Halo 4 Review

Posted By Yousif A. about 6 months, 2 weeks ago

Halo 4 Review

Halo 4 Machinima Forward Unto Dawn Begins, 10.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating

When I saw the original announcement for Halo 4 I was skeptical. Sometimes when something ends, it should be left alone. Without Bungie behind the wheel it seemed like Microsoft was just using the name for income, ignoring the legacy of a legend they had helped create. When creative director of 343 Industries Ryan Paton quit the company, claiming that he “wasn’t creatively excited about the project anymore,” I honestly started feeling sorry for Halo fans that were going to shell out for the game regardless of quality.

Then I saw the recent trailers. A spark of hope ignited in me, remembering that winter years ago when I rushed to the shop to buy my original Xbox and Halo: Combat Evolved. Could it be that despite my reasonable reservations, Halo 4 would avoid doing a Phantom Menace?

Could it be?

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Master Chief is brought out of cryostasis and teams up with Cortana. They accidentally stumble across an artificial Forerunner planet. After landing on said planet you discover that it could contain a device that while constructed for good, could be used for evil. Then the Covenant also randomly appear at this location and are dead set on you not getting it. Unless Master Chief stops the bad guys, Earth could be at risk.

If that sounds like a lack of creativity and new ideas, then you should wait until you get into the game. Halo 4 is nearly completely devoid of originality. Even when something new does come up it has been poorly implemented. I hate to say this Halo fans, but this is not the game you deserve.

Are they about to hug?

Now, when I say that Halo 4 lacks many things, that doesn’t automatically make it bad. Building upon the foundation that is the Halo series, no matter how badly, is never going to produce something outright poor. This effort simply feels like the early Treyarch Call of Duty games did: cool, but ultimately rehashing sections from an Infinity Ward CoD. Halo 4 just doesn’t have the creative energy that Bungie gave it.

If I may be allowed to come back to the story, a large amount of important information goes by without ever being explained. I would like to know why the Covenant are enemies again, despite clearly having allied/declared peace with Earth. I would very much appreciate knowing how Spartans have been recreated and who these named Spartans are. Giving a character a name does not give them character. Perhaps answers to these questions and more can be found in books or videos that I haven’t had the opportunity, nor the inclination, to watch, but I find it appalling that the game starts where Halo 3 left off and yet I find myself lost in a universe that I was previously comfortable in. You would think at least Master Chief himself would have questions.

The story is poorly told and the pacing is all over the place. Characters often express a need for urgency, but the gameplay, often at these moments, crawls to a halt, forcing long slogs upon you rather than quick firefights. The supporting cast is thrown at you with next to no establishment of character, and no believable interaction. Among the few characters that do get some exposition, many are the worst kind of stereotype. Brace yourself for the hard-ass commander who cares little for Master Chief’s crazy stories about danger–he has a job to do, dammit.

Pictured: The high point of the story.

I found this myriad of poorly conceived narrative blunders all the more frustrating when compared to the superb script writing that develops the relationship between Master Chief and Cortana. At times the dialogue between these two is genuinely touching and serves to expand upon the wonderful framework Bungie left behind. It’s an emotional rollercoaster taken by two non-human characters that wish to be more than they are.

Despite everything I have said about the plot, the final 2 chapters of the game take a massive leap away from the rest of the adventure and really deliver memorable moments which genuinely leave me wanting to experience the next part of the new trilogy. While I may spend the majority of the remaining review bashing the hell out of this title, this game may be well worth slogging through for these couple of hours alone.

It won’t take you long to get to the credit sequence either. I didn’t feel as annoyed as I did with Halo 2, as this new title wraps things up a little more neatly, but I was very much aware that the ride had only really just started when it ended. At an overly generous guess, I would say that Halo 4 took around 8 hours to complete, and a lot of that is story. Let’s put aside the bits where people speak to you and get down to the bits where you shoot stuff.

The new enemies are cool, but don’t change up gameplay too much.

Halo 4 plays very much like a Halo title. The controls have hardly changed, if at all, from Halo Reach. You immediately feel at home with the whole experience and once you have that UNSC assault rifle in hand, you know some ass is going to be kicked. The problem is, the ways in which you can kick ass have been nary improved. In fact, it could be said that they have been limited.

While many guns make a return, ranging from human shotguns to Covenant carbines, several weapons are noticeable missing. The Covenant Plasma Gun in both purple and red form are AWOL and the human submachine gun has also left the building. Dual-wielding also strangely disappeared from John-117′s list of skills, decreasing your damage output significantly. There are some brand new weapons in the game after a couple of hours though, so believe me when I say that when you pick one up the first words coming out of your mouth will be “awesome.” However, the smile soon leaves your face as these ‘new’ weapons are simply re-skinned and slightly tweaked versions of other weapons in the game. In the end they only serve to fill the ammo gap between missions. I never found myself intentionally dropping human or Covenant weapons for this new selection.

If you’ve played a Halo game, you’ve seen it all before.

The enemy seems to have decreased in size and intelligence too. Expect to see only the Covenant types from Halo: CE in this new iteration, with buggers noticeably missing. In addition, the absence of the Flood, and indeed Brutes, really stifles the variety in gameplay. One one hand, I’m glad both races remained out of the new title, with each having good reasons for not appearing, but I also worry that without them the dynamic of the game is fundamentally lacking in depth. The new enemies are just too similar to the remaining Covenant forces to mix things up enough for combat to remain interesting. The new antagonists make an appearance around the same time the new weaponry turns up, but again, despite the cool design, the tactics used for defeating them are much the same as the ones implemented against the Covenant.

