Many people, myself included had a huge hype for the release of Halo 4. If only then I knew what I had known now I could have saved myself $60 and a trip to a midnight release. Before flaming immediately after seeing the title, please, at least here me out.
Flashback to November, 15, 2011. Microsoft and 343i had just released its first Halo game (with 343i being a separate company, respectively). Halo: CEA was released in North America and was sold on the shelves for a mere $40. But the price had nothing on game itself, right? The original Halo, just with better graphics and sound quality. Sounded great to me. But as a gamer, I wouldn't be doing my job if I hadn't poked out the flaws. And please, let me take a minute to explain. Hating and nitpicking flaws are COMPLETELY different. Don't know the difference? Google it. Back to the matter at hand. I remember playing the first Halo as a kid, I only played at my cousins place, because my parents had refused to buy me an Xbox (they thought the games were too violent, so I showed them Madhouse on the Wii when it came out years later). Nonetheless, I went from Banjo Kazooie, Mario 64, and the LoZ series (which are GREAT games, by the way) to shooting my way through any situation I saw fit. Halo ALONE stood above as the mighty grandeur of most of my gaming experiences. This led on to me playing Halo 3, CoD 4 and WaW (I did play Halo 2, just not online). All of which I highly regard to as great games to a modern era. You know what all of these games have in common? If you guessed 'A player progression system' then step up to get your prize. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING could compare to the feeling that I got once I hit General in Halo 3 or when I prestiged in CoD 4. I just had this sense of accomplishment where I knew that I had something that few people had. I don't really remember CE having any online capabilities (I may be wrong), but I do know it had Custom Games. CEA; however, failed to deliver an online experience, let alone Custom Games. To save myself a few words, I'll say this: The same can be said for Halo 4. Like I previously stated, I enjoy ranking up and proving my worth, which would explain why I love games like WoW and GW2. I'm getting sidetracked. Now onto Halo 4, or should I say the burden of my Halo experience.
Flashforward to November 6, 2012. I'm standing in a line at Gamestop waiting to get my copy of Halo 4. Line number, 122. Not too bad I guess. After driving home and changing my pants, I popped Halo 4 into the disc tray of my 360 and ran it from the dashboard. Let's start with the Campaign. I played this first as it is simply my tradition to experience the story line before anything else. Let me be the first to say, HOLY MOTHER OF GOD this was purely amazing! Campaign was probably my favorite aspect, I beat it twice. Once to test the waters and a second time for Legendary Solo. Only I have a few problems. 343, to my dismay had lied in saying that Halo 4's legendary mode would be the hardest yet. I beat it; solo, mind you, in less than a day. I'm not that great at Campaign, especially Halo. I expected this to make me break a controller, not sit through in boredom as the derpy AI wandered around like nothing happened after I clearly assassinated a Promethean Knight. On the plus side, being able to see a little bit of Master Chief's face was MORE than promising. The game felt like a Sci-Fi shooter, like it should. However, this shouldn't give 343 the right to take the humor out of Halo. Even playing through the entire Campaign with IWHBYD on, I found no humorous remarks from the Covenant (I expected no real humor out of the Prometheans, mind you). Just growling most of the time. I also find myself running out of ammunition when it's most needed. Anyway, enough with Campaign (I gave it a 9/10).
Onto the prominent Spartan Ops. A replacement for the classic Firefight experience, you play as the infamous Crimson team while playing through multiple missions, each with their own chapters and objectives. It's an interesting change; however, I would like to have seen a separate custom loadouts for Spartan Ops. Having to change constantly for Spartan Ops and War Games is a chore that should never have to be done. Here's an idea, have different roles for Spartan Ops. Each loadout would express a different role that could be fulfilled be the player. Heavy Weapons, Assault, Sniper, etc. Just a suggestion, of course. Now, herein lies the problem with Spartan Ops. The connectivity between players feels like the Ethernet cords were replaced with licorice. I can connect (with full bars, err, green bar, rather) to people when in Custom Games or Forge, and still lag like crazy when in Spartan Ops. It's like I'm being forced to play on LAN to enjoy the experience. With about a year in Computer Networking and mostly logical thinking, it can only be 343's servers that fail to support anything. Replaying the same map for missions can be a bit annoying too, unless it's like Mission 4 (or 5, I can't really remember) where you're on Ragnarok for 2-3 chapters and it actually follows a decent story pattern to it.
