(I’d just like to say i have no Corporate sponsor feeding me BS things to say about the game like some other people i have heard from)
As some of you may know, i had the privilege of playing Halo 4 yesterday at the Microsoft booth at London Comic-Con. Let me just start off by saying it feels like a cross between Reach (before the NBNS update) and Call of Duty. Now this is might not necessarily be a bad thing because some Call of Duty games are good and Reach turned out decent after the NBNS update.
I played two, 12 minutes games while i was there and had to wait in line for 30 minutes each time, so i waited for an hour to play for 24 minutes. The gametype we played was Infinity Slayer and the first game was on Adrift and the second game was on Haven. My current record is 1-1 as we lost on Adrift but did quite well on Haven and won. (The game on Adrift came down to 50-49) In the game on Haven i was playing against my friend and it was his first time EVER on Xbox and he got a kill and 5 assists so i was quite proud of him as i was explaining the controls to him in the 30 minute line. I did quite my bad in my first ever game and got 5 kills, i don’t know how many times i died or how many assists i got because as soon as the game finished the Microsoft employees who where at the booth rushed us off straight away.
The first game was on Infinity Slayer on Adrift. For my first ever game i used the Carbine loadout with Hardlight shield as my AA, i kept forgetting to change my loadout every time i died which was quite annoying and towards the end of the game i switched to the BR. Let me say that the Hardlight Shield feels VERY balanced, you can use it to tank 1 person’s shots but if you try and use it in front of 2+ you’re screwed. So i can definitely see it having a place in MLG play. I could imagine a situation where 2 people go for rockets and one person covers his teamate who grabs the rockets with Hardlight Sheild, of course with all the new features in the game there are thousounds of variables and thousounds of possible scenarios. So we lost the first game 50-49 i believe, or 500-490 if you play by Infinity Slayer scores. During this game i fell off the map and changed my account name to “LOL” like whoever did that in the EGL finals and got a few laughs out of the crowd that was watching.
The second game was Infinity Slayer on Haven and i used the BR loadout w/ Promethean Vision to start with. I did much better this game and picked up a few nice double kills, although i don’t know what my stats where as the Microsoft guy kicked us out of the booth as soon as the game ended. At the beginning of this i had to change the controls as the person who was playing on that Box before me was using 2 sens, Inverted. Who plays Inverted in this day and age??? In the second half of the game i started using the DMR loadout w/ the health regen thingy, and let me just say the DMR feels VERY satisfying to get a kill with, the bloom and recoil have been blown way out of proportion and it’s hardly noticeable. I would say the bloom feels more like inbetween the 85% bloom that was used @ EGL5 and NB. So say 20-25% bloom to compare it to Reach. Sprint is still the same and i can still use to it run away from people when i -Yoink- up and make a bad decision so don’t listen to anyone who’s saying Sprint is different and it’s balanced now because it’s not. The needler feels very powerful and you can get a few quick kills with it if someone is not paying attention. Promethean Vision is very useful, so i could see it being used a powerup of some sorts in the future. Anyway i choked on the triple at the end and we won the game.
It’s too early on to tell if Halo 4 is “good” or not but at the moment it looks like it will need a lot of work done on it by gametesters and such, because i feel like there is too much going on in the game at the moment, too many new guns, too many new features, too many new AA’s, it just feels very cluttered in my opinion. (But why should you listen to my opinion? form your own)
P.S: There was some guy infront of me and my friend in the line playing Pokemon on his 3DS, who was talking absolute bollocks about how he was so good at Halo 4 because he had played it at EuroGamer and never lost a game, and talking about which gun was better that the other and how much better the DMR was than the BR and i wanted to slap in the face, luckily i didn’t. He high fived all of his teamates like he was at an event after the game, took his headset off and ran right round again to join the line lol. We then saw him after the event eating this weird Asian food that they were selling that stunk to high heaven in the Restaurant bit afterwards.
P.P.S: I think i pissed off this Microsoft employee, when i was waiting in line he came up to me and started to make small talk, this is what went down:
MS Guy: Alright?
Me: Yeah i’m okay thanks, so do you work for 343 or Microsoft?
MS Guy: I’m just a Microsoft guy i’m afraid
Me: Oh so you’re not involved in the developing of the game then?
MS Guy: No.
Me: Oh, it’s just that i wanted to ask someone from 343 some really in-depth questions about the game, so i guess you just come these events and guard the line then?
MS Guy: Pretty much, yeah.
Microsoft guy proceeds to walk off with a sour look on his face.
And that concludes my little write up on my very brief Halo 4 experience so far, pictures to follow: