Having been a massive Halo fan since my friend getting an Xbox with Halo CE (prompting me to trade in my PS2 for an xbox straight away!) I've been a huge fan of it. From the main story to the frantic multiplayer sessions, it's been my main game always. To me it rapidly became the shooter to benchmark others against and always seemed to be the innovator at least with console gaming anyways. Many other games came but could never in my eyes match up to what Halo offered.
So with the newest instalment of the Halo franchise I was expecting a similar award winning package, but what I got was far far from that....
Halo CE had a stella story and a seemingly perfect multiplayer mode which seemed largely accidental but in many eye's became revolutionary indeed living up to it's claim of combat evolved. This continued on with Halo 2, a story with more grandure and a full blown online multiplayer experience with ranked playlists, tracked statistics and matchmade games. The core gameplay built on the core CE package offering more weapons and the ability to dual wield. Halo 3 continued this again moving to the 360 and riding an apocalyptic finish the fight story. Multiplayer was again refined offering equipment along side weapons. A fully customisable map editor in the Forge mode was a stunning addition fuelling the Halo community's creative side with custom maps and game types cropping up all over.
Halo Reach further built on this with armour abilities and a more realistic gritty campaign mode, and somewhere in-between ODST brought in Firefight.
The point is each game built upon the core foundation and was always an improvement but still retained the core essence of Halo CE. Which is my biggest disappointment with Halo 4.
Being developed off the back of Halo Reach but being handled by 343industries instead of Bungie I was pretty hesitant that it wouldn't be classic Halo. Still It was Microsofts flagship game, it would be in the safest of hands I was sure.
Unlike previous Halo's I steered clear of any pre-launch hype and generally just knew very little about the game until it actually landed on my doorstep. Sitting down to play I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised as to where this new story arc would go to.
As usual I blasted through campaign mode to see how the story developed after its departure from bungie.
The new enemies the Protractors, erm Protheans no wait sorry Prometheans Are terrible!. Considering they've been years in the making a little robot dog, a flying drone, and a Lego Bionacle are the best they could come up with?
Still beyond that, the AI on them isn't that great either, unlike the early Halo games where the enemy AI was challenging to fight against, the
Still at least the story is great...(spoiler tastic) (I consider below spoiler plus as it tells more than the game does..)
Oh yeah, It's not too bad. I'm a huge fan of the more dialogue from the chief and Cortana, as well as the first person cut scenes but this is all something Half life 2 did years back.
The campaign aswell lacks the grand scale of the previous games. In my memory i've such vivid scenes from each Halo game. Be it, Storming the beach on Halo CE, Saving New Mombassa on Halo 2 by blowing out a Scarabs insides, Taking down scarabs with nothing more than a Mongoose and a Rocket Launcher on Halo 3 and Jetting off into Space in Reach only to Fall back down!.
Halo 4 simply doesn't have a moment I can memorise like this. Sure You get to ride a Elephant and fight along side other Spartans. But Reach did other Spartans and did it Better. The ones in Halo 4 just feel like Marines nothing especially "Spartan" about how they fight.
Overal with the story mode I feel the story simply doesn't go anywhere. I don't follow the books, i've read a couple of them, and know the Halo story is a lot deeper than just the games. But it's almost like having to read all the books is the only way to actually get into the Halo 4 story. This surely alienates most of the people who play this game. With past Halo's the story's were always told in the game, you could dabble in the books if you wanted more detail but they were never a prerequisite.
My brief understanding from some research is that the Forerunners were the highest forms of life in the galaxy and transcended merely being a race which existed but were able to create and assist other lifeforms in developing essentially becoming gods. One day they bumped into the flood who after much fighting could not be stopped. The Forerunner faced two options, keep fighting or build and fire Halo's to kill off all life essentially starving the flood. The former was the path of the Didact and the latter his wife's path the Librarian.
The Didact was hell bent on fighting off the flood and used the composer (a device which turns organic life into digital beings but is not very good (I'm not sure why it doesn't work I presume it's because anyone composed is then just a prothean knight with no real brain power...))to turn his soldiers into the Prometheans, this was strongly opposed by the Librarian, who wanted to fire the halos and repopulate the galaxy with all the collected life forms restarting it if you will.
As the war raged on The Librarian had to betray her husband the Didact to stop his fighting imprisoning him in the Cryptum until released. The Halo's were fired and the galaxy was restarted.
So after the event's of Halo 1-3, the Chief is floating in space on the wreakcage of the Spirit of Fire. he drifts towards the Forerunner world Requiem.
The covenant pop up with no real explanation as to why they are aggressive other than "a lot can happen in four years" (I guess I'll have to read a book on that one then) Chief get's pulled into Requiem and awakens the Didact. Understandably the Didact has been in stasis for a long period of time, but is still the same angry dude wanting to kill off humanity and keep the Forerunners as the dominant race in the galaxy.
So after lot's of average fighting and button pressing the Didact get's hold of the composer and turns it on Earth. Chief and Cortana kill off the Didact and push him into the composer. Then the game end's with Cortana (nearing the end of her life due to rampancy) sacrificing herself to save the chief.
There is a few other details here and there but thats it after struggling through campaign and doing some research.
To me this fairly neatly wraps up the Halo 4 saga... The renegade Forerunner is dead, earth is saved again and Cortana is dead (probably not). So Where does Halo 5 go?, if the forerunner return they will be fairly peaceful being a highly intelligent race. I presume the hostile covenant are simply small pockets of resistance here and there. So really you just introduced the only tangable new bad guy and killed him straight off... and no he doesn't pop up again in a legendary ending at all....
Also after saving earth in Halo2/3, and again in Halo 4. How much more epic can 5 be? I mean after the "save earth"card is played it doesn't get much more epic. My point being the ending of Halo 4 leaves no excitement for the next game, no speculation as to what the new threat is only that it will surely be "tacked on"because you simply can't replace the iconic covenant. The franchise seem's to be weaving together ever decreasing lose ends to make a plot that simply doesn't excite anymore. It Star wars Episode 1,2,3 The originals stood just fine all you did was dilute it's good name. I fear that Halo is going the same way...
The only positives I can grab are the graphics are stunning, the best thing I've played on the 360, and elements of the story are told well, the ongoing relationship between chief and Cortana and her ever increasing rampancy. But overall the campaign has lost too much of the core of Halo, it fails to give that motivating story and feeling of the originals. But it doesn't do anything else either... It just does not feel like a natural evolution on it's history
I really want to love Halo 4 because it is part of one of my favourite franchises but I'm just finding it hard.
I'll Leave the tragic tale of multiplayer for another post...
In all the games i've played and the same with movies etc... I've never felt compelled to comment my thoughts to words, but this game has been a massive step in the wrong direction for so many reasons...
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