Halo 4 Review

Xbox 360 game review

General Game


Halo 4 has continued the epic story line that the series has brought everyone to grow fond of. Although this game being taken over by another company they did a nice job and picking up exactly where bungie left off. In this story Master Chief ends up on a new planet that has yet to be seen by the player introducing a new race the Prometheans. This race is a machine like bug type that brings a whole new set of weapons to the game that have some pretty good looking effects for them. To not give any spoilers I will say the campaign mode plays out much like that of the previous Halos where you fall into the shoes of the main story line character Master Chief and have that feeling of epic over powered-ness. I found a lot of the time you can actually play through the missions in vehicles, with the newly added mech suit type vehicle awaiting your slaughter in the later half of the game.

The campaign continues the story, and adds some twists that leaves everyone in awe, but the game itself really doesn't offer anything that we haven't already seen in another halo. There are some fun little trinkets that are given to you for a couple missions that stand out. Such as the ability to finally fly a pelican. Over all though it sort of feels like a recycled game that payed a little to much time trying to make a story rather then given players a new game.

Combat

Like all the previous halo games, this one plays just like any of the others. Players anxiously hoping that duel wielding would return were slightly let down but then given a whole new set of amazing Promethean weapons to quickly turn their interest into disintegrating covenants with laser cannons. We have seen the return of the armor abilities that were introduced in halo reach which play a nice part in the campaign when jumping around with jet packs to get on top of a 50ft vehicle.

As for vehicle combat, it really feels like they try to persuade you to using a tank or mech most of the time. Resulting with warthogs, wraiths, and ghosts feel disappointingly weak in comparison. Banshees being a wreck in the campaign leaving the few opportunities you have to obtain one giving you no space to fly or to many things to shoot you down.

Multiplayer

Even though this game was being taken over by a new company it still feels much like halo reaches online, you're awarded medals and commendations, exp to level, and credits to unlock armor upgrades that pose nothing more then an aesthetic customization for your character. Although meaningless they did a great job at making sure you had tons of variety when customizing the way your spartan looks. You can now also spend credits to unlock different weapons, equipment,  armor abilities, and the newly added perk system. Its disappointing to see customization with perks added to this game that resembles a lot of what call of duty does, but it has no great impact on your play style.  A lot of weapons and items seem to be a standard pick by all, due to the amount of power they do which is disappointing to anyone who likes to use almost anything besides the DMR.

Spartan Ops

The new feature added to Halo 4 is a mode called spartan ops, which is essentially a challenge mode where players can participating in an objective based mission which follows an engaging story line. Playing this mode offers the players something to do once they have completed the story line, and it rewards them with exp and such to further progress their online profile. The spartan ops story is said to be released monthly and will offer the player "episodes" to play through for an ongoing story mode at the gamers expense. These will be paid DLC after the first season of episodes.

Final Analysis
Game Score: 7

If you are a die hard Halo fan then you're likely to want to get this game to follow the story of Master Chief and play through the spec ops mode as new content is released. If Halo is something that you can live with out, and the multiplayer doesn't look that appealing to you. I would recommend this game just be one you rent or borrow as I found the five hour campaign to have next to no replay value, and the online to get very, boring very quickly.

of course if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to comment and I will try to answer them to the best of my ability.