At launch it was a good game, a bit far from having the core Halo for me personally. Current day it is a very good Halo game. A few tweaks and maps plus in game rank could move it from very good to great IMO.
I enjoyed a new take at 4’s launch, disliked some of the lacking features and Infinity sort of grew a bit stale for me quickly, especially the CTF waypoint and no dropping by the carrier.
Fast forward to the current day after all the updates and tweaks and there is a very solid Halo game these days. It has the best gunplay and sandbox of any Halo game IMO. The turbo update drastically improved Halo 4, I wish that had been the launch game. The same mates who played Reach continue to play Halo 4, for me at least anyhow.
The maps to me are a large part of the overall game and design philosophy that feed into everything else multiplayer. It seems the maps were made bigger or more “random” for lack of a better word and this altered the game play quite a bit. When you combine that with the more random approach of personal ordnance and loadouts dominating at launch I can see quite a shift in Halo by design early on.
It was a worthy attempt to unify the multiplayer of Halo after the splintering that Reach showed during it’s life and the TU/Anniversary updates.
We’ve seen a large turn around to that since launch and it’s a shame the DLC maps aren’t more prevalent. Maps like perdition, monolith, pitfall, vertigo (to an extent) and skyline make all the difference in how the game plays for me. It makes Halo 4 more like that classic arena feel and less BTB style maps like Vortex or Forge based maps. Don’t get me wrong the Forge maps and community turn out amazing stuff and every game I am extremely thankful for their creations and getting them into matchmaking.
I’m all for variety and developers sticking to their visions but the weighting of it was to biased to Infinity at launch. After seeing the latter DLC, the global championships, the turbo update, ricochet mode, playlist cadence and the sustain team plus evolution of Waypoint feedback I’m really excited for next gen Halo Xbox One. I also enjoy the settings and playlists Halo 4 currently offers, I feel the maps could be better though, more Halo 2/3 style maps please. 1 sided asymmetrical objective I miss you and assault RIP.
It seems like all the ducks are lining up to cater to the default, the hardcore, the BTB large battles and more. Dedicated servers and the game changing features of the new X1 platform will bring a consistency like no other previous Halo, perhaps approaching LAN style play IMO. Roll on next gen Halo but Halo 4 is a great way to spend some nights playing with buddies. I still turn off my X1 games like ACIV or Killer Instinct to play Halo 4, also play Reach or 3 on Thursdays too.
After all I’m hosting a LAN party this SAT and Halo 4/2 are going to be amongst the most popular games played, they’ve already been the most requested for everyone to bring along.
If you’re talking about campaign for Halo 4 I was just blown away by the graphics on this old dog of a console, the 360. The character models, animation, facial animation, dialogue, voice acting, soundtrack 1&2 etc was all of an insanely high quality. The audio mixing between music/effects sorely needed sliders for personal adjustment and the music in game was sort of drowned out. I could go on about campaign more but I’ll leave that for another reply.