These tactics can be written on the back of a match box because, as I previously mentioned, smarts don’t seem to be the alien’s greatest weapon. After a couple of firefights, you can call in exactly the moves the enemy will make, literally. I spent 5 minutes of the game narrating the actions of the enemy a couple of seconds ahead of their movements with 100% accuracy. Even when the enemy does something you don’t expect, you will find yourself wondering why they did it. For instance, enemies often step out into the open or teleport to a location only to run back to where they were moments before. After a few hours of this, killing them just felt cruel.

Kill them you will, however, and in droves. Missions very rarely involve anything other than “Go here” or “Blow up 3 (no more, no less) targets.” These often take place in bland flavorless environments, leaving the rich well-designed locations of ODST and Reach well behind. I could honestly describe 70% of the game as “the library from Combat Evolved, but with new paint.” There is a jungle bit and a desert bit, but both of these are over quite quickly and the latter possibly being one of the most boring levels in recent FPS history.

Looks more like a puma.

The objectives are bland, the enemies are bland, the weaponry is bland, the level design is bland, and so it came as quite the shock when not only did the story improve in the last 2 chapters, but the gameplay did too. Suddenly the enemies start coming at you in numbers that create a genuine challenge and the pacing takes off with several defense objectives challenging you to hold the line. Suddenly, you feel like a hero again. The final mission itself is actually of the highest quality and made me realize what 343 Industries are capable of. Shame it took until that point, but hope for the future and all that.

I am going to admit that I never liked Halo‘s competitive multiplayer. It just never grabbed me. There must be something about it, as Halo 3‘s multiplayer is still–to this day–one of the most played games on Xbox Live, so I honestly understand that I am in the minority here. With that out of the way, I am unsurprisingly going to announce that I don’t think much of the competitive multiplayer on offer in Halo 4.

The multiplayer still reeks of “the person who shoots first wins,” with map knowledge often accounting for more kills than skill. Combine this with the fact that some weapons are just genuinely better than others and the right skill load-out will see you smashing the opposition, and you have a multiplayer mode that doesn’t do it for me.

If you bring some friends along you’ll probably get some laughs.

There are more modes than you can shake a stick at though, with a pretty decent amount of maps to take part in. There is also a fair amount of load-out options to choose from and unlike most FPS games, where weapons and skills are unlocked in a predetermined fashion, you are rewarded with Spartan points at every level up, and it’s up to you which items you purchase. Herein lies further evidence to support my claim of certain weapons/skills being more useful than others, as some unlocks cost more.

On the few occasions I found enough players online pre-release, the connection was next to perfect. I can’t say that I once suffered from lag or connection loss. I got the impression at all times when playing online that the multiplayer had received some considerable attention and the quality of the production was evident, it’s just a shame that I personally just don’t get on with it.

There is a new co-operative multiplayer mode called Spartan Ops, which can also be played single-player. This replaces the firefight mode, presenting a mission-based adventure rather than a horde style arena battle. Alongside others, you can battle your way through enemy lines, progressing the story as you go. It’s here we find the only inkling that the Spartan revival story might be revealed, and perhaps it is, but during the review period I unfortunately kept finding the server down and was unable to play, as the mode requires an online connection.

There is hope on the horizon….

What I did get to play of Spartan Ops varied very little from the gameplay found in the main campaign and the “story” seemed simply to be a series of voice clips that suggest that the events are coinciding with the main campaign. The most noticeable thing about Spartan Ops was the intro, with pelican gunships floating through the air like some Gary’s Mod creation, clearly showing that production time had not been well allocated to this mode. The dramatic cutscenes seen in the trailer for Spartan Ops were oddly missing from the opening mission, dumping you straight into the game without so much as a hello. It appears later on, but feels misplaced.

Ultimately, that’s the problem with Halo 4. The game almost seems to lack faith in itself. It’s like the new developers were so worried about stepping on toes that they didn’t stick their head out at all. Even the orchestral backbone of the original experience is missing. It’s almost unfathomable. I want the Covenant to scream “Daemon!” every time I come into view. I want epic music to announce Master Chief’s rampage through enemy lines while UNSC soldiers cheer and taunt as they follow behind. More than anything else, I want the Spartan super solider I am playing as to feel like a true badass.

343 Industries have created a title here with sparks of brilliance, making me really get into the Chief/Cortana relationship for the first time, but the whole experience is let down by lackluster gameplay and poor pacing. This studio obviously has it in them to produce, and the last few sequences show promise that hopefully can be expanded upon in the sequels. Despite this, I fail to see how I can possibly rank this game anywhere above average. However, I cannot wait to see what they do with some critical response to work from, because let’s face it, even if every other review site agrees with me, Halo 4 is still going to sell better than 99% of the games released in 2012.

This game was provided by the publisher on Xbox 360 for review purposes. The game was played for roughly 20 hours and was completed. The campaign mode was played for around 12 hours on a variety of difficulties and was completed. The competitive multiplayer was played for around 5 hours. Spartan Ops co-operative mode was played for around 3 hours, but was played in solo mode.

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