I noticed today while playing firefight that while the covenant boasts an impressively diverse pool of races and unit types within their military, they’re not so diverse in how each unit works. You got little, bipolar, methane-sucking midgets that run around and shoot at you. Then there are taller shielded guys who run around and shoot at you. There are medium sized space penguins with big plasma buckler shields that run around and shoot at you. They also have big monkey men who, despite having no shields, soak up a lot of damage and go berserk on you… and run around and shoot at you. You see what I’m getting at…
I’ve never really been a fan of the flood levels, but with the last two games omitting them completely they felt like they were missing something. I’ve come to realize that the flood are my favorite enemies to hate. While they swarm you in your face and are kind of annoying, they are a lot more interesting to fight than covenant. They have little squishy things that swarm you in the dozens that explode in your face and eat you when your shields are down. There are walking “red barels” that sneak up on you and blow up in your face, releasing dozens of the little squishy ones. Then there are the pure forms, which are my favorite, who can transform like optimus-fkin’-prime into fast lizard thing, a wall-mounted turret that shoots projectiles out its a, or an incredible hulk monster who can smash your face in with a tree trunk arm. Sure they have enemies who still run around and shoot you, but half of the time they still opt to jump 50 feet across a room and hit you with their tentacled extremities.
I’m really hoping that whatever enemies they’ve added into Halo 4, while still containing the run and shoot kind, have a more varied way in which they’ll go about trying to murder you.