Halo 4, oh boy Halo 4 this is a game that tends to piss of Halo fans by the mere mention of it's name. And I have beaten the game a number of times over the years and yes, I do like the game. It's a game while I get not being a great game yet at the same time I can't for the life of me get why it's considered a "bad game". I am not a Halo super fan despite spending over 100 hours in the MCC so this is probably why I don't consider it to be the epicly bad game that 4 is widely call as. The game is mostly a play it safe sequel in terms of gameplay and that is by far it's biggest issue, I'll go more in detail on that later.
Story first, I actually consider this to be the best narrative in the series as far as games are concered, the only game in the series that I consider coming close to this is Halo Infinite, I say this because while the story overall isn't super amazing, the bond between Master Chief and Cortana is what carries much of it and does so much of the heavy lifting for the story. I like Chief and Cortana's interactions with each other and it's Jenn Taylor best performance in the series. The whole idea of Chief being a stoic soldier having no humanity is reflected well within the story. It's both a strength and a weakness. A weakness in that Chief never really knows what to say to Cortana in her times of need yet also a strength because his stoism also gives Cortana the conviction to move forward. It's one of the few times where the series actually gets any form of emotional connection out of me regarding narrative. At the same time, Halo 4 has it's flaws, a lot of stuff like Infinity, the expanded lore with the Forerunners, the "storm covenant" and the character of the Didact feels like the game is throwing way too many concepts that an FPS like this can even handle, I might look up the supplementary material for this game but at the time, I am not that interested. The Didact might be the best villain in the series...even though it's not saying a whole lot, he does at the very least does one evil deed that makes me dislike him like killing all those people on the Halo installation where Truth and previous Halo villains never accomplished that much, sure they killed Miranda but even Tillson in her short screen time was more interesting than Miranda was in 2 whole games, then again, this could because I tolerate Tillson more than Miranda since I consider her to be boring and terribly written character along with Sgt Johnson. The Didact still does that Halo villain thing of doing the cryptic monologuing while Chief is killing enemies but I'd still say he is better than what came before, even if it was a low bar.
Now the gameplay, I still think the gameplay is solid and the sound design for the game is incredible, the gun sounds and weapon feedback was the best the series had up until that point and I still love hearing so many of the weapon sounds, sounds meaty and very punchy which is great considering this game is an fps. The fights with covenant are still the same, the AI is still solid even if the enemy roster is still the same 3-4 types you have mainly been fighting in the series up until this point, they are still enjoyable to fight and the coveant weapons being more fun to use with improved feedback makes the combat more fun in some ways since I want to use covenant weapons more. Now where Halo 4 divides everyone is the Promenthan enemies and weapons and while I don't think they are as bad as Halo fans make it out to be since the Flood wasn't exactly enemy design masterclass either. They still are just Halo struggling to figure out to come up with an enemy type outside of the Covenant since fighting the same 3-4 enemies for 10 hours would be boring and you don't have the Halo Reach excuse of shoving in Brutes halfway through the game. I do think the Promethan weapons at the very least feel good to use and the combat even if it has that Halo bad habit of alien weapons being an analog for weapons in real life. You got an alien machine gun, pistol, shotgun, rifle and rocket launcher, it just feels incredibly lazy and I hate to use this word but uninspired as well since the Covenant weapons are also like that and it's issue with them too since, this takes place so far into the future and the best you can come up with is just real world guns with a different skin. At the same time, with that said, I don't think the Promethans show how bad Halo's health system can be compared to the Flood, but it also isn't that great either. Since enemies can be pretty spongey can swarm you a lot especially swarm you more than the health system can handle. You want your health to recover but enemies will keep swarming your position preventing you from doing so and leading to some cheap deaths. Rocket launcher promethans can be pretty annoying too since they can kill you in one hit at full health. They can also teleport and insta kill you out of nowhere too, but it didn't happen too much to the point where I found extremely infuriating
I also don't get why sprint gets so much hate when Halo's health system forces you to have your health to regen, sprint saved me at so many points and it's one of the few options I have when health is at critical. Halo was never even as fast as Doom and Blood to begin with, so sprint isn't even ruining anything.
The biggest issue with Halo 4 is that I played the game already, it's called Halo Reach, it has the same armor abilities which I didn't find interesting in that game since most of them are situational to this game's credit, sprint is an ability that you can always use. I never found the armour abilites as interesting as the equipment in 3 or dual wielding in 2. Dual wielding complements the combat really well since it allows you to destroy shields with one hand and tear flesh with the other. Equipment on higher difficulties allowed you to use arena design more to your advantage and give you a possible edge in combat, armor abilites give you one situational power that you can use after a lengthy cooldown. It even has similar air combat like Halo Reach does later in the game. And that's where the big issue with Halo 4 lies, it doesn't offer a whole lot of geniune innovation gameplay wise over the rest of the games. The Mantis was great but innovations and sections like that are few and far between. It's the best feeling Halo game by far yet at the same time, I don't think it does enough to have the game escape from feeling like a Halo Reach expansion.
Overall, I'd say it's a good game but not amazing. It's definately not the second coming of the devil like Halo fans want you to believe.
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