Halo 4 - Xbox 360

    Halo 4 is actually the seventh game in the Halo franchise to be released, though it is only the fourth part of the Master Chief storyline. Halo 4 is unique in that it is the first Halo game in the series to be made by 343 Industires after the series was handed over by the IP's creator Bungie. As such, the gigantic Halo fanbase was quite worried about how the new developer would handle the game. Luckily the company has proven to be more than worthy to continue the Halo series.

    Halo 4 sees the return of Master Chief, a super-soldier trained physically as well as psychologically from a young age to be part of the Spartan-II program. This program created soldiers with almost super-human size, speed, and strength. The children chosen for the Spartan-II program were molded into true soldiers, with little but combat on their minds from an early age.


    The single player game opens four years after Halo 3 left off. Master Chief is still drifting in space aboard the heavily damaged ship, Forward Unto Dawn. Even though the ship's distress beacon has been continuously transmitting for the entire time that it has been adrift, no help has come. After encountering a fleet of Covenant, a religious, fanatical alliance of multiple alien species, Master Chief is awoken from his cryo-sleep by his Artificial Intelligence companion Cortana. Still trying to shake off the effects of four years being cryogenically frozen, Master Chief is thrown into battle with the aliens aboard his rapidly decaying ship. It's not until he makes his way outside to the hull of the ship that Master Chief realizes that the Dawn has been pulled into orbit of a massive Forerunner planet.

For some reason, Cortana's boobs have gotten bigger progressively in each game.

    As soon as it appears that Master Chief has things under control, the massive planet opens a gravity well which pulls in a large number of Covenant ships as well as the Forward Unto Dawn. After another in a long line of close calls throughout his career, Master Chief miraculously survives the plummet to the surface of the ancient alien planet. Master Chief and Cortana immediately begin to explore the planet in order to find a means of escape. It isn't long before the two receive a garbled transmission from the human ship Infinity.

    Master Chief begins a race against time to take out whatever structures on the alien planet are scrambling transmissions in order to radio the Infinity and warn it about the planet's gravity well. Along the way, Master Chief comes into contact with a new species of enemy, the Prometheans, a race of robotic soldiers created by the Forerunners to protect the planet. Unfortunately, the destruction of the structures believed by Cortana to be scrambling devices releases the Diadect, an ancient member of the Forerunner race bent on harvesting all organic beings in the universe in order to create more Prometheans. Master Chief will battle both the fanatical Covenant as well as the newly discovered Prometheans in order to combat this new threat to mankind.

Spartan, meet Promethean. Now play nice!

    Halo 4 builds upon the gameplay standard set by the previous games in the series. Armor abilities see a return to the game with a few new varieties. Old favorites such as active camoflage return, and a few new abilities are introduced such as the hardlight shield and auto-sentry turret. Most of the familiar Human and Covenant weapons make a return to the game with a couple new additions that are enjoyable to experiment with. The introduction of the Prometheans includes a whole new arsenal of weapons to master as well. These new weapons hit all of the major roles of weapons and fit the personality of the new species incredibly well. In addition to the newly introduced weapons, a slew of new vehicles have been added to the game, including the Metal Gear-esque Mantis mech suit.

    The game offers the normal four difficulty levels standardized in the past entries into the series. I completed the game on Legendary, the hardest difficulty, and would recommend that others play on a difficulty level that will be a challenge for them. While Master Chief is known to be a great warrior, it is much more satisfying to complete the game while feeling that you have actually accomplished something rather than stomping on all the enemies on a difficulty level that's too easy for the player.

    Halo 4 features a number of beautiful environments to explore. The Forerunner planet offers a large number of climates, which is surprising given the planet's shiny metallic exterior shield. The game's graphics are a step up from Reach, the previous entry in the series. This improvement is minimal, however, as the game has launched towards the end of the Xbox 360's lifespan. The environments are very well rendered and varied, which adds an element of interest to the somewhat repetitive FPS gameplay.

Apparently this is the Promethean salad bar...

    Multiplayer has been a large part of the Halo experience ever since the first game dropped in 2001. 343i has done a great job continuing the work that Bungie started long ago. A large number of game modes, customizable Spartan armor, and newly introduced custom loadouts all add to the online multiplayer experience. The ability to play through the game's campaign with up to three other players returns in Halo 4, as well as the ability to play online with the same number of cooperative players. The new Spartan Ops mode offers episodic multiplayer gameplay for up to four players as well. Unfortunately, the beloved Firefight mode of previous Halo games is nowhere to be found in Halo 4.

    Spartan Ops offers numerous scenarios to be tackled by players. The scenarios usually require the players to destroy target objectives, or to defend certain structures. Each scenario can be played on multiple difficulties as well as over Xbox Live. Spartan Ops makes for a poor replacement for Firefight, however. The scenarios tend to be extremely repetitive and somewhat boring. Players who prefer to play solo will quickly find that Spartan Ops was meant to be played by more than one person. Overwhelming enemy presence, a lack of ammunition, and horrible spawn points which tend to drop you right in the middle of a group of enemies all make solo Spartan Ops a highly frustrating experience on the higher difficulty levels.

    343i has done a great job keeping the multiplayer experience balanced. A large number of changes have been made to the multiplayer game modes in Halo 4 from Halo: Reach, most of which were asked for by the game's online population. Bloom has been removed from a few of the weapons' aiming reticules, armor lock is no longer an armor ability, and a number of other points of complaint have been addressed by 343i. Unfortunately, encountering extremely rude players online who throw racial slurs and insults like they were confetti is still an issue, though 343i has been aggressively banning violators of their code of conduct.

Gotcha you @#$)*@! Tell your mom I said *&#$%!!!

    Overall, Halo 4 turned out to be a very enjoyable experience. I really enjoyed the story presented by the game and found it to be the best storyline in the series of games. In addition to the basic go here, fight this guy, tired storyline presented by most FPS games, Halo 4 touches on some pretty deep issues such as what it means to be human versus being a machine. I found the campaign mode to be surprisingly fair in the challenges it presents the player with. If I died multiple times on a certain part of the game it was because of a problem with my strategy, not because I was continuously killed cheaply by an unfair situation. I tend not to enjoy playing competitive multiplayer by myself, though I found a number of the game modes to be quite fun even when playing solo. I found a large number of bad sports while playing online, but you can't blame the game itself for the people who play it. Halo 4 is definitely a game worth playing for fans of the series or the genre, and I would absolutely recommend it to others.

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