War Games. Matchmaking for any fellow Halo vets. I could go on about this for ages, but to sum it up, I hate it. I hate the fact that I HAVE to hate it. This shouldn't exist, and I feel like it's a monstrosity to the competitiveness Halo used to bring. Whine and cry about Reach as it may be, but at least Reach could support an MLG playlist. Or any playlist for that matter. Halo 2, from what I've collected, had a Clan Battle playlist. That's perfect for clans who want to warm up before a GB match or something. For weapons, one precision weapon for UNSC is fine enough, thank you. Not two, is that concept so difficult to understand? Was 343 even thinking about the competitive community? Probably not. Reach brought about the concept of Armor Abilities, which most people hated. Any hate was usually directed for only one reason in particular, Armor Lock. Personally, I always used Sprint. I like to get to objectives and places around the map quickly. AA's were the only thing that really put someone at an edge over the other player (not including weapons, of course. I'm just talking about the traits at spawn). Now, in response to this, Halo 4 added not only Armor Abilities (which I find myself almost never using,) but perks as well. Perks? PERKS? Are you serious 343? If War Games had a CoD label on it, it would be the most balanced CoD out on the market (certainly better than BO:II). But why put a Halo label on this? Spawning with the same thing as everyone else had was just fine. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy change as much as the next guy. Repeating a similar multiplayer pattern gets old and boring. But this is not the way to do it 343! If you want some change that's fine, but don't change the game mechanics! Team Slayer Pro has little to no player base, and changing loadouts simply shouldn't be in Halo. Look at Reach's response to Armor Abilities, it was horrible. And the addition of having everyone have sprint is absolutely fine, I in fact welcome it with open arms. This doesn't give 343 the right to add perks. If they wanted a perk system, they could have made slight, minuscule differences that had a slight impact on the game. Like maybe 105% movement speed, or maybe a slight increase in the duration of sprint, not unlimited. 2 primary weapons in a loadout? No. Get rid of it. Awareness? Leave this game. More grenades? Kill yourself. Increased Explosives radius and less damage received? (Insert sarcastic smile, obviously indicating anger here) Better yet, let's throw in a carbon copy of a CoD perk! Oh, what's it called? Sleight of Hand maybe? Yeah that's the one. 343, grow some originality, or at least fire your multiplayer development team, and make a multiplayer system that makes me not want to throw up.
Finally, Forge (I'm not dealing with Theater, that failed after Halo 3 due to no multiplayer viewing options). Forge seems much worse than compared to in Reach. Dynamic lighting and magnets were all that 343 brought to the table as major changes to Forge. That's great, but provide no decent maps to forge on and the whole system falls apart. Not only is the Magnet system feel uncomfortable, but the Coordinate system feels odd too! And precision editing? Nope! Zooming in while in monitor mode? Ha! Nope! In terms of maps, Ravine is horrible. I can't find a place to put anything anywhere. The Promethean structure half shouldn't be there. The moon base is equally full of stupid-syndrome. I just want Forge World back. I'd rather have one large map to forge on rather than 3 dysfunctional maps with no real purpose. Custom Games just feels dull since 343 copied most of what made Reach's custom games a bit derpy. Like the Camo system. That ruined Ghostbusters, my favorite custom game in H3. The jump scares were really fun! Now it's just like "Oh, you're there.." I tried making a paintball-esque Custom Game in Halo 4. It was okay, but there were no good maps to play it on. Why take away the freedom, fun, and creativity from Halo? I forged quite a bit on both H3 and Reach. Both were decent in their own respects. Foundry. Am I right, or am I right? Sandbox was pretty cool, along with the other maps that had skulls on them. Nice touch, Bungie.
Above all, I feel like Halo 4 fixed a few of the big mistakes but made a LOT of smaller ones in its path. Graphics only add to the overall atmosphere of a game. And I feel like 343 focused on only that. The appeal to the atmosphere, rather the gameplay. Reach had a sort of grunge look/feel to it. The dirty armor truly made me feel like a war torn Spartan. And that's what Halo is about, right?
Hate on me if you will, I've come to accept that my opinion isn't very welcome. At least think of this: Are you defending this game so much because you like it, or because it simply says "Halo" on the cover? I am actually enthralled to hear someone else's opinion on this.
I never really addressed my concern with Halo 4's ranking system. After hitting 50 and passing into your first specialization, it's easy to rank up until rank 5-6 of your specialization. It then follows a repeated pattern after hitting 60. Choose the specialization, it's easy then it gets really difficult. There's no sense in that at all. Just wanted to point that out.
