With Bungie out of the series, successor 343 Industries takes over with a sequel to
Halo 3. With a changed world, changed cast, and new threat. 343 was under a lot of pressure to deliver on what Bungie had built and prove Halo could work without Bungie. Does it succeed? Well, it's... some where in the middle, let's talk about it.
Halo 4 is set almost 5 years after
Halo 3, where the Chief and Cortana were stranded in space and the Chief became a chiefsicle. The game opens with Cortana being alerted to a presence on their half of a ship and wakes up the Chief, now with a so-so redesign, to check it out. Learning of a new Covenant faction who didn't get the memo that humans were cool, the Chief and Cortana find themselves orbiting a Forerunner planet they're soon pulled into. Now, a whole bunch of shit happens but the short of it is that Cortana is dying because her mind has reached overfill and the Covenant actually found and awoke one of their Gods thanks to the Chief, a Forerunner called the Didact. Now the Chief must stop the Didact, his Covenant, and robotic Forerunner soldiers called Prometheans while finding a way to save a decaying Cortana.
So that's a lot for a plot, too much if you ask me. There actually is a second villain in the form of Jul' M'dama, an Elite who still holds his grudge from the war and leads the Covenant. I think the plot should have saved the Didact till
5 and focus on the Chief and Cortana trying to get home, making it more of a planet hopping adventure. Because one of this plots problem's is that more time is spent explaining the Didact than showing the Didact, who tries to go for the Darth Vader esque presence but it just doesn't work. Focusing on a more charismatic villain like Jul' with a backstory of being a xenophobe would be snappy and give the story more of an effect. I'll go more into detail at a later point but the point is the story needed to be scaled back to focus on a more personal story as opposed to Galaxy threatening stakes.
Of course there are human characters who join the cast like Thomas Lasky, a young and eager XO who likes to take the lead personally; Sarah Palmer, a Spartan who, well you got me there; and Andrew Del Rio, the angry and cowardly captain of the UNSC Infinity, the ship that finds the Master Chief. Now, as that description of Sarah Palmer could tell you, this human cast sucks. They have almost no real character, personality, very little interaction outside of Lasky and the Chief, and Del Rio is a fucking cartoon character. And that doesn't mean he's deliberately over the top, no, the game seems like it wants us to take him seriously, which is the funniest thing I've ever typed because he's such a ridiculous screaming lunatic who seems to hate the Chief for.... well that's it, there's no good reason. Again, focusing on making big stakes blows up in
4's face as it doesn't give the supporting cast time to breathe. These guys are like the cast of
Halo Wars, but unlike
Wars there is an actual protagonist to hold it together here so it skates by.
Halo 4 also changes the art style in a radical way. The Covenant have seen a darker design with more brute style appearances for elites, more of a disgusting design for grunts, and well I don't know what they're doing with Jackals but it's a thing. Hunters are unchanged meanwhile and Brute, Drones, and Engineers are out entirely, which I could live with but, like I said, they're basically replaced in terms of design by Elites with they're more bulky style. Of course my biggest problem with the new designs is the armor, in all the games before this I could tell who was in charge and compensate my strategies for it. Now all the Covenant are all the same basic color and holy shit is it awful, ranks are indistinguishable and it just makes every firefight unmemorable, was the Elite top ranking? I couldn't tell, it's all so dark in here. And don't get me started on the Plasma Rifle's replacement, the Storm Rifle; or the Beam Rifle redesign. Though everything else is unchanged, thank god, especially the vehicles, the only downside is that there are no new Covenant weapons.
Of course that's only one part of the enemy as you also have to take on the new Prometheans. Again I find it rough to tell the difference in rank but at least species design is radical enough in the faction. You have doglike crawlers who are equipped with the pistol shotgun hybrid Boltshot, SMG replacement suppressor, and one shot kill Binary Rifle. It's their job to be numerous, annoying, and climb on the walls to be everywhere; though a simple shot to the head will kill them. Massive knights can warp around, use the previous mentioned weapons as well as the DMR/Battle Rifle hybrid Light Rifle, nuke-tastic Incineration Cannon, and the shotgun like Scattershot and can deploy the Watchers, which are the real threat. Watchers are tiny, fly around, use Suppressors and Bolt shots, catch grenades, revive dead knights, spawn turrets, and birth crawlers. Now all in all they're nott terrible, but it does kind of get stale battling them after a while, espically when you know what they're al about. I think what does it is that they don't have vehicles and therefore battling them is just a series of hallways and small battle arenas. Vehicles add spice to a campaign and a lack of them, which
4 suffers from, kills the experience, but more on that after I'm done tearing into the new UNSC designs.
