Gaming Halo 4 review

This review is a bit "by the numbers" IMHO.
What were the negative points to justify the 80% again?

I know that Halo4 is not gonna score high on a PC centric site for a long list of understandable reasons. But some comparison and contrast would still be nice.

Isn't this true of all francises; FIFA, CoD etc?
Similarly most people that dislike Halo, (aside from reasons of console, controls, graphics) do so because they dislike the genre of arcadey sci-fi shooters. So there's nothing a developer can do about that IMO.

 

Ain't that the truth. I find it slightly odd that Microsoft don't see fit to release the Halo series for PC. The usual excuses - there's no market for it, it'll cost too much to port - don't seem to apply, because as with any AAA-rated title there are always PC buyers, and since the Xbox is Microsoft's own machine I can't see why it should be particularly hard to port. The unusual excuses - the PC version would graphically shame the Xbox, the keyboard/mouse combination would shame the controller, limiting to Xbox forces people to buy Xboxes - are all I can come up with...

 

To be honest, in recent years there have been more than enough pc games where keyboard and mouse where officially supported, but the controls where still influenced by the console versions which made controls rubbish.

DX HR? forced 3rd person view at times which ruins aiming
Fear 3? hyper sluggish response to input
All Capcom Pc shooters? horrible controls
Skyrim? curse that useless when used with a mouse menu.
Assassins Creed? Oh the horror of playing that with KB + Mouse.
Not even Minecraft managed to get it right and that was originally PC only, I mean seriously, what jerk of a developer limits what keys you can assign in the menu to what action?

And so on...

Lets face it, the days of the original Unreal Tournament when controls worked just fine with KB + Mouse are long over.

 

Maybe it's the complete lack of innovation? The same reason the CoD series has scored steadily less every review on the site. Yes, it's Halo and yes it all ''works'' but there's no real attempt to break the mold and inject something new into it. Hence the score. I would assume!

 

Surely this is a 10/10, Best Game Evah?

 

All hail the return of the burst mode DMR!

 

*falls to floor*

 

You realise of course that I'm talking about the ever epic Battle Rifle I love that gun!

 

I was laughing at the Halo 4 MLG matches. Those poor kids couldn't turn around fast enough to kill their attackers because they were using controllers. The matches consisted of each team standing on one side of the map waiting to see someone and pick off a BR headshot.

No quake or CS anywhere, just some joke of a competitive game.

 

Friend picked up halo 4 and been playing it today and I'm not impressed. Reach was considerably better.

 

I'm going to have to insist that you elaborate on that. 'Reach was considerably better' how? Campaign? Multiplayer? Controls? Graphics? Elaborate and discuss!

 

Halo 4's campaign has been the most compelling campaigns in the series. I was on the edge of my butt the whole time. I'm still trying to grasp what I just played through. I was also completely blown away with the level of detail put into the characters. Their facial features looked so life like, amazing on 6 year old technology. I think this is what made it really compelling for me, it felt more like a movie than a video game. The graphics are just so well down, I'm speechless.

This is the first time I want to play the next game NOW, because I feel like I need to know what happens with the storyline. (not including Halo 2, that was the worse cliffhanger ever.)

 

I've played halo 1-3 plus ODST and while I never did end up getting reach a friend of mine let my plow through the single player. My same friend brought over halo 4 and honestly, the single player isn't that great, the new guns are nice for sure and the online was fairly solid although we did get some lag in big team battle while playing split-screen which was a bit off-putting. Overall though, I don't think the single player alone is worth the price of the game, it seems short, we've only played 2 sessions and were about done with it. It feels like a whole lotta yack yack yack and the same old generic shooting sections where you choose in which order you wanna take out the enemy. Not saying it wont give you that great halo feel but it does nothing else new to really get me excited after all these games. Anyone who's read the books or has more than just a passing interest in halo, the story is pretty predictable and I feel like it's so sad that it's taken us getting to halo 4 just to start with the more emotional connection between cortana and the main character.

 

I also have a bit of a different viewpoint than an above poster, I really liked halo 2 even with it's cliffhanger ending. It really changed things up to see half the game from the arbiters viewpoint and having the MC sorta in a weird Limbo at the end meant anything could happen and that got me excited! So far halo 4 hasn't got me excited by anything in the single player. One of the best new features to the online world is that new Domination mode where you capture bases and hold them while they level up, give you new weapon spawns, gain turrets (which are fooled by holograms) and spawn ghosts and such. It doesn't feel like a vast open multiplayer map like a game such as BF3 would offer but it does give a really nice change of pace to the basic modes which still make up the larger picture of the online world for halo 4.

 

Ah sorry,

Im coming from not playing the first and only playing limited amounts of the campaign of halo 2 and 3 so Reach is the only one I'm really going by.

