Halo 4 (Xbox 360)
“Wake me when you need me” were the last words spoken by Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 at the end of Halo 3, and to Bungie’s credit, they managed to keep Master Chief on ice and instead developed two Halo spinoffs in the form of Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach. However, when Microsoft decided they wanted Xbox’s biggest icon back in action, Bungie was on their way out to begin developing Destiny and the task of continuing the franchise fell on a newly created team known as 343 Industries. However, this new team of developers was a strange assemblage of people who at first didn’t know they were working on Halo 4, were specifically asked to try and correct what they “hated” about Halo when they did learn, and had work discarded when it was deemed too close to the series’s traditional design. Thankfully this seemingly messy approach to making a new installment in a beloved first-person shooter franchise didn’t lead to an absolute mess, but picking up Halo 4 certainly feels different than playing the previous five titles in the series and not in a way that seems to be pushing the series in an exciting new direction.
When Master Chief is woken up aboard the remains of the Forward Unto Dawn, he finds the space vessel’s remnants being attacked by a familiar foe. Despite the Covenant crumbling at the end of Halo 3, a splinter faction seems to be causing trouble for humanity still, but this won’t be explained much in the main campaign and is instead relegated to a secondary story mode called Spartan Ops. Instead, Master Chief’s combat with the Covenant soon gives way to the two elements of the game’s real plot focus: Cortana and the Didact. Master Chief’s AI companion Cortana had grown more and more human during the time he spent with her during his battle with the Covenant and Flood, but in the Halo universe, any AI that isn’t wiped after a set amount of time will begin to undergo a process known as Rampancy. While this allows them to think more like sentient being, it also begins to fracture their thinking as destructive impulses and negative thoughts start to take hold. Master Chief promises to return Cortana to Earth in the hopes of finding some way to prevent the mental degradation without removing her personality and agency, but the path there involves many moments where he needs to rely on Cortana to perform vital tasks that she repeatedly fails. It’s rather frustrating to see Cortana be responsible for plenty of death and destruction while in this state as Master Chief blindly pushes forward with the idea of salvaging her mind, and the fact he trusts her with such important technology and machinery grows more and more suspect over time as she becomes so unreliable and more innocent people get caught in the crossfire. There could be a deeper discussion to be had about how to support someone with negative impulses or the limits of trust, and the idea of exploring the relationship between these two that has been growing over the previous three games would have added a lot more heart to the adventure if done well, but instead Halo 4 glosses over the potential as it instead clumsily pursues a new and uninspired villain.
The Didact is a Forerunner, an ancient race that were the ancestors of humanity and their species was even responsible for building the Halo superweapons and other extraterrestrial installments that have cropped up throughout the franchise. Guiding a group of robotic troops known as Prometheans and taking control of the Covenant splinter group, The Didact seems to be too powerful to beat and hits on the issue where he could have killed Master Chief at multiple points but doesn’t, all while the final confrontation with him proves to be an anticlimax both in the playable portion and how it resolves story-wise. The Didact is the main thing keeping Master Chief from returning to Earth though as all human vessels in the area can’t escape the gravitational pull of the Forerunner technology, and working alongside Earth’s forces, you fight your way to taking down this foe whose motivations are better told by optional story terminals rather than the main plot. While some human characters like Lasky are likeable companions and others serve as obstructions, the confusing story elements make it hard to be invested in this side of the story, especially as it steals focus away from doing more with Cortana. It is perhaps fortunate that much of it can be pushed into the background and ignored for the sake of enjoying the first-person shooting, but it hardly feels like this should have been the story that brought Master Chief back into focus.
When it comes to the structure of the campaign levels you can feel the series both paying homage and trying to shake things up at the same time. The slow gondola ride from Halo 2 was brought back but instead of being a long dull ride it stops frequently at little areas you hop off and have fights in. The space battle portions from Halo: Reach have been upgraded to an entire segment focused on flying carefully to avoid crashes, although actually shooting things is oddly enough deemphasized during this portion. Rather than having an escape sequence on the Jeep-like Warthogs, instead you race across a crumbling planet in the Ghost hoverbikes that are looser to control but faster and more combat capable. Fighting in the vacuum of space as things are sucked into a gravity well and hopping into the incredibly powerful Mantis battle mechs to repel tons of enemy infantry and vehicles stand out, but the setpieces and locations could do with more true combat variety, and even some like riding atop the ridiculous large Mammoth vehicle boil down to plain turret segments where you need to hop off often and, perhaps saddest of all, the portion of the game where you finally get to hop into the Pelican troop carrier plane after seeing it in so many Halo games only uses it for getting from one location to another with little resistance. When you are in a gunfight things are still rather enjoyable because of fundamental ideas in the gameplay like the shield system where you can recover if you avoid gunfire for a while so that you can move in and out of combat to manage survival and aggression, but there could have been more done to make areas feel diverse rather than just having a new object of focus next to familiar battle design.
