Halo 4 Review

A 12+ hour campaign and delicate treatment could have yielded very positive results.  Instead, you get this rushed whirlwind where you find Master Chief expressing curious one-liners that seem extremely out of character.  Everything feels very forced.  Another victim of the short campaign is that aside from Master Chief and Cortana there are no other important characters in the game.  The other characters that you briefly see are best described as background clichés.

As stated earlier, there is still a lot that is really good about this game.  Spartan Ops is fantastic.  It is the best method ever created for keeping players engaged over a long period of time.  Spartan Ops in essence is like a whole separate game.  Every so often new episodes containing levels are released.  These episodes carry you through a whole separate story arc and you can play through them with your friends or with other players online.  A group of episodes make up a season.

Each episode also comes with lengthy pre-rendered cutscenes which help push the plot forward.  Keep in mind though that the plot of Spartan Ops is only very loosely related to the plot of the single player campaign and it does not involve Master Chief.

The only negative thing about Spartan Ops is actually a complement as well.  Spartan Ops is such a fantastic new idea and is so great that it casts an even bigger shadow over the single player campaign.  As wonderful as it is, it is still side content – an extra.  I can’t imagine how much better the single player campaign could have been if some resources would have been diverted to it from Spartan Ops.  I have no doubt that future seasons will move to a paid model.  In the long run, the decision to provide the first season free of charge will likely increase sales of future seasons.

When it comes to grading Halo 4, I am very conflicted.  There are so many great things about the game but I am still left feeling disappointed.  Diminishing the quality of the single player campaign is a terrible mistake.  It lumps Halo in the same category as the countless other first person shooters which are fun to play but lack any meaningful connection.  I can only hope Microsoft and 343 Industries take note and work on making Halo 5 better than its predecessor.

85/100