Halo 4 Review

Master Chief, A.K.A. John 117, was the hero of the Covenant Wars and responsible for the destruction of the Flood. Halo 3 left him floating through space while fans busied themselves with Halo 3: ODST, Halo Wars, Halo: Reach, and the anniversary of Combat Evolved. Now, five years after Halo 3, 343 studios takes over the Chief’s story in Halo 4.

The game begins four years after the events of Halo 3. The Chief awakens from cryosleep as his AI, Cortana, wakes him up frantically, saying that there are intruders on board their ship. Chief takes almost no time to prepare and goes to investigate the disturbance. Cortana and Chief are both puzzled by the appearance of Covenant Grunts, Elites, and Jackals. Chief fights through the ruins of the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn to repel the Covenant forces. They discover that the ship is orbiting the forerunner shield world known as Requiem. Both the Forward and the attacking covenant fleet are pulled out of the sky by Requiem’s gravity. Whilst on the planet, Cortana intercepts a signal from the Infinity, another UNSC ship approaching Requiem. Now racing to prevent Infinity from suffering the same fate as Forward and the Coveys, Chief discovers a more personal problem: Cortana is beginning to malfunction, and is becoming increasingly insane. Soon, Chief encounters the Prometheans, a new enemy race that is primarily AI and native to Requiem. This engrossing story follows Chief and Infinity’s struggle with the Prometheans and Covenant, all the while trying to get back to Earth, where Cortana’s creator, Halsey, is currently located. The story is interesting, action packed, and pretty sad. Master Chief seems like an actual human for the first time, showing real emotion (as much as someone can through a helmet). The antagonist, Didact, was a better antagonist than Truth, Gravemind, and Guilty Spark.

The gameplay was great, but there wasn’t much change from previous installments. Sprint is now a standard ability to be used along side your armor effect. The sound effects were much better than the other games, such as firing a gun actually sounding like a real gun. The graphics were the best I’ve ever seen. During one scene between Halsey and an unnamed interrogator, I actually believed that the characters were actors, and had to look closely to realize that it was animated.

Of course, the main selling point of Halo has always been the multi-player. The leveling, loadouts, and lack of preset weapons in maps warned of a possible Call of Duty-like experience. So far, this is not true. I did not get a COD feeling at all from the competitive multiplayer experience. In fact, the competitive has mostly improved from Reach’s. Instead of whichever jerk spawning closest to the rocket winning, now it’s whoever has better actual tactics. There are plenty of new, interesting maps to explore. Flood, however, is lacking. As promising as the idea of playing as a Flood for infection mode is, this game ruined my favorite game mode. Playing as an infected was difficult before, their only saving graces being the one hit kills and the evade ability. Now, the evade is replaced with thrusters, which isn’t nearly as good. It emits a light that the Spartans can see from across the map, and has one use before stopping to have to recharge. With evade gone and no worthy replacements, being an infected has become even more difficult.

The Spartan Ops mode has replaced Firefight. Though this game type will be missed, the Spartan Ops seem to be killing wave after wave of Covenant with purpose, which cannot be said for Firefight. Spartan Ops are entertaining both alone and with friends, and it almost seems like an extension of the campaign to be visited and revisited.

Overall, this game has an incredible story, great multiplayer, good gameplay, good graphics, and a new game mode that promises to entertain long after the end of the campaign. The only issues with the game are the downgrade from Infected to Flood and the slow servers experienced by some players opening week. I believe that this is an effective changing of hands from Bungie to 343, as well as a great sequel to one of my favorite games. I look forward to what else 343 has for Halo and its fans in the future.

9.5/10