By Sam Coles:
Since the Halo series was taken over by 343 Industries,
people often say they have “ruined” Halo which honestly these people need to
look up the word hyperbole as that is not the case with 343. However they have
done some questionable design decisions when it comes to the gameplay, and Halo
4 is no exception but what we got with the campaign in terms of story is rather
good as we get a more of a look into the personal relationship between Cortana
and Chief.
Halo 4 takes place 5 years after the events of the third
game, where Master Chief and Cortana are still drifting through space on the
Dawn. Cortana is awakened by a mysterious scan of a ship, where it turns out
that they are in orbit of a Forerunner planet as well as being boarded by a
Covenant armada. Things go smoothly and they land on the planet, but all is not
well as Cortana is acting strangely, it turns out that she was put into service
8 years ago where she reveals that A.Is start to malfunction after 7. Chief
being attached to her for many years begins to panic, as she has been the only
one that he has really cared about and wants to get her back to Dr Halsey to
fix her. I love the story in this game because we start to see Chief breakdown
as he has not really had proper human interaction, as he has always relied on
Cortana to comfort him and to see him panic as she slowly fades away is heart breaking.
Gameplay is where Halo 4 starts to falter a bit as the
changes they have made to A.I behaviour makes me want cough up blood, as
Covenant and Promethean encounters are arduous and frustrating especially on
higher difficulties. Let’s start with Covenant behaviour with how the Grunts
and Jackals use Plasma Pistols and Neddlers. In prior Halo games, they were
projectile based and they still are but the tracking of both weapons are
insanely strong where you have to take cover like you are in a Call of Duty
game as you can’t dodge them. Elites frames of animation have been changed too
when they perform melee attacks, these again have been sped up where you can no
longer dodge and they kill you in one hit on Legendary.
Let’s talk about the Prometheans, they are almost worse than
the Flood because encounters as they play out in a random manner (not in a good
way) and take far too long to kill as they can regenerate their shield and can
be revived by Seekers. These are the majority of encounters and it becomes a
slog, as you will run into another problem the lack of ammunition. The amount
of times I ran out of ammo is ridiculous, now I’m not expecting a dragon’s
horde load of ammo but this is Halo and not Resident Evil, I feel like I’m
playing a survival horror with amount of ammo there is or should I say lack
thereof.
It’s not all bad what I like are the updated UNSC weapon
models as well as the updated sounds, which give the weapons more of a beefy
grunt instead of sounding like a playing card attached to a bicycle wheel (I’m
looking at you Halo 3 assault rifle). However you barely get the chance to use
these weapons, which as I discussed earlier there is a lack of ammo and you’re
stuck using the terrible Promethean weapons, which have as much impact as a wet
sponge.
Visually the game looks fantastic; it’s hard to believe that
this was released on the Xbox 360 as it looks like it could have been an early
Xbox One game. The detail is staggering with the details on Chief’s armour
where you see the wear and tear from battle. The environments are big and
impressive, with beautiful Forerunner architecture to the cold and industrial
corridors. The animation is stunning from the characters; this was all done via
motion capture which makes scenes more convincing.
Halo 4 has a great story, but the gameplay can be
frustrating and tedious especially on higher difficulties. I’m all for the
introduction of new enemy types, but when you make them more frustrating to
fight compared to The Flood then you have done something wrong. If you are
going to play this game for the story I would highly recommend playing it on
normal, as it is not worth the hassle on higher difficulties.
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