Worth playing through
And the verdict is it's pretty good. Not life changing, not really even great but it is a solid game that has a good formula for a FPS. The production values are excellent. Art style, visuals, music, sound design are great. This game feels like a lot of time, money and effort went into making it look and sound great. Character models (without helmets) look just so so and the voice acting is okay but feels a little bit lacking compared to the rest of the pieces that get put together here. Same goes for the story in the campaign mode. However the story structure is somewhat novel compared to many games for the first three quarters of the game anyway and it fits in very well with the presentation elements of the game and also flows nicely as the player progresses through different types of gameplay. If there is one element to nitpick it's the buffoonish nature of the dialogue from the Covenant. There's a majestic orchestral score, a world in peril, thousands of innocent lives at stake, the player is in a fight for his life, towering skyscrapers, amazing alien technology and it sounds like you are being pursued by rejects from Scooby Doo. The cartoonish nature of their dialogue and voice tone simply does not fit well with the tone of the game.
But considering the length of the campaign (as in there is not a whole lot but about what you would expect from a FPS these days) I guess Bungie figured the average player wouldn't be spending that much time worrying about the campaign or the voice acting vs. diving into the co-op and multiplayer. Which are solid and provide some fun. Not as good as some but better then others. Average or better multiplayer would be a fair assessment.
Bungie has also done a nice job with the achievements as the vast majority of them don't require the player to spend time grinding or hunting down dozens or even hundreds of collectibles as some games do. That isn't to say there aren't any collectible achievements as there are a couple but the achievements are integrated well into the game for the most part.
In the end Bungie has created a very pretty, polished package to join its lineup of Halo blockbusters. If there is a downside it would be that like many Hollywood blockbusters all that pretty packaging fails to hide that at the core there isn't much of a soul.