The reason people disliked halo 4 was not the campaign, it was the multiplayer. 343 took what was extremely good, stripped it down and completely changed it to be unlike the halo that fans came to love. Halo is known for both it's excellent campaign story, and its highly customizable and entertaining arena-style multiplayer. If either one is not up to par, the game fails. And the multiplayer in halo 4 was a disgrace. The majority of gametypes from previous halo's were removed. Some gametypes, such as ctf and griffball, received unnecessary changes that, while not necessarily bad by themselves, were forced upon players with no way to play the classic ways. And all gametypes had nearly all of their customization removed, which prevented players from making many, many custom games that would have been possible in the previous games. To make it even worse, there's halo 4's downgrade of forge. Forge was made far less user friendly than in reach, and even the new features such as magnets did not work as good as intended, and the removal of features such as zooming in and nudging objects made it a bit more of a nuisance to forge than what we were used to. And then there is matchmaking. For starters, the majority of playlists that players expected were absent, leaving about 5 or 6 game modes to choose from (some of which were the new game modes that weren't that great). Instead of playing in the classic arena style, players now had classes, custom abilities, perks, etc that just don't belong in halo. It made the online experience just feel like it wasn't up to par with the other games. There are more factors that I could go into. Point being, the multiplayer was nowhere close to what fans of the franchise wanted. Its ok to innovate, and its ok to incorporate elements of modern games, but you don't completely change the core game. Campaign is the short term, and no matter how good it is it won't keep the game alive for years. Multiplayer is the long term, and it did not deliver in the slightest with halo 4.

"Halo 4" had a nice campaign with gorgeous cut scenes. The main enemies were bullet sponges, and not as fun as the Covenant. (Remember when the Grunts would run away from you?) The most hate comes from the on-line multiplayer. 343 made the multiplayer more like "Call of Duty" and gone were the longer encounters and map control that made Halo so good. (Sound familiar?) The co-op missions were also super laggy and not as fun as advertised. The multi-player population fell precipitously.

One word [spoiler]Multiplayer[/spoiler] Your argument is invalid

Halo 4, standalone is a decent game. However, it's the black sheep of the franchise. It doesn't feel like a halo game.