Halo + Generic shooter = Watered down Halo...
Halo has always been unique in its execution. It's been a solid shooter wrapped in an ominous hinting of its mythology. From the haunting trademark chant to the mysterious artifacts left behind by a lost civilization, these games have always been dark, epic in scale, hauntingly vague and otherworldly. No matter how you spin it, you can never really see the universe as our own, simply in the future; it has always stood as a universe all its own...and then Halo 4 happened.
Gone is the haunting chant, the eerie sense of god-like beings that came before you. Now the universe has a familiar feel, like it's something that could pop into existence any day. It has lost its wonder. The guns are no longer alien; the human weaponry remains as it was, a quirky twist of modern technology; the Covenant weaponry retains a strange ancient elegance, but the new weapons seem out of place; the Forerunner weaponry seems to be a generic take on future human weaponry...and it glows orange. A similar thing has happened to the Covenant sadly (no, they don't glow orange) . The odd zealot creatures have been reduced to mindless monsters for you to fight. In fact, WHY they are fighting you isn't even detailed in the game. It's as if the developers failed to think of enough enemies and threw in the Covenant for filler.
It was to be expected that this game's campaign would fall short. With a strange direction taken to focus on the hollow character of Masterchief, the developers were left with no where to go. The more Masterchief talked, the more desensitized I became to his voice. Again, the game loses its ominous feel. There were a few times throughout the campaign where I wanted Masterchief to just shut up. That NEVER happened during other Halo games. Before, Masterchief would speak and the room would fall silent, even to the simplest of sentences like, "Wake me when you need me." (God, that was a badass moment) In this game he just wouldn't shut his trap. I understand the deal of,"Oh, he's talking because he's alone with Cortana and that's the only time he talks." But even then, he would never comment on EVERY update Cortana spits out to him in the heat of battle. Speaking of battle...
The fights have lost their epic sense of scale. In previous games, there would be down-time to act as a foil to large scale battles. It added to that OMINOUS feel Halo possessed. Now, to take a page from modern triple A titles, 343 flatlines the experience by trying to ALWAYS have ACTION. Like with any good book, the story has a rising action, a climax, a falling action and a resolution; Like with any good painting, the work has space to emphasize form and bring focus to subject matter; LIKE WITH ANY GOOD GAME, THE ADRENALINE BUILDS UP AND RECEDES. This is done to hook the consumer and immerse them. In no work is it in someone's best interest to make the experience constant. However, this is what 343 did, they made Halo 2-dimensional.
...Ok, that's a wall of text.
Simply put, the campaign was unimaginative and boring. 343 took all the wrong steps in creating the story and what was left was a watered down version of Halo.
Multiplayer: (?/5)
I want to play a little more until I am bored of it. Right now it's still entertaining. That's a good sign...
(?/10) Call it a 60% until I get a solid opinion on multiplayer...