Look, I’m absolutely serious when I say that I HATED Halo: Reach more than any other Halo game. That is, until now…
It really does sicken me to say it and it speaks infinite volumes to me, but I enjoyed Halo: Reach more than I have Halo 4. Just reading that sentence and realizing that I’m the one who typed it makes my skin crawl. I seriously have never hated the direction of a franchise sequel more than I hated Reach, and I’ve played since Halo CE!
This is an extension of another post I made. I’ll try to be constructive about the way I post, though I can’t promise I won’t get a little crazy.
Here is my list of grievances:
First:
Maps. Holy hell. The maps in Halo 4 are just terrible. What is the point of map flow if everyone has AAs to get around it? What is the point of spacing weapons when everyone gets a personal ordinance? Why are the 4vs4 maps so ridiculously huge!? Where are the smaller maps and plentiful vehicles to fool around with? In Halo: Reach I got to play on Hemorrhage, Spire, Boneyards, and several memorable player-made maps (But not Paradiso, I hate the thought of that map.). Does anyone else actually get to play the DLC maps that they purchased? I don’t think I’ve played the crimson map pack more than a few times, and I would LOVE to play those on BTB sometime.
It’s been fixed now, but Exile was the most unbalanced and broken map to ever have surfaced in Halo. And Settler? God. Please. No.
Second:
The UI is terrible. I can’t see who my friends are playing with, the score, the time, what playlist, NOTHING! I don’t know what team I will be playing with until 3 seconds before the game starts. The idea of cards with the players on them is a terrible choice IMHO. Halo: Reach has the best UI of any Halo game; something which I consider one of the only positives of that game.
Third:
The playlists available for 8 months disappointed me to no end. I’m sorry for being a noob casual or whatever, but I genuinely enjoyed played Big Team Battle and Flood more than anything else in Halo: Reach and Halo 3. What do I find when I come to Halo 4? I find that Flood has been BUTCHERED giving zombies the power to destroy everyone effortlessly thanks to a newly added shield AND a new and improved lunge that launches them forwards faster than you can actually turn.
And what about my Big Team Battle maps with objectives like CTF? Gone. Not even there for me to try. I enjoyed the randomness of playing 8 vs 8 with an overpowered banshee on the map and a tank or two with ghosts all over the place. I enjoyed feeling empowered when I picked up a power weapon that I killed an enemy for or beat a teammate to. I LOVED playing large maps with vehicle focus where I would lunge for the sniper, and even if I missed it, I would have something to do. But when I arrived to play Halo 4, I saw that the population of players who played flood (the most played playlist in Halo: Reach just before Halo 4) had dropped off of the map into the couple of thousand or less, and my BTB friends and enemies had no where to go but smaller maps with unbalanced placements like freaking Exile. I’m still seriously bummed out about that. And now that BTB is here… I don’t feel like I can enjoy it much because so few players are left to play with and even fewer still are of a variety of skills.
Fourth:
What on God’s green earth made the game designers in 343i think it was a good idea to give people the ability to start out with a 1 hit KO sidearm? A plasma pistol loadout was pushing it, but a friggin SHOTGUN 1 HIT KO PISTOL!? You know what it is like playing on most 4vs4 slayer types and even FFA? I play against people who have a BR, a shotgun pistol, and frag grenades. Even worse is the fact that it is all I see on the global championship playlist. Why even attempt to play without the shotgun pistol if the other two are completely useless when compared to the 1 hit KO against an opponent coming around a corner?
Fifth:
ARMOR ABILITIES. Don’t get me wrong, I believe they are a monstrosity added by disgruntled Bungie employees as a way of telling Microsoft that they really hated DLC. I’d still like to think that A LIMITED AMOUNT OF THEM should stick around in future Halo games. Personally, I wish they would fix active camouflage and REMOVE Promethean Vision. Why Promethean Vision? Because it is a wallhack that has been approved of by 343i. If I get into a fight and lose my shield after winning the fight I feel that it is unfair that, after finding a place to crouch and recharge, someone with PV runs up into my radar range, uses PV, and throws a grenade right where I am. This breaks all strategic planning just like ordinances break tactics. However, jetpack breaks both. Although it is the AA I use the most, should also be removed from the game excluding maps and playlists DESIGNED to accommodate them. There is no point in trying to give a map a certain flow in order to have players fight it out in certain areas if a jetpack user can laugh, fly over the area where all of the ground peasants are currently fighting it out, and drop two grenades while getting near guaranteed headshots.
Sixth:
What happened to matchmaking selection? It was like a good idea that was growing in the womb of 343i before labor was forcibly induced due to a deadline that was upcoming, so that figurative idea baby had to be born right then! And much like premature babies, it wasn’t doing so well living without massive outside help and improvements.
Before we had objectives bundled together in a pure objective playlist along with slayer playlists, and it worked quite well. But what happened this time around? Now we don’t even have oddball and KTH.
Trueskill is also a joke now. I play either scrubs or pros, never between.
Epilogue:
I’m just sad I guess. I was so hopeful that Halo 4 would be a big comeback for Halo, but in the end it was just a temporary moment of nostalgia and excitement for me.
Oh yeah! PLEASE, PLEASE GOD, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE 343i, PLEASE ADD REPLAYABILITY TO THE CAMPAIGN! I seriously would love to be able to play on the campaign like I did in Halo CE, Halo 2, and Halo 3. What made it replayable and exciting was the sandbox that the flood provided and the fun you could have with your enemies.
Seriously, I’m absolutely disappointed in 343i. I can’t express how much I hate Halo: Reach. But Halo 4? Halo 4 is not Halo to me. Halo 4 is Halo: Reach 2 with CoD augmentation. It’s funny, because Halo: Reach was worse than Halo 3 and saw a drop in population, but Halo 4 “improved” upon Halo: Reach and saw an even further drop. I’m sorry, but a population going from 600k to 30k is terrible. Even Reach was able to compete with MW3. So if you’d like to tell me that no one knows why the population dropped because it could be a variety of factors, I would like to inform you that people usually leave when a change happens that they hate.
Here’s to Halo 5, though I won’t play until I know it’s really good.