makes them annoying, and their shields recharge faster than the Elites (I think; it always feels like that to me). Now, aesthetically speaking, the Prometheans are FANTASTIC, and I do think that their weapons are both awesome and fill nice niches in the power weapons (being more visually noticable, but tending to do a lot more damage as a result), but I don’t care for the Prometheans as enemies.
From a story standpoint, someone on the Bungie forum already explained to me how the Halo 4 storyline could work as a huge expansion into Human-Covenant relations and picking apart John’s character, and I’m simply not qualified to even paraphrase what he said, so here it is, roughly (Ctrl+F Lord of Unicorns and just read the replies from there), so I’m convinced that the lore could work. I’m kinda still bitter about having to bring back the Forerunners from the dead to serve as antagonists instead of just letting them remain an enigma and finding some other opponents to fight (rebels, guys), but otherwise I can see the Halo story working.
Now, Multiplayer. Oh boy… Multiplayer, where do I begin?
OK, I’m gonna make this quite clear here. I share plenty of the complaints people have and have voiced them. DLC’s distribution is abysmal. The JIP system is abhorrent. The ordinance is downright broken. The new sprint mechanic makes games too slow. Perks are stupid (although tbh I’m fine with armor abilities, since they got rid of Armor Lock).
However, 343i has, albeit slowly, been fixing things. They introduced Team Throwdown (which lost its support… -Yoink-). They introduced One Flag. They tuned the weapons so that the DMR wasn’t the end-all be-all weapon (but buffed autos, which I don’t agree with, since I feel that precision weapons are THE POINT of Halo). They fixed the File Sharing debacle back in the beginning.
There are some issues, though. People have flat-out shown that the capability to record in Campaign is there, despite some excuses to the contrary. 343i refuses to put in a dedicated DLC playlist despite everyone -Yoinking!- wanting one. The Boltshot still exists (OK, that’s probably just me ranting).
So, Multiplayer isn’t perfect, and definitely still has issues, but overall they’ve been trying to improve. It’s just been pretty slow, which is probably a reason for a lot of Halo 4’s population dip.
But as a whole, guys, what do you think? Has it been a good year for Halo 4? A bad year? Mixed? Share your thoughts on Halo 4, and if you think it will stand up for another year. Personally speaking… I don’t see Halo 4 having much longevity until Halo 5. Hell, it’ll be lucky if it still has a population when it gets there, given how Battlefield 4 and CoD Ghosts are against it.