The Covenant and Prometheans make up the forces you’ll face across the campaign, with the Covenant only bringing some familiar faces while the Prometheans bring a surprisingly small pack of new enemy types to the table. The Covenant’s Grunts are incredibly common and use the weaker weapons to harass as you focus on more important foes, Jackals come in a few varieties but are all based around the idea of some special weapon approach like sniping or charged shots coming from behind energy shields, Elites bring the stronger weapons to match what the player is likely carrying and even have the same shield system for health and use of movement tactics to survive, and the Hunters serve as the strongest foes that can block shots from the front and fire explosive blasts. While it’s missing some of the species added in titles after Halo 1, it’s still a solid batch that can make for a group with decent diversity to fill a battlefield. The robotic Prometheans on the other hand can struggle a bit more with feeling varied. Knights are their main troops, having the stronger guns and ability to teleport if they want to escape fire. Crawlers are weaker dog-like machines that come in packs usually lead by an alpha, the group able to deal heavy damage if they come in close but still able to open fire from afar. The last member of this enemy faction are the flying Watcher drones who not only fire on you, but can fling grenades back at you, add energy shields to enemies, and even resurrect dead Knights. The game does wisely mix this small pool of Promethean types with the Covenant to ensure they don’t get stale during the campaign, and swapping your weapons and approaches to overcome these two enemy factions allows the action of Halo 4 to still remain exciting and diverse, but Spartan Ops unfortunately drops the ball when it tries to tell its secondary tale about why the Covenant are fighting humanity again in the first place.
Spartan Ops is a set of extra missions that can be played alone or cooperatively just like the main story, this set of ten episodes with a total of fifty missions starting off incredibly poorly when the first half consists of the same maps recycled repeatedly, your actions seeming to have little to do with the story being told, and the game coming up with flimsy reasons for why you’re returning to a map even when it is trying to be relevant. Near the middle the episodes do start to play in new map spaces, but before then the game struggles to fill its missions with new ideas, most often choosing to throw in a bunch of one enemy type like the Watchers, Grunts with Kamikaze grenades, or a batch of Hunters in the hope that it will feel like something new. The Covenant are at least explained to be a group of zealots who support the idea the Forerunners are gods so their presence in finding and interacting with Forerunner tech and the Prometheans makes more sense with the added context here. The cutscenes for Spartan Ops are incredibly well done when it comes to animation and detail, and even during regular gameplay you can see some impressive animations like how Promethean weapons assemble themselves when you pick them up and how Prometheans dissolve into yellow particles on death. Still, the extra touches don’t make up for Spartan Ops failing to really reinvigorate the content it keeps rehashing, but it does at least start to find its footing some after you push through a poor start.
Multiplayer options come with a lot of the same caveats as the rest of the game: it plays well, but its structure is odd. The map design tries to encourage different playstyles such as fighting over vehicles, sight lines crisscrossing to make for dangerous open areas, and tighter portions where close range options can shine more. The map customization options of Forge have been reduced in complexity and potential from their previous appearance in Halo: Reach and it’s not quite as inspiring of a canvas for it, and some game modes are odd additions or retoolings. You can still find some standard modes like modes focused on the most kills or area control, but the Infected mode has been replaced with Flood where one team of players play as underequipped zombie creatures and try to convert the other team to their side by killing them. Extraction feels like it exists somewhere between the concept of Oddball where you find and try to hold onto skulls as long as you can despite diminished weapon options, Capture the Flag where you need to carry an objective from one area to another, and King of the Hill’s focus on maintaining control of one space. Extraction involves two teams going to specific points in the map, using a beacon that limits their ability to fight to try and extract the objective items, and jostling for control over it. The simpler modes are certainly more accessible, and besides Flood replacing Infection’s more open approach to the same concept the new ventures are at least interesting experiments, but the more important element to note is that it is still fun to fight each other no matter the mode due to solid core mechanics.
