I think 343 Industries has done an excellent job respectively. They took the game back to being relatively new as to exploring the unknown back in “Combat Evolved”. The multiplayer has received an overhaul as well adding on the Spartan Ops, Flood mode, and the maps are specifically designed for multiplayer instead of being pulled from the campaign. Not to mention the audio quality and graphical beauty that stands as the best the 360 has to offer currently aside from “Assassin’s Creed 3” IMO respectively. What do you like or dislike about 343’s efforts to breath life into the game we all fell in love with that Bungie threw the towel in on. Thoughts?
Bump, cuz I’m on the fence about buying this one.
Just finished the campaign last night- it’s magnificently rendered.
Although you can’t re-create the wonder of a first-time experience like Halo, there were a lot of times that I had to just stop and look around.
Going to get into the multiplayer this weekend.
Worth the money, IMO.
Finished campaign twice, first on Normal, then on Easy just so I could run around kicking ass and seeing the sights. I’ll take a break then do the hard difficulties (although some spots were pretty damned hard on Normal). Happy’s right, there are a couple spots where you look around and go “wow.” Fun campaign, new enemies, good story, I liked it a lot.
My son has been blazing through the multiplayer, which I don’t really do, and gives that a big thumbs up – if I gather correctly, they finally have some notion of rewarding kill-levels/streaks during play, but only in some modes. As an aging Modern Warfare player, I’d like that part a lot.
Pretty damn cool. It was definitely picked up by the right company. Liked some of the new guns and some of the new enemies. Though the new Brutes seem ridiculously impervious to damage and every time I met one, it was always a place where there was next-to-no room to dance around their melee attacks.
I don’t think there were any Brutes in the campaign this time? Did I miss them?
Anyway, as a loyal Halo fan since the beginning, one who has read all of the books and comics, watched the anime and web series and played all the games to completion many, many times, I gotta say Halo 4 was pretty impressive. I’m not big on multiplayer in general, so I can’t speak for that, but the single player was great; on par with Halo 3 for sure, though Reach still stands as my favorite entry in the series.
However, I’m not sure a casual gamer will follow the plot and have it make much sense if you haven’t read any of the books, especially the new ones. The Didact’s (the main villian) motivation is never made clear in the game and some of the terminology they fling around will mean nothing to someone who isn’t already familiar with it. I suppose one could look at that as a failing, but I found it pretty awesome myself; it’s the first transmedia experience that has paid off for me.
The new enemies, the Prometheans, were top notch too. One might go so far as to say fighting them is more fun than fighting the Covenant, but that’s probably just the novelty of something new in the Halo universe talking. Nonetheless their A.I. is just as good as the Covenant and they do bring some different tactics to the battlefield, as well as weapons. The weapons, however, are pretty much in line with the human and alien weapons. You have your machine gun, scoped gun, pistol, shotgun, rocket launcher and sniper; they just happen to shoot orange light instead of plasma or bullets. That’s not to say they aren’t different, but by and large it’s just minor tweaks to already existing weapons. There’s no new weapons as imaginative as, say, the Needler or Spartan Laser.
To be honest, I’m not sure it’s worth the 60 dollar price unless you either are a massive Halo fanboy (like me) or have enough money to throw around. The campaign is short (I played it on Legendary first time through and I clocked in at probably around 10 or 12 hours, so I’m assuming a playthrough on Normal would be about 8 or so hours). Although I guess there’s replay value to be found in the multiplayer, but like I said, I can’t say whether or not that’s any good since I haven’t played it.
You didn’t. Not sure what Gukumatz was referring to.
I’ve had no other contact than the games, and it made reasonable sense to me, although the extended cut scene in the middle with the um, “curler-haired” apparition was a bit dense, but it pretty much added up. My only disappointment was that the current Big-bad was wrapped in one episode, which is decidedly un-Halolike. But the main story wasn’t about him, it was about Cortana and Chief, so that’s okay. And they obviously have Plans for the Forerunners, given the dead guy’s big speech at the end. Maybe he has nine lives or something.
The campaign length struck me as about the length of Reach’s, and longer than Halo 3’s. Obviously YMMV.
Just to make those of you interested in the game aware there is a current problem going on right now that has the fans raging. The multiplayer features something new to the series called “specializations” which can be chosen once you reach level 50. There are 8 specializations that I know of and one can only choose one at a time. For example: You reach level 50, choose one, for the next 10 levels you are set on that specialization path. The specializations rank up in sets of ten. Once you reach 60 you will have unlocked all the armor and perk associated with said specialization and make choose another to continue ranking up. These perks provide simple, but effective bonuses to competitive play.
The problem is that only the limited edition came with all 8(?) specializations to begin with while the standard edition only came with 2. There was a promotional code with certain requirements(Live in a particular country, be 17 or older, and play before Nov 20th) to meet to be eligible to recieve said code by e-mail which seems to have been botched for a large majority of the player base. Granted, I understand that this is 343 Industries first go, but I don’t see the franchise being anything buy a shadow of its former glory unless they resolve this issue quickly.
The issue seems to have been resolved. The codes have been sent to Xbox live message inboxes. I suppose the specializations will be released gradually over time for those who will be getting the game at a later date.
So, I’ve been playing a shit ton of Halo 4 multiplayer. I’ve really been enjoying it, but it feels like there’s a layer of crap over, what appears to be, a very good game here. I find it interesting that 343 rebranded Fiesta Slayer toInfinity Slayer, made it the default gametype, and now everyone loves it.