So I have finished Halo 4 campaign on legendary solo and co-op.
Played through it 3 times.
Spent well over 3 days online in either spartan ops or match making.
I got my assist commendation and spartan slayer commendation to master.
So i hope i am now qualified to give my own personal review of the game.
I will start with Campaign.
And right off the bat will congratulate 343i on possibly the best campaign since Combat evolved.
My reasoning is this:
Halo 4 is the first halo game since the Genesis to introduce a brand new element to the story. Well still Achieving a measure of closure far beyond halo 2 or 3.
If Halo 4 was the last we ever saw of the Chief. Then i would say he has gone out fittingly if not slightly tragically.
– Spoiler – He is back at earth. He has saved Humanity again. Cortana reached the end of her natural life and her final farewell was to save her best friend and get him home. As she says “They did their job’s. They looked after each other till the end” It just so happens Chief’s life cycle is much longer than Cortana’s.
Secondly. The campaign is beautifully voice acted. The Didact is so fitting of a ancient being.
And special mention goes to doctor Sandy Tillson. I have never been so impressed with a voice actors dialogue. And i loved the line; SANDY: “Next time you save us. can you atleast give us time to pack”? Chief; “Next time”.
She endeared herself instantly and made the effect’s of the missions ending that more dramatic.
My only issues with campaign are:
There is a slight amount of discouraging from exploring off the main track. No secret weapon spawn’s or hidden vehicles. And there is way too much button pressing. Press A now B and finally C. Party time.
Otherwise as i said. Fantastic effort from 343i On campaign.
What i would like to see from halo 5’s campaign. Is more of the same but maybe with a extra 2 or 3 missions that allow more time flying a pelican. And a space mission like reach where you do some dog fighting.
NOW onto spartan ops.
I have little to say on this. It’s been fantastic for me from start to finish of every episode.
I never played firefight. It was to repetitive and mindless. Spartan ops gives me a new part of story to drive me forward and as well as that allows for some of firefights more ludicrous heavy weapon slaughter fests but in a more controlled environment.
THE only thing that spartan ops needs is an ability to customise previous episodes for replay.
So once they are off the active playlist you can set them up like firefight to have all different types of hostiles, loadouts and stats. This would make it a perfect evolution to firefight.
And to MULTIPLAYER.
This is where the core of Halo lies for many. NAY most.
Personally I am as equal a fan of MP as I have been of campaign on previous Halo’s.
So lets start with the good.
The new armour’s look fantastic in 90% of cases and permutations.
Err and now I am struggling. The map adrift is classic fun and i love it. Reminds me alot of halo 2.
And I suppose it’s now for the bad. And this sadly outweighs the good by a few million times
I think it’s more important to address the core of the issues than just list them.
So I will start with the most basic problem’s.
I think the biggest issue of this generation has been the introduction of instant respawn.
In an Attempt to make the game faster paced. What they have actually done is make it a mess.
you can now be killed and then respawn in firing sight of your killer with AR.
Secondly. Weapon and vehicle distribution on certain maps.
Namely Vortext and exile. On vortex the wrathe is Always Always in the hands of one team first.
It’s nearer to them and frankly it can seal a game in the first 2 minutes.
Worse is exile. Where the Blue team spawn with a gauss Hog. all it requires is two people to take it and head for the scorpion to win blue team the match EVERY TIME.
You can guarantee is blue’s take it that way. They will then get the scorpion and the rockets.
And even if red’s get to the banshee. Vs blue’s sniper, rockets, gauss hog and possibly the scorpion. It stands no chance.
I can not begin to explain how many times i have seen this happen and how frustrating it is.
And this brings me to my main issue with MP. 343 have essentially removed all skill from the game. In reach and previous titles. Knowing weapon locations and having limited numbers of certain weapons allowed for strategic play. You could avoid certain area’s prone to snipers or explosives as they would as a rule be coming from a certain area.
This is now gone. But worse the point system combined with ordinance and ordinance priority
Have made it so that any wombat. who can get any form of assist or point can now get their grubby hands on high explosives. In one game I counted 4 people with rockets at once.
Another game saw 3 spartan lasers. And yet another 3 Incinerators. This is at the same time as there being at least two snipers. Probably a binary winnall and a number of sticky detonators.
This is not HALO hell it’s not even COD. at least in Cod the game works in such a way that the little car bomb and chopper strike don’t totally screw up the entire match for everyone.
In short it’s a mess.
A few other notable failures of MP:
Ridiculous perks that seem to do little.
no scope pull back
The lack of red X death marks for allies on screen.
The lack of mute.
A host of complaints from the MLG boys about custom game types.
Removal of falcon and Revenant.
Well and the list goes. on,
But that all said HALO 4 MP can still be fun. It show’s that at it’s core there is something that works. It’s just got lost along the way.
So to sum up my review of HALO 4 i give it a 7.5.
Fantastic campaign. visuals and core.
Let down by serious lack of quality control…What in the end all said and done will leave you frustrated rather than exhausted of the title.
A Final word on the game is this and it’s my biggest pet hate as a HALO fan.
The scaling of pretty much everything is terrible. From the Master chiefs height when he walks past Spartan Sarah palmer in the mission “infinity” To his height compared to her in the epilogue.
And then to the ships. Infinity goes from being massive “its as big as a city” to being not much larger than previous halo ships.
This thing Should dwarf the Pillar of autum. But when it’s seen beached it looks not that much larger than pillar did in Halo when beached.
And similar to it’s fly by over MC when disabled at the start of that mission. It should have cast a shadow and blotted out the sky for a fair time when passing over head.
Basically it’s a matter of all of the scaling being screwed up. And I hate it ppssibly more than anything else.
