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dkirschner's Halo 4 (360)
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| [January 5, 2014 11:42:39 AM]
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Just completed Halo 4. It was good enough, fun enough, solid, nothing unexpected. Maybe the Halo series has become a little stale for me, or this one just didn't measure up to my favorites like 2 and 3. Not sure.
Either way, there is one thing I do know. After...5 Halo games (that I've played anyway), there NEEEEEDS to be an in-game compendium. I didn't have much clue what was going on in the grand scheme of the Halo universe. Cortana wakes up, wakes Master Chief up, she's suffering from "rampancy" which is like AI death, and the gist of the game is Master Chief and Cortana trying to get home to the scientist who created Cortana to fix her. In the meantime, they stumble upon some alien who is going to...do something...bad...and they have to stop him or else...bad stuff...will happen...I think...
Forerunners, Reclaimer, Reclamation, Halos, Covenant, various military personnel, Cortana, Master Chief, Forward Unto Dawn, other ship names, planet names, Prometheans...an in-game compendium would have been so helpful because I forgot what half these words mean. A refresher on the story so far would also have been amazing. I either missed a ton of backstory somewhere along the line, or I don't remember, or it wasn't explained well, but there is stuff in this game about Master Chief's origins and Cortana's origins and their relationship. I know they were always fond of one another, but Cortana seems to be a little...in love...with Master Chief. Maybe it's her rampancy and her approaching death that are making her emotional, who knows. Anyway, was I supposed to have more of an idea of this stuff before this game, or did they just cram some of it in?
Luckily, the game is still a solid fun shooter even if I didn't really understand the big narrative picture. All the favorite guns are back, with some new ones for the new enemies. It's a bummer they took away dual wielding (or didn't put it back in, can't remember which game removed it). You just get two guns at a time to switch between. There are also grenades, one new type that creates like a warp explosion. The items were pretty sweet this time around. This is a gameplay aspect that has been pointless in several Halo games, so glad to see they got something good this time around. Basically you have armor modules that you pick up. You can have one at a time. There is a plasma shield, hologram, sprint, sentry drone, "predator" vision, jetpack, maybe another. The hologram was pretty useful for drawing fire away from me. Predator vision was sweet for sniping and seeing through fog in one particular set of levels. My favorite was the jetpack. I liked flying over enemies' heads and getting to high sniping positions.
Halo 4 overall felt a little "same-y" to me. It's certainly not as repetitive as Halo 1's godawful hallways, but a lot of the environments, especially in ships, looked very similar, and I seemed to be fighting in the same types of rooms and semi-open spaces. I was surprised that there weren't many very open spaces like in some previous games. If there were open spaces, then it was pretty much a vehicle sequence. Speaking of, there were definitely less vehicle sequences too, less vehicles to pilot. That kinda sucks because I always liked the variety of Halo's vehicles, speeding around mowing down Covenant. Part of this less open, less playground-y feel I think makes Halo 4 feel more similar to lots of other AAA shooter titles. There was more handholding for sure than previous Halo games.
Anyway, good times. Worth a play through if you like Halo at all. There's probably great multiplayer fun to be had, so I'll keep the game around in case I ever get the bug.
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dkirschner's Halo 4 (360)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Friday 3 January, 2014
GameLog closed on: Sunday 5 January, 2014 |
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