What honestly was wrong with Halo 4.

Games Other Halo
1

foreword:
sorry, i kind of need to rant tonight. things are not going well for me atm, and someone on facebook said something about how “Halo 4 gets too much bull from the community”. we all know that it was a pretty decent game. But you know there were things Halo 4 did well, I know there were things Halo 4 did well, you know there are things halo 4 did wrong, and I know there are things Halo 4 did wrong. I’m going to go through them.

some things Halo 4 did right:
-Halo 4 delivers an excellent, powerful story.
-One thing that I really like about that game, is the way that the story was played out. it doesn’t take much for a first-time player to understand what’s going on, and why, and if you never got into the lore, you immediately understand how messed up the S-II program was, and why John acts the way he does.
-the new enemies really did what 343 intended, and caused even veterans to re-think their tactics.
-In-game dialogue was a really nice bonus, and helped to solidify the relationship between Cortana and John. it feels as though they’ve been together for eight years, and that’s what was really important.
-Forerunner weapons may not have had to look like human weapons, but they were built for creatures with human-like physiology and mentality. from a psychological standpoint, there are few differences between Humans and Forerunners, minus the mantle. combined with fighting style, it is reasonable to assume that Forerunners would have had human-like weapons.
-the environments were beautiful, with a gorgeous combination of linear progression and sandboxing.
-the first time i looked at Halo 4, i was angry, and thought that they were going to try and jip me, because I saw that there were only 8 levels, and Gamers tend to judge a game based on how much game they get (see: Destiny). but after playing through it, I realized that of these 8 levels, some of them are really long, and tend to feel like 2 or 3, sometimes. (Dear 343 employees, your 70+ hour weeks really paid off, i appreciate it.)

as a veteran Halo player, and from a game designer standpoint, however, the game had three main problems that really killed it for me.

a, the end level was really anticlimactic. they tried to lead the world to believe that they killed a character with three books of backstory by having you plunge a grenade into his armor, and have him fall off of a bridge to his “doom”.

b, the entire game was essentially “hey, hit these three switches and see what happens.”

c, quicktime events.

things they could have done instead:

a, let you have an honest boss fight with the Didact. lore limitations probably wouldn’t let this work out, but honestly, at the same time I was playing that game, I was coincidentally building a game including a similarly invulnerable villain, and working on the final fight for it. one such solution they could have considered was:
making chief have to hide behind pillars or hard light barriers courtesy of Cortana and take potshots at him, or reflecting back his attacks at him, then after x amount of damage, they could have stuck in that final cutscene bit. Halo 2 was the only game to really have Boss fights in the series, and I understand it if Halo 4 wasn’t really meant to have one.
if that was the case, they still really didn’t do the didact justice to have him fall off of the light bridge into the composer’s forge, only to be killed by a halo.
b, increase the distance between these “three switches”. instead of having to go from one to the next, with them relatively close together, we would have had levels like “The Two Betrayals” from CE. the concept of Forerunner was alright, up until the “hit the 4 switches to deactivate the tower” parts, but Shutdown and Midnight were real problems.

c, i would have rather had CGI cutscenes of chief killing an elite, or detonating the nuke. or even climbing the elevator shaft. they would have, at most, been 20 seconds long, with the longest being the sequence in which chief has to “crawl” toward the bomb, detonate it, and then look up at earth. it wouldn’t have been too much trouble to animate, compared to coding it all, and since we were used to that game having a cutscene every five minutes, it wouldn’t have ruined the immersion nearly as much.

if you’re going to defend Halo 4, look at my list, and tell me that this isn’t a fair criticism.
but I honestly think that most criticism over Halo 4 was the multiplayer, and largely because it’s incredibly difficult to have a sandbox map type, and still have people able to sprint. Some weapons were unbalanced, but im not going to go through that, right now.
needless to say, none of this is going to stop me from playing Halo 4’s campaign again, but i’m going to be likely to avoid some levels, like forerunner.

I am a game designer, and from my perspective, these were my biggest issues.
Granted, I understand that these changes I proposed would make Halo 4 a much longer game, and it probably wasn’t quite done when it shipped, but seriously, it would have been much better for the players.