The campaign: Story wise its fine, a bit slow for my taste and probably due to not playing earlier games in the series I really feel less connection to Master chief than I did noble 6 (or noble 6 biographer if playing with a friend) difficulty felt a bit too easy too despite a few sections of wtf moments where you walk out a door and get ambushed by 3 banchees or such but over all reach felt more difficult. A lot of the objectives are "run here, push button, push next button, jump". Graphically I felt reach looked better too.

Mutiplayer: So far the usual death match, CTM etc all present and correct. I haven't been able to find "multiple wave last stand survival thingie" (can't remember the name) however which I really enjoy especially with a friend.

Music: Not impressed quite simply.

I also donno what it is but I've had a few clipping issues where I randomly get stuck or die even tho I haven't crashed or touched anything. Could be just my controller pissing up tho.

I'll see how I feel when I finish playing everything and give it a bit more time

 

See the "Halo 4" thread in the gaming section for my take on the multiplayer, I haven't played the campaign past the second mission, so am hesitant to comment on that so far. At the moment, I don't like the multiplayer enough to want to play it, so back to Reach I go for now.

 

I was hesitant at first, about the multiplayer. After a couple of games I reevaluated how I normally play Halo. In 4, because everyone can now spawn with a precision weapon, you can't just run and gun and get away with it. I now play smarter, and as a result I'm playing as well as I did in the previous Halo games. It's more difficult to be a juggernaut in this game, (everyone has a DMR or BR) but when you get on a spree it's just like old times.

I do have one gripe however. I've been noticing a lot more lag in Halo 4. I believe it's isolated to the game itself, and not my connection or my friends' connections. Case in point, playing co-op with my friend, there's several spots where the game froze up completely. Out of those times, we had to completely restart where we left off because one of us would get kicked from the game. This happened 3 times in a few hours we played together. Really frustrating, and never has happened before with Halo 3 or Reach. Even with 4 of us playing in the prior Halo games, we never had issues. But with just 2 of us playing co-op, bad laaaaaag.

It's not just co-op play, it's even more frustrating in multiplayer, because of the competitive nature. I played a couple of games where they were completely broken. Unplayable, and we got slaughtered. While one person had 800 points to themselves, with no flag scores or carries. I don't know if we were getting "lag switched" or what, but he had over 30 kills and single digit deaths. While I, (I consider myself a better than average player) went 14 - 28. Absolutely my worst Halo game ever. It started out with my suspicion that someone was using a rapid fire controller, because he was firing at rates a lot faster than you could pull the trigger. Than it just progressively worse from there on out.

I've had two games last night that were horrendous, and the game never even bothered to switch host. Extremely frustrating experience, and it was something I feared would happen with the switch to a new studio. They did a brilliant job with the game, but now there's new glitches (and lag) we have to deal with.

FYI, one huge glitch I watched a video about is the grenade glitch. Basically it allows you to throw a grenade as far as you could in Halo 2. Across the map. You hit sprint while tossing the grenade and it will go miles across the map, in a pretty straight line to boot. Fanboys are freaking out and rejoicing. I for one, wish this gets patched ASAP.

A glitch is something that should be fixed, not exploited. I've also heard rumors of double shooting being back?

 

Every multiplayer game of 4 I've played so far has been my worst game of Halo ever. I can't move on a map without losing my shield and dying. It's nothing like Reach. Being good at reach means damn all when you go to play Halo 4 - you start at the bottom rung of the ladder again, and have to forget everything you ever thought you knew about how to play Halo well. As far as I'm concerned, nothing is the same. It's literally like playing CoD4 with a Halo mod on it. I'm serious about going back to Reach, at least I could enjoy it - there is no fun to be had from being constantly mowed down by skilless kids with a SAW.

Fixed.

That has happened to me maybe 5 times in the past week, whereas I am capable of making as many as 10 sprees per game in Reach, because Reach is Halo, and I know how to play Halo.

I didn't want a game that forced me to re-evaluate how I've played my favourite game for the past 11 years - I wanted a game that took the Reach multiplayer experience and refined it, removing some of the issues that were present in Reach and had 343's own unique stamp on it. Instead, I got a game that plays nothing like Halo. Instant respawns? Killcams? Promethean Vision (the new Armor lock)? Come on, get serious. They've given us Call of Duty: The Halo Edition. I'm done with it, seriously. The Reach disc is back in my console and if tonight's Halo 4 matchmaking games are anything to go by, won't be coming back out for a long time.

You can add me on XBL by the way, always nice to have another avid Halo player on my friends list, even though I don't see myself playing 4 much until the first update: My gamer tag is unicorn7337.

 

Finally complete campaign on Legendary and the final bit is a QTE.......nuff said