The most polished, narrative driven shooter is back! Master Chief returns for another trilogy and 343 nails it.
As the game starts we start years later where we left off. Cortana has had too much time to think and she's showing signs of rampancy, something every AI suffers after 7 years in service. This is the backbone of the story as 343 tries to tell a more personable Chief story, and really explore Chief's human side. The story is top notch throughout.
343 does something that hasn't been done since the franchise started, and that's introduce a whole new enemy class. The Prometheans are the main foe of the game, and you of course get to fight the Covenant as well too. The Prometheans AI is amazing, Knights will teleport at you in a blink of an eye. This adds extra tension to the fight as you desperately wait to heal.
343 hasn't let down any of the hardcore fans. The game is still hard and rewarding. Enemies flank, attack and think like you. Legendary is of course almost impossible, they even throw in a huge achievement to make you try to do it. I really can never say enough good things about the AI in Halo games, but 343 really stepped it up again with the new class. Crawlers go up walls to side swipe you or shoot from behind while the others attack from the front. It can get real dangerous very quick.
The story takes about 10 hours to do on Normal. This is a very well paced story, maybe one of the best paced games in the series. There's never any long stretches of driving or vehicle parts with nothing to do. There's never any overly cheap parts, it just rewards good playing. As you progress through the game you get to try many new guns from the Prometheans. The best is the Scattershot and Binary Rifle, two guns that pack massive damage from the right distance.
343 Industries took very good care to balance the guns. Sure when the enemies shoot at you they feel powerful, but they made sure that none felt out of place or too over the top. Like usual when the machine gun usually takes exactly a full round to drop an armored baddie or you'll be quickly reloading as you try to go in for the kill while the armor is down.
Of course in a Halo game the story is only the beginning. War Games is the new multiplayer, trying to tie everything into cannon. What this means is basically it's a simulation of red vs blue on board the Infinity. The new maps are excellent and offer something for every fan. With the introduction of loadouts Halo made a huge change to it's formula.
Don't worry too much about it. Loadouts look perfectly fine. Like Call of Duty or any games that use it, you get your main weapon, secondary and all that jazz. You can of course feel free to pick up dead people's weapons on the battlefield. As you go up the ranks you'll unlock new everything from guns to customized armor and dog tags. This brings a whole new level of addiction to the multiplayer.
The popular Forge mode returns, with the ability to do pretty much what you want in any map. You can also customize any game like Capture the Flag and so on, to bend the rules to your liking.
All this typing is only saying what we already knew, Halo 4 is solid. 343 might of stayed a little too safe in the single player mode, but their ideas and integrity shines through. You have the Bungie model with a new shine of care, polish and shine. 343 even introduced a free downloadable story Episodes, that work sort of like a TV show. Every week you get a new Episode with 5 chapters, each chapter is about 20 mins of play depending on how many players (up to 4) and difficulty. It took me about 40 minutes finish on Legendary per Chapter solo.
Halo 4 succeeds in every single thing it aims for. The guns scream and rumble as you shoot them, you can feel them shake in your hand as you kill enemies. This is the best audio in any Halo game for weapons, they felt real and very dangerous. The amount of polish that went into the graphics is also noticable.
Halo 4 is running on a new engine, and it looks pretty. I enjoyed it on my new 50 inch TV and oh man was it pretty. This is the next gen Halo I was waiting for since Halo 3. Halo Reach looked good, but this is even better. Character models look great, the alien world looks awesome and everything runs super smooth and fast. This is easily the fastest Halo we ever had.
The voice overs and story are very good. The little things shine through like seeing the characters face in your visor as they talk, or Cortana's desperate pleas as she goes further and further into her madness. What you get in this $60 package is a lot of value. An excellent shooter, great story, top notch multiplayer and continued support for months. Nothing should sway your mind for buying this game if you love shooters.