I'm going to be straight with you and say the only Halo game I ever really liked was the first game. It was fun, new, and I have a lot of great memories involving LAN parties with friends, but none of the other games ever impressed me. When a friend of mine invited me over to play through Halo 4 with him, I figured it would be worth a few laughs. So, over the next few weeks, he and I experienced the many facets of the new installment of the Halo franchise. There are many features to the game, though mainly for multiplayer uses, and the story reflects this.
Halo 4 was developed by 343 Industries. After Halo: Reach, Bungie sold the rights for Halo to Microsoft, who then started their own company to continue the franchise. 343 Industries itself, is a reference to a reoccurring character in the series, 343 Guilty Spark.
Story - 5
Before I go into detail, yes the story is pretty bad. I'll try and keep this as spoiler free as possible. Master Chief awakens from cryosleep after 4 years of drifting through space in the wreckage of a large space ship. Cortana, his AI cohort, guides him through the ship to then discover that there is a Covenant fleet incoming and a strange planet size, death star shaped ship outside. You get sucked down onto said planet ship and uncover a plot of an evil Forerunner who is intent on wiping out mankind.
That's the basic storyline in a nutshell. There doesn't seem to be a lot wrong with that. I mean, it's a video game, right? It doesn't need a deep plot, right? Well, normally, I would agree. But Halo 4 tries to give you a deep plot, only to rely on external media to explain everything to you. To fully grasp the story in it's complete form you need to have read the Halo books revolving around the forerunners, watch the live action Forward Unto Dawn movie, and then find little computer terminals throughout the game. This frustrates me. The game doesn't really even rely on the previous games at all, nor does it refer back to them. The only characters that appear that we've seen in the series of games are the two main characters, Master Chief, and Cortana. All in all, the storyline was sloppy, and there were a lot of other things that didn't make much sense to me, but I won't go on a rant about all that right now.
Fun Fact: Master Chief is a real military officer rank in the Navy. However, you'd be more likely to see a Master Chief behind a desk pushing papers, than in the field slinging bullets.
Video - 10
This game is beautiful. The graphics are very lifelike, and the environments are very well rendered. There are a set of new enemies in the game, and both them and their weapons' soul purpose seems to be eye candy. Master Chief even has new armor (no idea how he got it) and it looks awesome. And the facial movements in cut scenes are so lifelike its almost too real. There's not really an adequate way to describe the graphics in this game so I'm just going to let you see for yourself.
Audio - 8
I was somewhat disappointed with the soundtrack for this game, though I haven't been satisfied by a Halo soundtrack since Halo 2. In Halo 1 and 2 I can remember the scenes and emotional high during elements of the story where great music played. Listening to the Halo 4 soundtrack is unable to bring the same nostalgia to me. Having just listened through it to write this review, its not that the music is bad, I just think it wasn't well placed within the game. Another contributing factor is that most of the album feels more like mood setting background music, than epic battle music.
There are some great names in the voice acting, but mostly in the supporting cast. Keith Szarabajka voices the main villain and does a very good job. Jennifer Hale voices a brand new female spartan, who appears in both the main story, and the Spartan Ops side story. And there's even some big names in the extras, such as Conan O'Brien.
Gameplay - 9
Halo 4 has primarily 3 different modes of play, single player story, Spartan Ops, and multiplayer. The single player campaign can be played online or off with other players, but it is the only mode that can be experienced without any other interaction with other gamers. The Spartan Ops is a cooperative mode that tells a side story involving a new squad of Spartans. And then there's the Multiplayer versus which allows many different forms of play like team deathmatches, capture the flag, point capture, and what would a shooter be without a zombie mode.
The overall gameplay is very well done. The controls are easy to learn and memorize. The environments are easy to navigate and there is a nice variety in the weapons. Spartan Ops is a great addition to the game, allowing players to play cooperatively online and experience a story that is released as a series of episodes released over time. The multiplayer modes are also diverse and entertaining enough to play for hours on end. And there's a fun new vehicle that is basically a mech. C'mon, you can't tell me that you never wanted to see Master Chief in a mech.
However, I do have a few complaints, which is Halo 4's gameplay does not get a perfect 10. There are a few new additions to the weapons, but most of them are just slight variations of pre-existing weapons. This doesn't present that much of a problem other than cluttering up the game, but there are 2 weapons that are a little ridiculous. One of which, is a sniper rifle that can kill someone in one shot, even when it only hits the torso. My complaint with this is that it takes the skill out of sniping, and changes it into something everyone is doing. The other weapon is a rocket launcher that explodes, then releases 4 grenades, that then proceed to explode. You can only fire one shot per clip, but it does get a little crazy when you can clear out an entire bunker of enemies with one shot.
One other problem that I have with the game, is that they changed the scoring system over to a points value. This linked with the new ordinance drop feature, which allows you to drop in special equipment once you have reached a certain number of kills, makes the game feel too much like Call of Duty for my taste.
I know I come across harsh on the story but it really bothers me. At the end of the day the scores average out to 8, which sounds fair by my standards. I hope you enjoyed my review. Please go ahead and click "follow" if you did, and then you'll be automatically notified when I post new reviews. Also, I'd like to take requests for future games to review so please leave some in the comments and I'll do my best to play through the games and voice my opinion. Thanks for reading!
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