The UNSC gets a redesign that calling clashing would be kind, on the one hand the new Warthog and returning DMR look like pieces of military hardware. But then you get a new Battle Rifle that has a fat design and toylike appearance alongside everyone looking like Power Rangers characters from the Spartans on down to the marines ijn a desperate attempt to look "futuristic". The thing is, the UNSC design always looked like military hardware, right down to the bulky design for the Spartans and marines. But now they look like fucking power rangers uniforms and it's just plain bad. So this middle of the road shit with the new Warthog vs the new Spartans/Battle Rifle doesn't work. Also, the Sniper Rifle and Shotgun look awful, though the new Railgun, Sticky Detonator, and Mantis Assault mech are great additions to the UNSC armory.
Okay, but that's not really gameplay, how does the actual campaign play out? Well, you remember
Halo 2? Because
Halo 4 plays a lot like
Halo 2, being more linear and closed in with the occasional wide open areas. This isn't bad, but the linearity hurts more because the Chief is pretty solo here, outside of three of eight missions, you're basically all alone. Whereas with
Halo 2 you usually had allies to keep you company,
Halo 4 is pretty lonely and desolate. Fighting the Prometheans usually means no ve3hiclesd so I hope you like a lot of corridors or just being locked in a room with them. Hell even when you do get vehicles it doesn't feel nearly as big or free as
Halo's 1, 3, ODST, and
Reach did, usually you're railroaded on a path because evidently rivers can blow up Warthogs.
Now, in spite of my issues with
4, I will not argue this game is beautiful and varied. From the wrck of the dawn to dense jungles,
4 is all around gorgeous and what ti tries to do is graphically impressive even today. I just don't agree with the style it's going for, which I will not hold against the actual graphics. New composers step up too, Neil Davidge and Kazuma Jinnochi and you know what, while it's not the old style we're used to I think the sound track is one of the best in the series. and while it's different it's about on par with what O'Donnell goes for. Tracks like 117, Green and Blue, To Galaxy, Revival, and Arrival all are slam dunks of music tracks and some of the best in the series. It's honestly the
Sonic 06 effect, while the game isn't all that great the soundtrack kicks 20 forms of ass.
But some of the biggest changes are made to multiplayer, and boy oh boy is it generally worse. The actual matches themselves now function like
Call of Duty, where you can make your own loadout which, to be fair, is an evolution on what
Reach did so it's not that bad. But there's a new Infinity Slayer mode where you can also call in certain care packages and what not depending on how well you do, which is basically Call of Duty-lite. Now the problem with the loadouts is that the Boltshot is broken and is basically a shotgun while the Plasma Pistol makes vehicles worthless. Combined with the care packages it all together removes that arena shooter element of scavenging for new weapons beyond what you start with and breaks map design all together as most maps used to focus on the scramble for good weaponry and now they don't.
But that's not the only problem, while the Spartan customization options are expanded Elites are no longer playable, the Rank Up system is way too easy and has no skill system in place, Forge has received a massive downgrade from Forge World, and Firefight has been replaced by... Spartan Ops. Spartan Ops is a story based co-op mode where you move through maps and accomplish objectives to move the story along. There are 10 Episodes and 5 chapters each and I'm just gonna say it now, don't play this mode, this mode sucks ass. Spartan Ops missions are painfully repetitive, often going back to the same maps over and over and over and over again. You're better off watching the cut-scenes as the story you do in the maps has nothing to do with the overarching plot in the cut-scenes that proceed each episode. But the story revolves around the UNSC Infinity and it's compliment of Spartans returning to Requiem six months after
Halo 4. The story in the cut-scenes is honestly just sorta okay at best, but I do like how more of the Halo universe is expanded here and we even get more Dr. Halsey who I love to hate so that's great. We also meet Jul' M'dama here and I think he should have been the main villain of
4 but I already went over that. The entire story of Spartan Ops is a bunch of great ideas that fizzle out quickly, though it did get me like Sarah Palmer a bit more here than the main game. The point is that if you're interested in this story, just watch the cut-scenes because Spartan Ops is not a worthy successor to Firefight.
And that is
Halo 4's main problem, it is not a worthy successor to Halo 3. Where
4 works it shines with a degree of excellence worthy of the original trilogy. Specifically developing the Chief and Cortana's relationship along with some serious character growth for the Chief. Which is accented by an excellent soundtrack easily worthy of Marty O'Donnell. But when it fails? It becomes a middling linear grindfest with a lame villain, underdeveloped side characters, poor artstyle changes, and a poor third faction to take on. And that's not even talking multiplayer which if it wasn't beyond flawed it broke the very definition of what
Halo played like.
Halo 4 shoots for the stars.... and falls flat on it's ass, but ya'know what they say? Second time's the charm, or is it?
