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12/13/2012 2:24:50 PM
56
Why Halo 4 is thoroughly disappointing.
Before I begin I want to start by saying that the reason for this post is because it's hard to find a review of this game that doesn't have 343 PR stink all over it. The fact that there are so many rave reviews of this game really does astonish me and I'm honestly wondering if these people played the same game as me. Either way this is my opinion of the game and because I feel that not alot of people have this opinion I thought it important to get it out there. Agree or disagree this is how I feel.
The majority of my main focus for the Halo games has always been the multiplayer but I do want to address the campaign as well. To put it bluntly, the Halo 4 campaign was brutal. Not in the Master Chief kicks covenant ass brutal, but more in the sense that Master Chief got bent over a pinball machine by 343 and -blam!- for everything he was worth. This story appeals to the lowest common denominator.
In 343's defense, Bungie knew they had beaten the Master Chief's story to a dead pulp which is why they ended it in 3 and went on to making Reach. Halo 4 tries to breathe knew life into the corpse that is Master Chief's story. I feel like they missed the entire point of what Master Chief was.
Now I'm not a Halo historian. I havn't read any books nor could really even recite the main plot points of every Halo game, but the Halo 4 campaign felt like it was written by a Twilight fan girl. I'm sorry but a love interest? I didn't say -blam!- love interest but that's exactly what it is. Master Chief's "love" for his AI. At the end of every mission after watching the cutscene I would literally stand up and yell "WHO THE -blam!- CARES?!" Who cares if Cortana is deteriorating. She's artificial, it's in the name. They could get Chief a new model with all the same memories and NO ONE WOULD KNOW THE FREAKING DIFFERENCE!
Master Chief is about doing the impossible. It's about having one man be the difference maker in a galactic war. It's about duty, honor and kicking the living -blam!- out of alien ass and having the most badass reserved guy for the job do it. It's not about his emotions or his psychology or having to wrestle with his humanity. He's a super soldier. He is supposed to be the constant. Not the emotional and broody protagonist with pre-teen angst over the loss of a rebuildable AI. Look I see what 343 was going for but for me, it doesn't work. For me the campaign was a really hollow experience. I never cared about what I was doing.
Also someone needs to say this, the forerunners look -blam!- stupid. They look like robotic bugs. Nothing about what the forerunners are supposed to represent should make me think of them as insects. And for someone who is supposed to be a superior and vastly evolved race, the Didact sure does whine alot. Looks like 343 created a Bowser to Master Chief's Mario taking away any possible thoughtful or creative plot elements and ensuring that they disappear from future installments of the Chiefs story.
Compare this story to what Bungie did with Halo: Reach. Bungie's cous de gras from the series was beautiful. They knew that Chief's story has been told and went back to look at 1 group of spartans tragic but beautiful story. It was about sacrifice and honor. Not once did I think during that campaign, "But how do these spartans FEEL about having to save the world" nor should I. I cared about these Spartans and got to know them and love them for what they did. With each death came a newfound respect and I loved every second of that campaign up until the most heroic and tragic death being Noble six trying to fight off the impossible and knowing death is coming but godamn im not going down without a fight. It was poetic and inspiring and it made me want to beat every single mission on SLASO which I did. It didn't rely on gimmicks. Most every gameplay aspect was there from previous versions of Halo with the exception of a few additions, such as the spacefight which was awesome, but the difference was it didn't have to rely on an array of awkward and stupid looking enemies or a vast array of impractical weapons, although they were really shiny I'll give them that.
The fights themselves were all the same. Go to this area and clear out room. Once room is clear press button. Ok this time do the exact thing with a different -blam!-ier weapon and on a moving platform. Ok now do that again but here's a robot you can do it in. Same old same old.
To put it simply Halo 4 was exactly what I thought it was going to be. A cashcow that's been sent to the slaughterhouse. The worst part is they're going to do it all over again and probably for awhile with each new installment probably being more gimmicky than the last. This is how Halo 4's campaign made me feel and I would like to think that the majority of fans can tell the difference between an original and a fake. But I see nobody making these same points. And everywhere I look it's the same BS over and over again.
Onto the multiplayer. Again, it's been ruined for me. The reason I loved Halo multiplayer was because at the begininng of every match everyone was at the same odds of winning. The only difference between the players was one thing. Skill. Do you know why games like Call of Duty and Battlefield are so much more widely played? Because in those games, if you luck out hard enough, you can still win games. Being good at a game used to mean something in Halo multiplayer. Where's the logic in having the person with the most experience in the game getting the more powerful upgrades.
There are so many possible mismatches and combinations of weapons and armor abilities that sooner or later you'll come across someone who is ill equipped for your layout and you will get the kill. It comes down to luck in Halo 4 like it does with Call of Duty. The more people that are under the impression that they are "good" at the game, the more people log in to play the game. The more people that play the game, the more money 343 makes. The more money 343 makes the more I cry inside.
Why do you think Halo: Reach wasn't as well played or in many cases liked? Because no one wanted to put forth the effort into perfecting the skill that was Halo multiplayer. It was man vs man. Not man plus x weapon y armor ability z upgrade vs the same. Do the math and and that's who wins. Cater to the lowest common denominator and more people will play your game. Does that make it better? No.
The 2 Halo games that have had the most attention from me would be Halo 2 and Halo Reach but that doesn't mean that I didn't play others. I played my fair share of Halo 3 and you know what? I sucked at it. Me and my friend would always play multi team just me and him vs 3 or 4 other teams alike. Probably out of at least 150 matches we didn't win a single game. And you know what? I loved it. I loved it because we were severely outmatched but the taste of that possible victory was that much sweeter.
