First let me get Halo 3 out of the way: It's kind of hard to accurately judge Halo 3 right after palying the Halo 2 ANNIVERSARY edition because of how much more polished it is than the original Halo 3. Not to mention how much better it looks, how amazing the cinematics were, etc. - Let me just say that I was glad that the assault rifle was back in Halo. It starts off weird. Why was Chief on the ground and almost dead in the beginning? What happened? Why was it started off like this? This was not the best way to start the game. I felt like I missed a cutscene from Halo 2. This one also felt shorter. I finished this one in about a day and another couple of hours into the next. It honestly felt kind of rushed. In the end I rank Halo 3 an 8/10. Chief went back to not talking as much as I wanted him to but the feels from Miranda Keyes and Sergeant Johnson were sad and greatly impacted...well....everything. the AI was better than Halo 2 and CE (even though those -blam!-ing marines drove over me 2 or 3 times) Now onto the "infamous" Halo 4: Honestly I was expecting the game to be shit because no one ever said anything good about this game. I know I should make my own opinion, which I have you'll definitely see, but normally when EVERYONE says it's bad, it's usually bad. Thing is, I was caught off guard by this. First thing I noticed was Chief...talking! He was talking like an actual human being! It made me really happy to finally get the dialogue I expected from this franchise! That was an immediate improvement from the original trilogy. As a whole, this game has a -blam!- ton of dialogue compared to the others. A lot more effort went into this campaign I can tell The cinematics were the best the franchise has seen along with Halo 2 anniversary. They were very well done. I was really impressed. These were the kinds of cutscenes I expected Halo to have for a while The art design and graphics were further improved of course and it looks STUNNING. Hard to believe it came out 4 years ago. I actually took a few screenshot of beautiful areas The Prometheans are an interesting enemy. It's a different approach than the Flood in the original trilogy. The Flood were more of a plague that just got exponentially worse and turned people into almost zombie like creatures. The Prometheans aren't just evil like the Flood. It's [i]organized[/i] evil. They were awakened and now are ready to seek vengeance. This was a cool scenario and I liked it. When the Didact said "The Forerunners have returned" that was my big "oh shit!" moment and it just kinda blew my mind that the Forerunners were actually here in this barbaric form all because of their war with the Flood. It was so cool! The plot was overall more personal than the others. This game really made you get the feels over Cortana's struggle trying to keep herself together long enough to defeat the Didact. It reminded me of Metal Gear Solid 4 when Old Snake was pushing his body to the limit and use every ounce of his will and being to stop Ocelot from mankind's subjugation to his rule. Cortana was using every ounce of her will to not break so that she could help the Chief defeat the Didact before millions of lives were lost. Halo 4 gives the feels a few times, no doubt. There characters were good. There certainly wasn't another Sergeant Johnson her but it was definitely passable. I liked Lasky, he was a cool guy. Del Rio was a prick and boy did they do a good job of showing him off as a douche. You were definitely not supposed to like him. I liked the mission with the Mammoth a lot. Being inside a multi-story tank with all these weapons at your disposal to take on your enemies was awesome. The AI was the best I've seen from the series thus far. I had no marines driving around like mad men and killing me in the process and they were not shooting walls either. I'm glad that 343 did what Bungie could not and that was programming AI. So glad I don't have to watch my back for my own soldiers There was sprinting! Dear -blam!-ing sweet jesus there must be a god after all! I was looking forward to Halo 4 specifically because of sprinting! And I don't give a shit what anyone says. Sprinting was implemented well into Halo and it worked well. I don't wanna hear any "sprinting is generic" bullshit. Sprinting is logical. If you're being shot at and you're trying to get to cover you're not gonna walk, you're gonna try to get there as fast as possible. This adds the element of hustle that Halo should've had since the beginning the Didact was an interesting villain and the terminals in the game added more depth to the Forerunner-Flood war and the Didact himself. Seeing what happened to this creature of hatred in it's past and The Promethean weapons were a great new sight. The animations on those things when you picked them up was fun to look at. watching all this outlandish technology added a level of mystery to these Prometheans and it was awesome as well Now onto the things I didn't like: I can see what some people didn't like about this one. They took away dual wielding! What the hell?! I was disappointed in that immensely! I got used to it but I was still unhappy for the most part of my play through Certain parts of the game were pretty generic and dragged out. Example: The mission where you fly to the Didact's ship ball thing and you go in one tower and go through a bunch of Prometheans to activate a switch or 2 then do the same to the other tower only to find out you have to do it to ANOTHER tower and it's just like "can I please just continue????" This happens through 2 or 3 more points in the game. This Halo was more about Chief and Cortana. No marines, no UNSC nobody. The UNSC does show up with Lasky and Del Rio and there is a great portion of the game dedicated to fighting alongside the marines just like the originals which was appreciated and all but as a whole the game felt very shallow in that aspect. No all out warfare, just Chief stopping the war before it starts. It's cool and interesting but underwhelming at the same time The soundtrack wasn't as good as Halo CE's or Halo 2's. This may be unfair to judge because unlike the first 2 Halo's where the soundtracks were remasters and were made louder, the others are more quiet and not as memorable because of it. The gunfire and explosions drowned out most of it for me but I did catch a good amount of it and it's still good. Easily better than just about any other shooter's soundtrack. It's style is just different. Instead of a loud and booming dramatic sound like in Halo 2, they went for a little more softer and more mysterious sound for the most part and that make sense! It matches the setting and tone. Either way it's probably a 50/50 shot depending on how you look at it It seems we can't have a Halo where we aren't shooting Covenant right? I'm probably alone here but I just can't help but feel like we shouldn't be fighting the Covenant anymore. What happened to that truce in Halo 3? That wasn't really explained but at the same time it did make sense in the story. I mean the Covenant worshipped the Forerunners right? It would make sense that they would swear allegiance to them once since they revere them so much. This factor is 50/50. It depends how you look at it really. I even played some of it's multiplayer and it worked well too. My only issue is the small maps. I felt that since sprinting was added it made the maps feel smaller. More like Call of Duty. I'm glad Halo 5 made maps much larger. Halo 4 multiplayer was still good though and I enjoyed it too. There's more but this is just off the top of my head. I'll edit more in once I remember it All in all I'd give this game a 9/10. The multiplayer boosts it up just enough to an 9/10 for me despite the campaigns minimal flaws (except that dual wielding. That's still disappointing). The originals had flaws too let's not forget that. Those who saw my Halo 2 review know my issues with it. What made people not like this when it came out? Comment why