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12/29/2012 10:41:36 AM
42
Your organized thoughts on Halo 4.
I think I'm I'm the minority here, but I thoroughly enjoyed Halo 4. The campaign was incredible and multiplayer was the second-best of the series after Halo 2. It's far from perfect, though, and I do have several complaints.
Pros
- Flawless campaign story. Confused? Watch the damn Terminals.
- Superb campaign gameplay.
- Dazzling graphics and sound design.
- Fresh art direction.
- Great enemy AI. The Prometheans are challenging and irritating in the best possible way. Oh, you think Knights are "overpowered"? Of course, that's the point. They're Forerunner AI soldiers! They provide a unique challenge and I enjoyed every second of fighting them.
- Second-best multiplayer in the series after Halo 2.
- Infinity Slayer rocks. All game types play well.
- Excellent map design. Only the default Erosion set-up (Ascent) disappoints, and it's not in matchmaking anyway.
- AAs are actually balanced! I still don't like Hologram, though, and it doesn't continue to flicker if you shoot at it like it did in Reach.
- On the topic of AAs, universal sprint was a good change.
- Incredible weapons and vehicles. Incredible balance.
- The Mantis rocks. *puts on flamesuit*
- Great music. Sub-par when compared to Marty's work, of course, but that doesn't make it bad. It just means Marty is a tough act to follow.
- Chief/Cortana relationship was well-handled.
- The Forerunners still feel sufficiently alien and mysterious. I liked that they were able to maintain that despite revealing so much about them.
- NO FLOOD. (Flood mode does not count.)
Cons
- The Mammoth was boring and underused, which unfortunately made Reclaimer a fairly ho-him level. It takes forever to get from place to place and there's nothing interesting to do with it during the journey.
- Cheap design tactics to discourage map exploration in the campaign. ("Return To The Battlefield," the killer streams on Reclaimer, etc.)
- Spartan Ops is bland. The idea behind it is exciting, but in practice, it's just bland due to the constant re-use of maps and objectives and the lack of replayability. Shame. I had such high hopes for it. (I like the idea of the shorter arena-style missions as well as the use of multiplayer maps, and the re-use of existing campaign environments doesn't bother me, but the re-use of the same 8 maps over and over again got monotonous very quickly. It's still fun but I have no sense of anticipation for upcoming episodes at all.)
- Lack of campaign scoring.
- Lack of campaign theater. This has all but killed the speedrunning community.
- Overpowered boltshot. Hopefully this gets fixed in a TU. I don't mind the DMR, though.
- Lack of multiplayer playlist variety. I love Infinity Slayer, but there needs to be a "classic Grab Bag" playlist with regular Slayer and FFA objective game types.
- Total lack of Forge map integration in matchmaking. (No Ravine, Erosion, or Impact map variants of any kind.)
- Short campaign, although this has been true of every campaign since Halo 3 and it's looking unlikely that it will change in the near future.
- "Return To The Battlefield" still sucks just as much as it did in Reach and needs to die a fiery death.
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[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] mcclintonsl Positives: Less frame rate lag No bloom Good campaign Ability to copy forge items Load out Customisation BTB is slayer exclusive Better Graphics Return to Halo art direction Mantis Better/more forge items Vehicle physics improved Interesting new enemy class Many new weapons Separate playlist for each game type Less playlists More customization options Magnets Three forge maps, with unique objects Large variety of enemy classes Faster movement speeds Better maps Better menu music Easier to rank up Active lighting Good sound design Valhalla remake Negatives: Short campaign No fine edit Unbalanced personal ordnance No UNSC aircraft No covenant vehicle role between the Ghost and Wraith Flinching Unbalanced random weapon drops Not unique, ugly armour Even less game types Still lack of gamp type options Boltshot is OP Sprint cannot be disabled Sniper Rifle is difficult to use No Firefight Weapons respawn too quickly No file browser No ability to check what games people are playing exactly Load-out cameras are blurry No scarabs Campaign ending was anticlimactic Significant areas in forge located on bad angles, co-ordinates Unbalanced loadouts/specialisations Forge pieces are asymmetric Terminals not in-game No visible ranking system based around skill [/quote] This. Added negatives: - Campaign was too short and has very little replay ability value due to its unnecessary restrictions, linear animations, and QTEs. - The story was massively disappointing. Instead of acknowledging the events of past Halo games and building off of them (everything that has happened has lead to the Didact), the campaign felt lonely and un-epic as just about every old character is gone (the Arbiter?), you need to have background information to understand it, and the graphical design made you think all of the events in the other Halo games never happened. There were Spartan IIs with upgraded Mark VI armor from right after the augmentations when we know the Chief got his Mark VI from Halo 2 and upgraded it to a unique style on the Dawn. The teaser trailers seemed to stick to canon, however, and this made for a very contradicting game experience. - Multiplayer graphics are too fast paced and cartoony. - the fact that you have to choose loadouts makes for a very forced multiplayer experience. - The music is great, but was horribly placed in the Campaign and lacked both a central theme and the complete original Halo theme (again, they should have built off the old music and introduced us to new sounds through it). - The game just feels incomplete. - The art style, specifically the lighting, doesn't look as good as Halo 3. I don't know why. [Edited on 12.29.2012 7:35 AM PST]