I got a 360 pretty late so by the time I got Halo 3 people were already way better at it. But with each loss came more experience and furthering our goals to a victory that much more. In Halo 4 wins are meaningless to me. Hell, kills are now that much more meaningless. I find that the best player is decided not by kills, KD, or really even a skill score anymore. It's all by medals and points. Medals give you points but who decides what is worth more points.
For example a headshot is worth 10 points but a killing spree is worth 5?! I understand you get points for each individual kill but 5 freaking points. I'm constantly getting beaten out by people with far less kills than me and its aggravating.
This game has no substance to it. It's meaningless. And do I really need to talk about the gimmicky weapons anymore? Like how most of the promethean weapons are impractical in ANY situation. And those promethean grenades has anyone actually gotten a kill with one of those? Kills arn't an indication of skill and the story isn't an indication of intelligence. Rather the lack thereof. Halo 4 has disappointing me thoroughly.
Cue angry mob.
[Edited on 12.13.2012 6:47 AM PST]
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[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] George 257 Adding too much humanity to Master Chief doesn't make him more profound or broader. It actually ruins what he really is. A hero. [/quote] I wholeheartedly agree. I don't want to sound pretentious but that's what I've been advocating since I heard about Halo 4 having a special emphasis on Chief's human side. I know it's fiction and anything can happen, characters can suddenly be super evil while others become the icons of morality in the next piece of work. But that is whats kinda bothered me. To change the Cheif's character [With the shoddy excuse of 'Character Development'] changes the very icon of Halo itself. You can change the story, you can change the gameplay, the art direction. But to change the Chief.... especially in the direction they're going for. [We shouldn't act like we're oblivious to where 343i is heading with him, Halo 4 has laid the foundation for where their heading with him, we all know]They already have and is changing the face of a series completely. All Spartan have had some form of personality. Insofar that you could find a distinction in different traits and attitudes from each other. But they all shared that one defining factor. That level of professional excellence achieved that made them almost non-human. That's what really made them legendary. Through their irregular circumstance. It was truly elitist in every sense of the word. They could not identify with anyone but themselves.[S-IIs] They were molded that way through the shared struggles and victories. That was why they became a family in the sense Nylund had tried to depict in all his novel. But what SPARTAN-IIs had in particular was the leading example of being Humanity's finest. Chief is a product of his environment. The humanity 343i and most people look for is one of emotional sentiments. If MC starts to 'develop' this way he no longer really is the MC we fans know him for, what the series knows him for. Not in the sense of how he was portrayed in the Novels and even the game. [They do match, the novels are just more detailed] Character Development works brilliantly in games such as Mass Effect and even in Halo, [Arbiter is a good example] but 343i really made a mistake with trying to make the MC try to fit with conventional societal norms. It's because of his 'anti-social' tendencies, his robot like nature that makes him the most efficient weapon. Yes, a tool. But it's funny because 343i first cut-scene indirectly suggest [using an anonymous character] that because chief is ultimately 'broken at his core' it makes him who he is, a perfect weapon. But Chief isn't broken at all in context to his purpose and background material, This 343i attempt with so called character development to fix him is actually breaking his character. Ironic right. He is Human, he does care about things as detailed in the novels. But it doesn't and shouldn't reflect in his emotions and dialogue, as that self-suppression of emotion is a intentional engineered weapon itself designed to distance himself from emotional fallacy. He is the pinnacle of humanity's efforts to create the perfect soldier. It goes against his training, it goes against his entire persona to become pathetic and self-conscious. He has bigger fish to fry. The Universe has always been bigger than him. There has always been exceptions, personal choices he choose to do in his own interest but always with a reason such as saving Johnson from ONI inspection, going back to Reach to find the rest of Blue team and Halsey. Killing the Huragok that repaired his Armour, Giving the Covenant back their bomb. :) etc But it never reach the level where it became outright out of character. The closest the entire S-II as a collective have ever gone in terms of emotion, is -Training and upbringing [Augmentation procedure and crippled washout] -Sam's death -Fall of Reach [Home planet, inability to protect-due to impossible odds and circumstances beyond their control, had to run, went against-everything they stood for, largest casualties - was shocking to see 'family die on such a scale first hand] -Onyx [Blue team's acceptance of S-IIIs, Kurt's death and mourning phase due to lack of action] Beyond these circumstance [Definitely missed a few] they carried on as normal. [u]As that was what they did.[/u]. Moved on. I know it sounds sad. For Chief to not fit in with everyone's typical upbeat or emotional personality. But that's the burden Spartan-II in particular carry. The only exception has been Kurt and that character development in GoO was done brilliantly because at his core, Kurt was a character designed with the ability to see more then just the battlefield. [Reference to Childhood social efforts that no other candidates had] John can never be someone like Kurt much like Linda, Fred and others but I know that's what 343i intends. IMO Kelly has the capacity to be developed, as she has always been written to be more friendly and empathetic than the other Spartans. But not to the level where it pleases people that she is a 'complete' person. None of the Spartans should ever be the all-rounder type. Like I said before Kurt was the only exception and that was partly due to having am entire novel revolving around a new main character where Nylund manage to make it fit with the S-II project and ground it with past material. [Example: The flashback passages in GoO was deliberately done to ensure continuity with behavior and attitudes of past characters and to ensure familiarity that important past characters acknowledged him to ensure canonical consistency] Anyways it doesn't matter, it's gonna go down this road. It already has. I can't stop it. Just reflect on it and be slightly disappointed. I won't be for 5 and 6 because my expectations are non-existent. But then again, as a Halo fan, I don't think I can ever not have that bitter taste that will be associated with the new games direction on a icon we all come to understand. [Edited on 12.13.2012 3:17 PM PST]