Members of the community, what do you think?
-also, if you just so happened to see my post on Facebook, you will have noticed that I added on a considerable amount. sorry if it seems like a lot.

2

i see no prob with halo 4 besides the ppl who hate it

3

All the things they removed in h5g :wink:
Legendary Slayer BR’s is perfect though, the halo it should’ve been from the beginning

4

It was a great game.

5

> 2533274949078675;4:
> It was a great game.

It still is, especially on the Xbox One in 1080p and 60 fps.

6

60 fps that is sad on th xbox 360 we run at 50 fps dude

7

its not a great halo 4 game cos they made the controls like cod

8

Was and still is a great game. At 60 fps on the One it feels like a totally different experience then on the 360.

9

Unfortunately, not many people pay attention to the story anymore. That is why you see all this criticism that has NOTHING to do with the campaign. We have moved from a campaign generation of players to “online only” players.

Most of the criticism comes from the online players. And quite frankly there are A LOT of players that dont even bother playing the campaign at all but instead spend all their time on the MP.

For some reason, those same people think they have the right to complain and say that the game sucks just because of what they dont like in the MP.

I liked the game. Though my gut wrenched at the end because of Cortana and I didnt want her to go.

But there is nothing we can do about the morons who say it was a horrible game just because of things in the MP.

10

I completely agree.

11

Really good campaign. But to answer the question directly, “What was wrong with Halo 4?” here’s a short and simple answer:
Currently glitched DLC achievements and those DLCs were not free.
Fix them 343.

12

These days, where everyone thinks they are a game designer (OP excepted, since he actually is a game designer), we have nothing but opinions from love to hate and beyond on every single point of every game from everyone old enough to pick up a controller and rant on a forum. The question isn’t whether people are going to have opinions, or even whether they will express them endlessly and with unimaginable vitriol, but instead the question is a) will they continue to actually play the game regardless of their opinions, and b) will they buy the next version of the game? And an argument could be made that a studio/developer/publisher doesn’t even really care about a. They only care about b.

In short, there is never anything wrong with any game at all (unless, like MCC, it just doesn’t work) - there are only opinions as to how the particular player in question would prefer the game to be. I myself have an endless list of things I’d like to see changed in Halo, but none of them are deal-breakers. I’ll play whatever they ship, and more importantly, I’ll adapt to whatever changes they make. The players that refuse to adapt will leave for some other game, but since we already know that they wish to make a career of dissatisfaction, you can bet they’ll probably still buy the next installment. And the circle of life continues…

13

I love H4, but I got so pissed off about was the Campaign system. Last night, I was playing on my second Xbl account and I wanted the MC armor, so I went to play the H4 Campaign on Legendary by speed-running through the missions. I got through to Infinity, when all of the sudden, the Xbl servers I guess were under maintenance? I thought it wasn’t a big deal, so I continued and got to finish the broadsword section of Midnight. Then, this morning I resumed from there and Xbl was back up, again, I thought it wasn’t a problem until I finished the Campaign. I got to the menu and checked for the MC armor. But guess what? It wasn’t there! I checked back to the missions and EVERYTHING was completed on Legendary, so I was like wtf? Then, I checked YouTube videos about it and players in the comments were saying that “Xbox Live Gold is required.” Then I realized, I wasted about 4 hours to complete the campaign with no in-game spartan rewards. I got pissed and that is why I’m here. 343, do something about this please.

14

Game just doesn’t fell right, It doesn’t feel like the halo I use to love.

343 just changed to much, to fast. Like changing the look of the elites, grunts, jackles, any new enemy. I dont like the new look of the grunts and elites, the rest are fine, jackles look fine, except that space armor looks stupid. I find that they wanted the game to feel like their own, so they scraped everything Bungie has put in. Which I get, need something new, every game does. But I can get over all the looks, all I really care about is the campaign. Story telling is good, in depth. But it just didn’t make sense at parts. Like the changing look of master chiefs armor. Dont care if Cortana did something to it well master chief was sleeping. It was a stupid change that shouldn’t had happened. But you know I can get over that, really doesn’t affect game play and story tellin. But what ruins the game for me is the ending, just didn’t make sense, ive watched lore’s on it. I get how Cortana makes that stupid bubble. But Master Chief blew a fricken nuke up in his hands, no way Cortana could have had the reaction time too save him well spit up into many little fragments of an AI. Then her having feelings with john and getting all touchy touchy with John. Just no, I know It was Cortana’s end. But come on stupid way to kill off a main character. I dont mind the game 343, but you could have made better decisions on the story. But I dont know what the fans like, im not in your shoes, so I dont know what its like.

