ok, I'm going to put the tl;dr at the beginning: Halo Reach is more fun if you're good at Halo. Halo 4 is more fun if you are bad at/new to Halo. What's more, Bungie and 343i know this and they meant this to be the case. Bungie wanted a Swan song to veteran fans, 343i wanted to expand the fanbase. So on with the evidence: [b]multiplayer[/b] First I will address guns and kill times. In Halo Reach all the core guns (AR, pistol, DMR and NR) have significant bloom which you need to adapt to at different ranges. The AR and pistol also have small clips compared to the number of bullets needed for a kill. The weapons also kill relatively slowly meaning that you need to focus and aim for a longer period of time for each kill. These problems make these guns inherently difficult to use. (with the excpetion of the AR being relatively easy to use in CQC). Halo 4's spawn weapons (with the exception of the pistol) are much easier to use. None of them have significant bloom (burst firing with the automatic weapons is ineffective so they might as well not have bloom) and all have very large clips. One of them, the blotshot, also only requires only one shot to kill, which is very easy to land. This greatly simplifies CQC combat. Then we get to the power weapons. In Halo reach these were rarely instakill, but instead required very good aiming (concussion rifle and focus rifle) or complex tactics (plasma launcher). In Halo 4 nearly all the power weapons (and the boltshot) are instakill. In fact over half the weapons in the game kill with one shot! There are easier versions of previous power weapons as well. -binary rifle is like a sniper were you only need to body shot -incineration cannon is like a rocket launcher that you don't have to hit as close with -scattershot is like a shotgun that you can quickly fire again with in case you miss. Furthermore instead of having to control parts of the map to gain powerweapons (like in Reach and all previous Halo Games), powerweapons are awarded passively as ordnance, for just playing the game. Ok, that's all I have space for on guns so I'm going to move onto armour abilities. Reach had armour lock which completely screwed up noob games, because it was easy to use, but difficult to counter. At a proper level an armourlocker who just stayed in armourlock would just look silly because his team would be dead and his opponents would be surrounding him ready to kill him. Halo 4 has no such armour abilities which ruin noob games, but has a few which cause serious problems in competitive play. For example promethean vision, removes any notion of stealth. Trying to sneak up on that guy while crouching? Well he can see you through the wall. Halo 4 also got rid of stealth in other ways such as giving the flag carrier a marker. Now going an unexpected, stealthy route with the flag is pointless and you should always just take it the fastest route. However it is now easier for noobs to locate their missing flag. [b]Campaign[/b] In Halo Reach you needed to approach each situation strategically and make sure you had weapons which could kill the specific enemies you were fighting. There was no point in trying to outshoot and ultra with an assault rifle. You also needed to watch your radar as enemies such as skirmishers would flank you. tbh in Halo 4 I hardly died on my first run through of the game, which was on legendary. In fact I die more on a regular legendary run through of CE which I've played countless times before. Halo 4 was really, really easy. Unlike Reach the AI was no aggresive, it would not follow you round corners when you retreated, but would rather sit back and wait for you to have another go. Occasionally a knight might teletport to you, miss a melee and then teleport away again, but that's about as aggressive as they got. It is also possible to kill anything with any weapon. I'd happily solo a knight battlewagon (the glowy ones with incineration cannons) with a magnum. Now Halo 4's story was good and it's enocunter were interesting and smooth, but they were nevertheless a lot more noob friendly and less exciting than Reach's. [b]Graphics[/b] Ok you're asking me "how can graphics be noob friendly" and I'm giving you an answer. Halo 4 sacrifices, graphical detail and number of in game objects to make everything really, really shiny. This makes new players go "wow it's shiny the graphics are sooooo good" and has a similar affect on reviewers, but it was definitely not worth very short weapon despawn times to have the broken pieces of phantomb look like they've been polished by a really keen grunt. The lack of graphical detail compared to Reach makes people who go slowly and admire the scenery of the campaign levels suffer in favour of those who just notice the graphics in the background. The short weapon despawn times are horrible for competitive play. I have killed someone with a powerweapon, only to have it despawn before I reach their corpse! [b]forge/custom games[/b] Forge has been given a graphical update to cater to those who were more interested in playing maps with graphical variety rather than maps with good design (the "why are all the maps made on forgeworld!" people). Gametypes have also been streamlined so that noobs are not confused and turned away by playing complicated gametypes in matchmaking. However this greatly decreases the options available to those designing custom games. Very few of the great party games I played in Reach can be remade in Halo 4, because they relies on stockpile, assault, headhunter, invasion or actionsack gametypes. [b]That's it I think, if you want a conclusion you can reread the tl;dr at the beginning.[/b]