Halo 4, the first game not developed by Bungie and instead handled by 343 Studios (the people responsible for the Halo: Combat Evolved remake), features the return of Master Chief Spartan John-117 to the Halo-verse.
Overall, this is a great game that will absolutely keep you occupied for hours. 343 does a really good job of blending in new things with Halo standards. Multiplayer is great, and the two new modes (Regicide and Dominion) are fun takes on familiar FPS modes. The game looks amazing, and the sound is done really well, allowing you to hear pretty much everything that’s going on around you.
The campaign (single-player) is also top-notch, introducing two interesting characters in The Librarian, and The Didact. The Didact is the main villain throughout the story, but too little is revealed about him. I learned more about this mysterious alien in twenty minutes on the Internet than eight hours in-game. 343 is going to flesh the Forerunners out even more with Halos 5 and 6, the last two parts of the Forerunner Saga. I’ve always been interested by this alien race, and I’m grateful to 343 for being able to learn more without having to read the books.
A new race is added to the series in this game: the Prometheans. They’re A.I. controlled robots that function similarly to the Covenant in that they attack you and coordinate their efforts, but they take it to a whole new level. Each of the three subsets, Crawlers, Watchers, and the Promethean Knights, use particular tactics to take you down and make for some really hectic fun on the virtual battlefield. Crawlers, which look like dogs, tend to swarm you and can crawl over any surface, vertical or horizontal. Watchers can create hard-light shields to protect Crawlers and Promethean Knights, and fly above your head. Promethean Knights stand out as being the big-bads of the Prometheans. Each one is equipped with giant blades and they can teleport short distances to get out of combat quickly, or to get around you.
What this game doesn’t do well are new guns. All of the Promethean weapons feel completely redundant, and some are much worse than their Covenant or UNSC counterparts. The Suppressor, a Promethean machine gun, is the most inaccurate weapon in Halo. The Scattergun, while extremely effective at close range (like all shotguns), can ONLY be used at close-range. Anything farther than a few feet and you may as well have not fired at all. The Light Rifle eats up ammo and has the exact same efficacy as the DMR and the Covenant Carbine. The SAW does the exact same thing as the Suppressor, but is more accurate and is still essentially the Assault Rifle with more bullets in one clip.
Of the all-new multiplayer maps, of which there are 10, none of them are really worth playing over and over again. None of them are especially bad, except maybe the swamp-scape of Adrift, but none of them stand out as instant classics.
Although this isn’t the best Halo game yet, this is certainly a great addition to the franchise. I’m very interested in seeing what 343 Studios has for us in Halos 5 and 6.
–By Jack Teague