My ending of halo 4 would have been Cortana sacrificing herself to let master chief escape, and that Cortana would blow up the nuke. Well before this master chief would try to stop her, But he knows its the right choice. But this is just something I thought of.

15

well, let’s hope that they fix some of these problems in Halo 5.

> 2533274873843883;12:
> These days, where everyone thinks they are a game designer (OP excepted, since he actually is a game designer), we have nothing but opinions from love to hate and beyond on every single point of every game from everyone old enough to pick up a controller and rant on a forum. The question isn’t whether people are going to have opinions, or even whether they will express them endlessly and with unimaginable vitriol, but instead the question is a) will they continue to actually play the game regardless of their opinions, and b) will they buy the next version of the game? And an argument could be made that a studio/developer/publisher doesn’t even really care about a. They only care about b.
>
> In short, there is never anything wrong with any game at all (unless, like MCC, it just doesn’t work) - there are only opinions as to how the particular player in question would prefer the game to be. I myself have an endless list of things I’d like to see changed in Halo, but none of them are deal-breakers. I’ll play whatever they ship, and more importantly, I’ll adapt to whatever changes they make. The players that refuse to adapt will leave for some other game, but since we already know that they wish to make a career of dissatisfaction, you can bet they’ll probably still buy the next installment. And the circle of life continues…

things wrong with games are really all in the eye of the beholder, recon. but you did bring up another excellent point, games and game design really are all about a constant flow of “game changing” and adaptation between gamers and developers. things are constantly improved upon.
which brings me to this:

> 2533274813312253;9:
> Unfortunately, not many people pay attention to the story anymore. That is why you see all this criticism that has NOTHING to do with the campaign. We have moved from a campaign generation of players to “online only” players.
>
> Most of the criticism comes from the online players. And quite frankly there are A LOT of players that dont even bother playing the campaign at all but instead spend all their time on the MP.
>
> For some reason, those same people think they have the right to complain and say that the game sucks just because of what they dont like in the MP.
>
> I liked the game. Though my gut wrenched at the end because of Cortana and I didnt want her to go.
>
> But there is nothing we can do about the morons who say it was a horrible game just because of things in the MP.

to that end, perhaps there wasn’t really a lot wrong with the game. on the other hand, multiplayer will never be perfect; because gamers, programmed to win by any means necessary, require new stimuli and methods with which to do so. e.g when someone breaks the game to gain an advantage, suddenly everyone breaks the game, then bashes the game because it’s “broken”.
Azrael, do you think that the criticism from these “online-only” players is well-respected in the community?
on another note, it seems as though there’s a serious disconnect between people who play multiplayer, and those who play campaign. what is your opinion on Spartan Ops?

16

This game was great. Was it perfect? No, but what game is. Bottom line is you will never satisfy everyone.

17

I agree with most of what you said, exept for the sanbox part. Halo 4 was the most linear halo game ever, only the 5th level have just a little bit of sandbox when you have to protect the elephant, the rest of the game You just go foward and shoot

18

I love halo 4 I still play it on 360 and on xbone . Mostly play h2a on MCC but I play h4 on 360 more often because it works lol

19

Halo 4 was a good game, but the problem I had was that the gameplay was not made for the maps. When you use sprint, look threw wall, and use jetpack there need to be bad side to it at all times for a arena gameplay. Plus I didn’t like how after the TU the game just felt dull with everyone using the same crap. If you going to update weapons then update the weapons that need like the Covenant and Forerunner weapons not the human weapons.

20

My thing is how hard it is to start up a campaign. AND OBOY BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAY IM HAVING PROBLEMS. I just uninstall the game and just reinstall the content again. And now it’s tell me that there are no options available to you for this player. Can any one tell me what I’m doing wrong. HELP PLEASE!!!:sob::sob::sob::sob::sob::sob: