I’m not bashing this game, I think it’s great. I’ve been having a lot of fun with it, especially the campaign. I’m just offering some constructive criticism.
Campaign:
+Really fun.
+Visually stunning.
+My favorite campaign since Halo 3.
-Somewhat on the short side.
-The story involving the forerunners wasn’t told the best. If I would have had no prior knowledge about the books I would have been quite lost.
Spartan Ops:
+It’s great that they’re continuing the story of Infinity. I’d like to see where it goes.
-I have the feeling that they’re going to reuse a lot of old elements. Note how the mission name is separate from the map name. Also two out of the 5 chapters are ripped straight from the campaign.
Forge:
+I haven’t really played around with the maps, but I think they look great and will have a lot of potential.
-It seems to me that about 90% of the pieces are just re-skinned from Reach. This just feels lazy on my part. I also think that it will hurt map creation as people are given many of the same pieces to work with.
Theater:
-Still no return of 2 player/splitscreen.
-Campaign/Spartan Ops theater are removed entirely. I hope that they do at this functionality soon.
Custom Games:
-Too many previous game types are absent.
-Too many custom options are missing.
-Impossible to replicate many classic playlists and community modes from previous games.
Matchmaking:
+A lot of the maps visually look good.
+I like how most all of the weapons are lethal now.
+Dominion is fun.
+A lot of the new weapons are pretty fun to use.
+Vehicles are effective at splattering again.
-Instant spawn wrecks the game. Combined with the faster kill times, faster movement speeds, and slow shield recharge rate it gives players very little time to recover in between fights. The flow of the game is just way to crammed together. It just feels like both teams are just spamming each other with spartans. I seriously hope they get rid of this, at least in a classic playlist.
-Getting rid of on-map spawns and replacing them with ordinances gets rid of a lot of the need for map control. Not that this really matters anyways, since the default weapons are power weapons in themselves. Power weapons, with the exception of the rockets/sniper don’t feel like power weapons any more.
-The DMR is overpowered, especially on large maps. They need to nerf it to bring it on par with the rest of the sandbox.
-Complex and Adrift are just terrible maps.
-The Falcon is gone. :’( Please bring it back…
-Edit: Join in Progress. This is worse in Halo 4 than in most other shooters, where at least you have a lobby that guarantees that you’ll be able to fully complete most of your games after your first one ends. You’ll often get stuck in incomplete matches. This also makes it really annoying to get the challenges/commendations that require you to win matches, as incomplete matches don’t count.
-Edit: They got rid of a lot of old emblems, including “Vortex”, the emblem I’ve been using since Halo 3. Also, making players wait to be able to use their old emblem (if it even still exists) is just awful.