So that's a lot for a plot, too much if you ask me. There actually is a second villain in the form of Jul' M'dama, an Elite who still holds his grudge from the war and leads the Covenant. I think the plot should have saved the Didact till 5 and focus on the Chief and Cortana trying to get home, making it more of a planet hopping adventure. Because one of this plots problem's is that more time is spent explaining the Didact than showing the Didact, who tries to go for the Darth Vader esque presence but it just doesn't work. Focusing on a more charismatic villain like Jul' with a backstory of being a xenophobe would be snappy and give the story more of an effect. I'll go more into detail at a later point but the point is the story needed to be scaled back to focus on a more personal story as opposed to Galaxy threatening stakes.
Halo 4 also changes the art style in a radical way. The Covenant have seen a darker design with more brute style appearances for elites, more of a disgusting design for grunts, and well I don't know what they're doing with Jackals but it's a thing. Hunters are unchanged meanwhile and Brute, Drones, and Engineers are out entirely, which I could live with but, like I said, they're basically replaced in terms of design by Elites with they're more bulky style. Of course my biggest problem with the new designs is the armor, in all the games before this I could tell who was in charge and compensate my strategies for it. Now all the Covenant are all the same basic color and holy shit is it awful, ranks are indistinguishable and it just makes every firefight unmemorable, was the Elite top ranking? I couldn't tell, it's all so dark in here. And don't get me started on the Plasma Rifle's replacement, the Storm Rifle; or the Beam Rifle redesign. Though everything else is unchanged, thank god, especially the vehicles, the only downside is that there are no new Covenant weapons.
Of course that's only one part of the enemy as you also have to take on the new Prometheans. Again I find it rough to tell the difference in rank but at least species design is radical enough in the faction. You have doglike crawlers who are equipped with the pistol shotgun hybrid Boltshot, SMG replacement suppressor, and one shot kill Binary Rifle. It's their job to be numerous, annoying, and climb on the walls to be everywhere; though a simple shot to the head will kill them. Massive knights can warp around, use the previous mentioned weapons as well as the DMR/Battle Rifle hybrid Light Rifle, nuke-tastic Incineration Cannon, and the shotgun like Scattershot and can deploy the Watchers, which are the real threat. Watchers are tiny, fly around, use Suppressors and Bolt shots, catch grenades, revive dead knights, spawn turrets, and birth crawlers. Now all in all they're nott terrible, but it does kind of get stale battling them after a while, espically when you know what they're al about. I think what does it is that they don't have vehicles and therefore battling them is just a series of hallways and small battle arenas. Vehicles add spice to a campaign and a lack of them, which 4 suffers from, kills the experience, but more on that after I'm done tearing into the new UNSC designs.
The UNSC gets a redesign that calling clashing would be kind, on the one hand the new Warthog and returning DMR look like pieces of military hardware. But then you get a new Battle Rifle that has a fat design and toylike appearance alongside everyone looking like Power Rangers characters from the Spartans on down to the marines ijn a desperate attempt to look "futuristic". The thing is, the UNSC design always looked like military hardware, right down to the bulky design for the Spartans and marines. But now they look like fucking power rangers uniforms and it's just plain bad. So this middle of the road shit with the new Warthog vs the new Spartans/Battle Rifle doesn't work. Also, the Sniper Rifle and Shotgun look awful, though the new Railgun, Sticky Detonator, and Mantis Assault mech are great additions to the UNSC armory.
But that's not the only problem, while the Spartan customization options are expanded Elites are no longer playable, the Rank Up system is way too easy and has no skill system in place, Forge has received a massive downgrade from Forge World, and Firefight has been replaced by... Spartan Ops. Spartan Ops is a story based co-op mode where you move through maps and accomplish objectives to move the story along. There are 10 Episodes and 5 chapters each and I'm just gonna say it now, don't play this mode, this mode sucks ass. Spartan Ops missions are painfully repetitive, often going back to the same maps over and over and over and over again. You're better off watching the cut-scenes as the story you do in the maps has nothing to do with the overarching plot in the cut-scenes that proceed each episode. But the story revolves around the UNSC Infinity and it's compliment of Spartans returning to Requiem six months after Halo 4. The story in the cut-scenes is honestly just sorta okay at best, but I do like how more of the Halo universe is expanded here and we even get more Dr. Halsey who I love to hate so that's great. We also meet Jul' M'dama here and I think he should have been the main villain of 4 but I already went over that. The entire story of Spartan Ops is a bunch of great ideas that fizzle out quickly, though it did get me like Sarah Palmer a bit more here than the main game. The point is that if you're interested in this story, just watch the cut-scenes because Spartan Ops is not a worthy successor to Firefight.
Comments
Post a Comment