First off I want to say, I know that the majority of you here on the forums are loving the game. Let me just say that this is not directed toward you at all. Seriously, if you think I’m wrong you don’t have to tell me. I know you exist. Just leave, you don’t have to comment. I don’t want any arguing on this thread. I’m creating this post specifically to discuss my disappointment with the game with other people who share it. So, do we all understand that? Ok, then let’s begin.
When Halo 4 was announced, naturally, as a long-time hardcore Halo fan, I was excited. It was sad to see Bungie go but I was excited to see the Chief return and thought that the people at 343 sure seemed passionate enough about Halo so as to not let us down. I was terribly excited all up until the point we all remember, when the Game Informer article came out and the internet went crazy. We were all upset and for good reason - the features they had decided to add were entirely un-Halo and we feared they would butcher the game. However, after a while we calmed down, we listened to the soothing words from 343 and we believed them, that everything was going to be all right. I then continued my excitement for the game. I went to the midnight launch and got my LE copy and ran home to play. I burnt through the campaign in about 7 hours (which was an enjoyable albeit short experience, however I thought the plot was weak, the secondary characters were all boring and there was no stand-out mission for me) and then hopped straight into multiplayer, and it was then that I realised something - I was right to have been concerned all those months back. The changes and additions have had the exact effect on the gameplay of Halo 4 that I and everyone else predicted and it’s for the worse. Halo 4 is not Halo anymore.
The first problem I noticed is the menus. They are atrocious. Like, really bad. They aren’t so much a nightmare to navigate as much as they are just not nice to look at and not fun to use in the way that Reach’s were. The Spartan Hub in particular is woeful. Now that actually IS a little bit hard to navigate. It’s actually so much that I don’t bother using it anymore. I have given up changing my loadout and armour and checking my unlocks partly because I couldn’t care to use the menu (and partly because I don’t like the armours or the loadout system, which I will talk about soon).
After seeing the shockingly poor selection of playlists I finally started playing some Team Slayer. Immediately I realised that my standard Halo tactics were not going to work here. Attempting to gain control of certain areas of the map with my team was futile, as everyone was always constantly on the move. You either shoot first or die in the game. The AR will put a person down, even from a distance, in seconds. Same with many other weapons. Evidently weapon damage was upped in order to up the pacing. I don’t like this. It no longer means that the smarter player will prevail in a firefight. Now, more often than not it’s the person with the faster trigger finger, or whoever sees the other player first.
Respawning instantly feels uncomfortable to me, but so does watching the killcam. Since I’d rather play the game than watch the oh so useless killcam, I always skip it. But it just doesn’t feel right. These instant respawns totally screw with the pacing of the game (I don’t mind sprint but instant respawn with the aim of speeding up the game feels like overkill). They negate the consequences of death and everyone is just constantly rushing. It also gets rid of any breathing time you might have had. Usually the spawn delay helped players calm down, clear their head and think about what they did wrong and helped them make better decisions. Without that, players just don’t think as they used to.
Next we have the scoring system. This just feels wrong. They’ve replaced good medals with stupid trivial ones, ones that you barely know you’ve gotten and couldn’t care about, and give you points for everything. I’m always getting points for this or that but what the game doesn’t realise is that I DON’T CARE. All I want to know is, DID I KILL HIM? Don’t tell me all the other things I did, and don’t reward me for stuff I did ACCIDENTALLY unless it was actually something impressive. The scoreboard itself is ugly too. I just want to old scoring sytem back.
Then there’s the loadouts, ordinance and weapon drops. I despise, no, LOATH these three features. Loadouts seems totally pointless and unbalanced. I actually don’t care about mine and have stopped bothering to edit them, I just pick whichever one has the primary weapon I want. Reach did them right, balancing the loadouts and offering everyone the same selection. However in 4, the more time you put into it the better gear you’ll have and it’s just an inherently imbalanced system in what used to be a balanced game. Everyone should start with the same gear or the same choice between gear. There should be no rank advantage. However, due to the way power weapons and ordinance work, this wouldn’t matter anyway. The standard weapons are so OP that no one bothers with power weapons when and IF they ever come across them. Halo, at it’s core was always at least partially about fighting over the big guns. Ordinance and random weapons does away with that. There’s no more excitement in exploring the map anymore, and location control does not exist. Everyone keeps moving and teams don’t fight tactically over control of prime locations. Halo, a formerly focussed arena shooter, is no longer focussed. It’s a bullet fest where the person with the least patience yet ironically the most time spent playing will excel and the patient thinkers will be left in the dust.
Also, they’ve ruined grenades. Not only have they been nerfed but you need a perk to pick them up off of bodies. They are practically useless in this game which destroys the Halo trifecta of guns, melee and grenades.
And finally, you actually have to unlock emblems. Seriously?
Overall, I know that, at least on these forums, I’m part of a minority. But I know I’m definitely no alone in my disappointment. It really just seems to me that yeah, 343 really do love Halo, but they don’t really “get” it. It reminds me of George Lucas and the Star Wars prequels. A clear amount of love was put into them but there was also a clear lack of understanding of the fundamentals of the series. Who else shares my dissatisfaction with the game? What other issues do you have?
EDIT: Just wanted to address something I’ve seen some people say, that I’m trying to exclude anyone who disagrees with us - I didn’t start this thread with the intention of debating the quality of the game. I started it with the intention of getting feedback on all of the things that disappoint us about it. If it was a “What are your favourite things about the game?” thread and it said at the start “please don’t comment if you don’t like it, this is specifically for things you DO like” well then you wouldn’t say there was any attempt at blocking out differing opinions. Simply, the differing opinions would not be relevant to the question asked. So it’s the same here. I’m not trying to exclude or ignore anyone with a different opinion to those of us who don’t like it, I’m simply asking those who disagree not to try and start an argument. If that’s what you want to do well then we’d all rather you didn’t comment.