Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Rent it first"

Soon after Halo: Reach, Bungie moved passed Halo and went on to make another project. A couple of years later, 343 industries continues the Halo franchise with Halo 4. And I will say that I have had a blast playing this game so far. I am not going to tell you to buy the game, every player has different taste's in their Video Game, and I could see why player would not enjoy this game. But as a Halo fan, I will say that this might be the best Halo mainly because of it's campaign.

I'm going try to keep this as spoiler free as possible.

Campaign:
At the end of Halo 3 Legendary, Master Chief and Cortana float through space after not making it with the rest of the Forward Unto Dawn spacecraft. Scene ends with Master Chief, John, going into cryo sleep and leaving Cortana all by herself. Five years later, the remaining half of the Forward Unto Dawn ship is attacked by Covenant soldiers, but note that these are rogue Covenant soldiers. Cortana defrosts John, and they get to work. After the first mission you crash land onto a planet called Requiem which was planet that was first inhabited by an ancient race called the Forerunners. Upon journeying through the planet, you come across one of the Forerunners race known as the Prometheans, and their leader the Didact. Master Chief gets nearly killed by the Didact but manages to escape, and shortly after finds out that a UNSC ship called the Infinity is heading towards Requiem. Master Chief tries to get off the planet with the Infinity vessel to go back to Earth. While trying to kill the Didact before he wreaks havoc.
The real story in this game is the interaction between Master Chief and Cortana, who is going through a stage where the A.I thinks itself to death aka Rampancy. So Basically Cortana is dying, and the way these two interact with each other makes the story more enjoyable. Due to Cortana's rampancy, she tends to be a disturbance to Master Chief and his survival on Requiem. Heck there was time when she almost killed him. In the end of the campaign, not many people liked in, but I enjoyed so much. It's a real nice ending they had so much emotion put into it to the point where it does not seem like a Halo campaign. Due to all the emotion that was being shown by these two characters is what made me think that this is most likely the best story and campaign Halo ever.
Aside from the story between those two, there is another story about the main enemy the Didact. Without giving out too much away, a basic summary is that he is the leader of the Prometheans that is trying to finding something that will destroy humanity. I'm leaving this origins and the rest of history out of it. They only thing though was so missing information, but they could have said, I probably didn't catch it.
-9.8

Graphics:
I don't really like to judge on a game solely based on graphics, but geez. The game looks incredible. This is by far one of the best, if not the best, looking game on the Xbox and I dare say the best level designing games ever. You have no idea how well 343i has designed the levels. On mission 2, when you first get to the world Requiem, you see some forerunner structures from a far distance and they look incredible. It's hard to say, but only that it look great. The third mission you get to the world at night. With cracks on the ground leaving a bright light coming out of it look incredible, and the lighting effects on the cliffs are even more amazing. The best though the amount of detail and lighting effects are on the 5th mission. I stood at the edge of the cliff for five minutes just looking over the horizon and seeing mountains that look so amazing. It beats seeing something's in real life.
Character designing look good too. I love how the added in facial expressions to Cortana, she feels more like a human than an A.I through those expressions. Other characters like Lasky and Palmer look just as good. If anything, the character design look similar to L.A Noire, which is not bad
-10

Sounds:

The sounds on Halo 4 have gotten a lot better, which is saying a lot because in Halo: Reach, the guns sounded incredible and more like realistic guns. In Halo 4, they redid the sounds and added in some new sounds that you really didnt hear before. A lot of guns sound more powerful than ever. The DMR sounds so strong, and I love it. However, there are some sounds that makes other weapons sound weak. For instance, the battle rifle does not sound like an actual rifle, I just think that it sounds weird. The warthog sounds like a freaking remote control car, but the ghost sounds like the vehicle is actually hovering over the ground.
The additional sounds that they added in to the game are small things, but feel more real. Such sounds are things like the clanking for every step you take on metal grounds, and the, I guess, latex material that you are wearing sounds like it's stretching everytime you run. Again, they are small things, but they make it seem more real.
As for the music, I'm not going to be dumb and compare Neil Davidge's work to the great Martin O'Donnell. I mean come one, there are only two video game composers that I'll acknowledge over Martin O'Donnell and that is the composer for Legend of Zelda and the composers for the Final Fantasy series. But that does not mean that what Neil Davidge has is not bad, in fact it's good. Sure I would like to have Martin composing, but Neil does a pretty good job. From the main menu theme, to the soundtrack playing throughout the game, to the redone version of the Unforgotten by Martin O'Donnell. I got to say, Neil has done a fine job creating the music for the game.
9.0

I'm not done yet, I'll be editing this later. Adding in Multiplayer review.
For now 9.6/10