Halo 4 did well in many aspects. We got to revive the chief, we struggled with Cortana, and we all had a blast with the multiplayer. However, I want to go over a few things I don’t think should have changed, and the things I feel 343i seemed to ignore.
Obviously, because this game came out on my birthday, I really enjoyed staying up all night, beating the Campaign, and living in a very rich story. However, many months have past, and many things are still bugging. I feel the game focused too much on it’s multiplayer aspects, and very little on community story telling such as machinima, and very little on it’s plot holes and reasoning. Let me go a little more into detail.
After Halo: Reach came out for us all to enjoy, we suffered a major split. The competitive gamers came out in a revolt over some new mechanics that were introduced, such as bloom. I had no problem with the bloom myself, and feel that things were taken out of proportion too quickly. Major League Gaming even considered dropping Halo as pro title. It was looking very dark, so 343 knew they had to focus on the multiplayer. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Halo 4’s multiplayer, but they needed to stop focusing on one group. I love both Reach and 4’s multiplayer very much, and feel that Reach got the crap end of the stick. It’s true, it really did. I did like Reach because it listened to it’s community on what should be for story telling in machinima, and it’s whole lap in creativity in forge. It’s funny, how in Halo 4, we have about three or four maps that are meant to build maps, and yet we have never seen one in a war games match. Why ship the game out, and not let us play with the whole thing? Then Halo 4’s file share is all kind of bugged. That, or no one is bothering with it. Another thing I like more about Reach are the menus. They were simpler to navigate to me, considering they stayed close to the Halo 3 and Halo 2 format. I miss that. It’s really annoying to me how I can’t change the lobby when I’m in a different lobby. Also, that whole thing where they throw you into a game is so ridiculous. You should be able to choose what map you want to play, not that it matters with all of the choices you have. I love Halo’s multiplayer, and I do accept most of the changes, but some things should never change.
Now I want to talk about Halo 4’s campaign. Halo 4 shoots you right into action 4 years after the Halo event. I understand that. There’s an easter egg where you learn chief’s story in case you skipped all of the games. I loved remembering all of the bad -Yoink- stuff we got to do when we played those games, but why are the covenant after the Humans again? We continue along the campaign, grabbing terminals, talking to the Librarian, and still, why are we back at war with the covenant? We don’t get an explanation. You want a full explanation, read Halo: Glasslands. I’m only on chapter four right now, but still, I’m annoyed at this fact that I have to read a book to learn this stuff. I thought the terminals would fill in, but they don’t. They have one with the covenant, barely telling you anything at all, and the rest are about the Librarian and the Didact. Why? I don’t care about them. I learn what happened in the campaign to the forerunners and humans, but not the covenant. Why? And that’s one of two major plot holes we have. Another is at the end, and if you are reading this, and have no idea how it ends after this long, you should take your game and destroy it, because you don’t deserve it. The second plot hole is the nuke. John survives a nuclear explosion because of Cortana? What gave her that kind of power? Jesus, I mean he should be particles scattered around the cosmos, and he’s just chilling. Seriously? What the hell, guys?
Now, I’m hoping Spartan-Ops will explain everything with the covenant, but from what I’ve seen, we are getting more Forerunner story. I want the covenant. More specifically, the Sangheli. Go in depth in how they had to literally re-build a society after many years of enslavement by the prophets. Show us Sangehilos! I don’t want anymore forerunners! And incorporate a way to combine social and competitive, because Halo 4 is not cutting it.