Its here, the Master Chief is back! Halo 4 is in stores and videogamesmen all over the world are getting the first taste of 343 Industries’ first attempt at a Halo universe. With 5 Halo games under their belt in less than 10 years, Bungie has left the franchise in very capable hands. Rather than giving the series to an established team, Microsoft built 343 from scratch and for the most part their efforts are more than solid. In fact, 343 does some things in Halo 4 that are more impressive than anything Bungie ever did.
I firmly believe that in this day and age multiplayer shooters like Halo, Call of Duty or Battlefield are completely inaccessible to most of the people who pick them up. Even experienced players like myself have no success in multiplayer, so this review speaks directly to the single player campaign only.
Halo stories have always held a self-important and almost silly amount of grandeur to them. The script is intentionally vague, cutscenes linger to evoke emotion and the gravity of each situation carries an almost soap opera-esq quality. The story has always been hard to follow, but the delivery of that story was so righteous that it didn’t matter if you understood it or not. Even if you don’t take the Halo story that seriously, that Halo story will step in and take it self seriously for you. Halo 4 is no different.
The glamour shots of Master Chef and the begging-to-be-iconic cinematics are in line with with what Bungie has been doing all along. The difference here is that Halo 4 is gorgeous! Both the in-engine cutscenes and the prerendered cinematics are some of the most beautiful video game scenes I’ve ever experienced. The background vistas rival those in God of War 3, and I literally had to study to the opening scene for about 2 minutes before I realized it wasn’t live action. 343 clearly knows how to make things look pretty. That carries over into the game itself as well.
If I were to describe the world and setting of Halo 4 in one word it would be “atmosphere”, then I would say “Screw you, I needs more words!” Taking lessons from games like Bioshock and Dead Space, 343 has captured more than just the aesthetic of previous games, but created an atmosphere to go with it. Its more than just the look or the lighting or the particle effects. Its a combination of all of those things, plus character and life and a number of intangible factors.
If the Halo universe is a classic car that you’ve never touched or seen in person, Halo 4 is you getting to sit in that car and realizing it smells exactly as you had imagined it. Clearly this is the most significant thing 343 brings to the game, a thick beautiful layer of gloss and aura. Had they only done that, it probably would have been enough, but 343 wasn’t content just making it pretty.
As the first chapter in the Reclaimer Trilogy, Halo 4 establishes alot of new ideas while still keeping the already somewhat convoluted back story in place. Probably the most significant change is the introduction of the Prometheans, an all new set of enemies with their own weapons set. Gameplay-wise the Prometheans bring quality new and interesting action to the game. While initially intriguing, once you realize there’s only about 3-4 different Prometheans their novelty wears off.
As in previous Halo games, the Convenant are still a problem, so those 3-4 different enemy types are also thrown into the mix. With the absence of both the Brutes and the Flood, even with the new enemies, the roster of things to shoot seems extremely limited. With the addition of Mech suits and a decent Star Fox like space jet sequence towards the end, the lack of Promethean vehicles is not too noticeable.
Whether this is good or bad news, Halo 4 plays like a Halo game. The physics are right, the shield re-gen times and a sounds are right. Even the noises the grunts make are perfect. I suppose the original games are popular for a reason, but everyone knows that Halo’s bread and butter is multiplayer. 343 didn’t have too much wiggle room when it comes to control or weapon design. The only area where Halo 4 could have spread its wings and defined itself as a new and truly interesting Sci-Fi shooter was the single player campaign.
Most players will play through the campaign once or twice to get the story and achievements out of the way and then spend hundreds of hours shooting people in multiplayer. Meaning, that if the single player campaign was fundamentally changed, those players might be disappointed but would most likely still stick around for the multiplayer. Risks were taken by 343 in Halo 4 but they weren’t big enough risks to push the game into a place Halo hasn’t been before.
Things like Master Chief being able to run and dual wielding being a thing of the past, are logical steps in the right direction, but the Halo formula needs to be retired. Every mission in Halo 4 contains nearly the same explanatory tropes as previous games. Run to this spot on the map, turn off this conduit, shoot some baddies, locate conduit number two, shut it down too and the big destructive “insert sci-fi explodey thing here” will not fire. Now, kill all the enemies in the area while Cortana decrypts the locking mechanism on the enemy’s Ultra gun cannon. It doesn’t matter how long you give her, Cortana will not finish that decryption until the last Elite is dead. The missions feel like someone did a Find/Replace on the nouns in the Halo 3 script and are trying to pass it off as new.
I wanted so badly for Halo 4 to be a rebirth of the Halo franchise. I wanted something interesting that changed the series in meaningful ways. Maybe, branching storylines (or hell a storyline that’s easy to follow), or maybe a choice system, a karmic system ala Mass Effect, contextually relevant co-op, a deep explanation of the Master Chief character and why Cortana’s so important, boss battles, actual character development, ANYTHING would have been be welcome! Please give me something to do that isn’t walk to waypoint and press X!
Maybe I’m the problem, maybe I expected too much. Maybe the Xbox 360 is out of innovative ideas, maybe Microsoft told 343 to not change too much, who knows. What I do know is that law of diminishing returns is quickly catching up to Halo. Playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 directly after this has in a way opened my eyes, to alot of the problems in Halo 4. BlOps 2’s branching story line is truly innovative in its delivery and while this is not a review of BlOps 2 I can say that I am truly intrigued to play through the Campaign twice. That probably will not happen with Halo 4.
If you like Halo as is, you will love Halo 4 (assuming you’re not a douche who whines over small things like the aforementioned run button). If you want a solid shooter that is fun and at times challenging to complete, Halo 4 is for you. However, if you have already grown tired of deactivating giant lasers and watching a green spartan float and/or jump off of stuff in space you might want to skip Halo 4.
Oh, and where the hell is Firefight! Come on man!
Verdict: Don’t get me wrong, the game’s not bad, in fact it could be the best Halo to date, but its still Halo and for many that baggage will be enough to turn them off.
