It's all about priorities.
Master Chief has enjoyed his catnap in space. Now the Chief has crash landed on an alien world where a new, sinister plot to destroy humanity is unveiled. He has to try and save Earth and Cortana as soon as he can.
1. Gameplay
The Halo series has five console titles under its belt. The original development company has turned the reigns over to a new group, so Halo 4 is a test of things to come. Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed with this game. The campaign was short and boring, Cortana (one of the main characters) has been reduced to an overemotional naked wreck, and the multiplayer feels very different from the previous Halo titles. Halo 4 picks up where Halo 3 left off. Master Chief is floating in space, hibernating while Cortana watches for a rescue team. Instead of rescue, though, the ship is boarded by Covenant. These fanatic aliens are trying to awaken one of the Forerunners. The Covenant religious extremism leads them to do dangerous things without any regard to life in the galaxy. But that isn’t really what the game is about. The Covenant and the Didact (the previously mentioned Forerunner) are both secondary elements. The real plot of the game surrounds Cortana’s technological decay and her relationship with Master Chief. This was a tragic mistake. In Halo 4 Cortana is boring, overemotional, and completely useless. She ends up nearly getting Master Chief killed a few times. She is a liability throughout the entire game rather than an asset. The campaign felt more like a prologue than an actual story. I didn’t really feel like anything was accomplished. The conflict with the Didact reached a conclusion, but it never felt satisfying. Fortunately, the multiplayer was actually much improved from the previous Halo games. The player is able to choose their weapon loadout, which means less time is spent running around the map looking for good weapons and more time is spent fighting the other team and trying to complete the objective. However, it does mean that sniping enemies with the battle rifle or the DMR is extremely simple and common. If I were a big Halo multiplayer fan and wanted to spend endless hours playing online, this game would be great. Unfortunately, I love the Halo series for the story, and this game’s campaign falls way short of the bar that the previous titles have set. I hope that the next two games will be better, but I don’t have high hopes.
The real meat of this game is going to be in the multiplayer. There are practically unlimited hours of gameplay in the multiplayer modes. This is further extended by the potentially unlimited number of fan-made mods and game modes that can easily extend the replayability of this game. If you find a game mode that you really like, there are going to be people playing it. The campaign felt extremely short. It’s supposed to be the first in a trilogy, but it really felt more like a prologue. There was very little accomplished and the overall ease of it made the whole thing a cakewalk. I’d estimate the campaign took me around 6 hours to complete. There is very little reason to go back and try it again. The game also includes these “Spec Ops” type levels. They’re basically specific locations from the campaign that involve some other, smaller storyline. They’re supposed to be cooperative, objective-based scenarios but I didn’t really understand the purpose. You also can’t play them in split screen, which lessened my desire to play them all. Fortunately, the developers are releasing new levels with updates for free, so those who want more Halo action without the story can spend some time with these.
The most frustrating thing about Halo 4 (aside from Cortana) is the multiplayer. If you pick some of the standard match types and are not a fan of fast-paced, twitch-based shooting, you’re going to get massacred. It’s inevitable really. There are guys that have been playing Halo’s multiplayer for over 10 years now. They’re absolutely amazing at it, so guys like me who like to be a bit more tactical are going to be quickly overrun. Fortunately, Halo 4 has a built-in solution to that. There are plenty of more casual (and even some cooperative) game types. Some were included with the game, but there are plenty that are created by the fans in the Forge World. If Halo: Reach was any indication as to how creative the community can get, Halo 4 is going to have some excellent custom game modes. There were some points in the campaign that were slightly frustrating, but overall the campaign felt extremely easy. Possibly too easy. The only thing that annoyed me was the fact that if you die in co-op you lose your extra ability. So if you’ve found the auto-turret ability and you die, you’ll lose the auto turret and instead be given whatever the default set was for that level. 2. Parental Notices
Violence in the Halo series has been extremely mild compared to other shooters, but I was surprised to find that it is even milder in Halo 4. The game features constant shooting, which is why this category received the score that it did, but there is almost no blood. Out of every ten enemies that I killed, one would bleed a small amount. It was a bit ridiculous. There are two types of enemies in the campaign. The new type do not bleed at all since they are some sort of energy-based creatures. The Covenant, which have been in every Halo game ever made, will sometimes bleed when shot, but even when the player is up close it can be extremely difficult to see. And that’s assuming the blood is even there. There were dozens upon dozens of enemies that did not bleed at all when I hit them. The only time I ever saw a noticeable amount of blood in the campaign was when I was killed. There are executions that the player can perform if he successfully melees an enemy from behind. However, these were all surprisingly nonviolent as well. There was never any blood, and they were over extremely quickly. And multiplayer works in a very similar fashion. There might be some blood in certain sequences, but it is much more common to have no blood at all. There was only one exception. There was one sequence in the game where the Didact uses some sort of energy weapon to kill all of the people on board a space installation. In the scene, the player watches while the humans are disintegrated layer by layer. It’s a bit graphic but there is no blood.
Sexuality is completely absent in this game… except for Cortana. Cortana’s been moving away from “helpful AI companion” and more towards “eye candy”. That’s especially true in Halo 4. While players have to constantly see her in almost every cutscene, she’s the only sexual element in this game.
Substances are not a factor in this game.
Gambling is not a factor in this game. 3. Other Factors
Halo 4 is one of the few games to include a complex level design system. It really is an awesome feature. The Forge World editor has been seriously upgraded and allows the community to make some amazing maps and game modes for all players to try. Inevitably there will be someone who manages to make pornographic images out of objects in the world (see the Halo 3 review for an example), but these are extremely difficult to find. Players are much more likely to pick up awesome new game modes to fight against each other than they are to try levels like “XXX Str1p C1ub L0L”. This is about as benign as modding tools will ever come.
Religion is not a factor in this game.
At one point Master Chief will directly defy an order to stay on a ship that is heading back to Earth. He will be aided by a different officer. However, the commanders on Earth will agree with the decision to disobey orders and will promote the officer who helped Master Chief. This goes against what I have learned of military protocol, but then again this is a fictional universe.
The Halo community has changed drastically since Reach. I’m not sure if it’s the style of multiplayer or a lack of anticipation for the game or what but it feels really different. Normally I’m shredded within seconds of starting a match, but Halo 4 actually gave me a fighting chance. It definitely helped what I could start with a weapon of my choice, but even then it just feels different. While the level of bullying present in previous games was absent in the matches I played, there are still a number of people trolling. I saw more than one player attacking his own teammates (probably angry over a stolen kill), and there were a number of people who did not understand the purpose of the microphone (Hint: It’s not for serenading your teammates while you play), but otherwise the community was surprisingly civil.
Extreme sports is not a common factor in this game. There are certain sections both in the campaign and in the multiplayer where the player can drive a vehicle (sometimes poorly). The mongoose, modeled after an ATV, and the Warthog are both the closest examples to true extreme sports that are included in this game. In the campaign, Master Chief can pull off some pretty amazing stunts. This includes anything from holding onto a ship as it travels through hyperspace to surviving a crash landing on an alien planet. But there is one sequence when he falls onto an enemy ship, bounces off of the hull, and then uses his knife to stab in said hull and stop his descent. It’s pretty impressive.
Magic isn’t really a factor in the game, but I made one exception. In one scene, Master Chief has his genes magically changed by a hologram of a Forerunner. The science and technology used to create this change is left completely unexplained. It somehow manages to prevent Master Chief from dying when the Didact uses his death ray. Because the game never even attempts to explain how this content works and because the whole process seems beyond any technological capabilities of any race, I considered this magical.
There are no other factors involved in this game.
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