The weapons, vehicles, and abilities add a fair bit to the action and shifting power balance of Halo 4’s fights as well. From Earth’s arsenal you can expect some straightforward takes on ballistic weapons like an assault rifle, shotgun, and sniper rifle, but the new SAW is a surprisingly strong automatic variant that can easily tear through a foe despite the high ammo usage involved in such power. The Sticky Detonator lets you place bombs you can activate at will, and the DMR takes the long range effectiveness of a sniper rifle to something a bit weaker but faster to fire. The Mantis mech’s incredible strength is definitely the highlight of their vehicle options despite its limited presence, but you still have the powerful Scorpion tank as well as simpler battle options like the Warthog Jeep multiple players can pile into and play different roles as driver, gunmen, or turret operator. The Covenant return with their focus on energy weaponry and hover vehicles, the Ghost a zippy bike with fighting power, the Banshee an incredibly maneuverable aerial fighter, and the Wraith a slower tank with a mortar short and a spot someone can pop in to fire a smaller plasma turret. Their firearms come in variations like the Needler that can cause an explosion if enough of its purple spikes impale a foe, the Storm Rifle replaces the Plasma Rifle in its rapid fire shots but need to cool down or it will overheat, and the fuel rod gun works similar to a grenade launcher in concept. Plasma grenades allow you to stick explosives to enemies and the energy sword lets you get in close for attacks that can instantly kill some opponents, so an effective mix of tactics and capabilities emerge from the two weapon sets you’re most likely to rely on. The interplay between weapon and vehicle strengths and weaknesses also means you won’t go uncontested even with the stronger tools, and players can do things like hop aboard to destroy or pilfer vehicles to reverse the balance of power.
The Prometheans have weapons you can salvage as well, although they lack any vehicles to commandeer. The odd thing about the Promethean weapons though is they don’t feel like they’re straying too far from niches covered elsewhere. The Pulse Grenade is similar to a typical frag grenade save for the fact it rises up and shows the area it will detonate in, giving players time to run away from a blast that isn’t that painful to begin with. The Suppressor is an automatic, the Binary Rifle a sniper, and the Scattershot a shotgun variant, so while the Incinerator fires an fiery blast that splits into smaller explosions, the Promethean tools don’t stand out much despite being competent options and almost as useful and satisfying as their traditional counterparts. Armor abilities have a greater impact and are mostly carried over from Halo: Reach, although sprinting is now a standard option you can activate as you please that makes navigation a little easier and gives you more escape options than just jumping around. Players can hold one armor ability at a time but can swap it with any pick-ups they find, the additional combat options inherit in having an energy shield you can activate almost any time and a jetpack’s mobility advantage fairly evident. The hologram is a bit more useful against AI opponents though as it creates a mindless duplicate of yourself that moves where you told it to go, and the autosentry does add some more damage output to a firefight but human players can target it for a quick kill. Still, these distractions can spice up a battle as can adding new options to your repertoire, so armor abilities do add a bit more interesting complexity to any firefight without ever shifting things too strongly that they become bothersome. Instead, Halo 4 is able to sit comfortably on the solid shooting gameplay it mostly borrowed from its predecessors, but its additions always feel like they weren’t thought through as much as they should have been.
THE VERDICT: Master Chief returns to the spotlight in Halo 4, but it feels like most of the game’s successes come from what it carries over while its failings exist in its new ideas. You will still find an enjoyable shooter with strong weapon and enemy diversity, and the existence of vehicles and armor abilities help to spice up combat that takes place in well constructed maps. However, the story struggles to make Cortana’s plight emotional while its main villain is rather bland, and Spartan Ops spends too much time recycling levels to make its contribution to the story effective. Some multiplayer options like Forge and Flood aren’t where they should be, but it’s hard to deny that the fundamentals of the action and the interplay of the gameplay systems still works despite the fumbling in other departments.
And so, I give Halo 4 for Xbox 360…
A GOOD rating. The Halo series’s fundamentally strong first-person action hasn’t been tampered with to any considerable degree, so Halo 4 manages to overcome its confusing story structure and shortage of memorable setpieces just by ensuring its basics are where they need to be to remain entertaining. The Covenant coming back in this form feels lazily conceived but they still bring with them tried and tested gun and enemy variety, and since the Prometheans and their weapons are a bit too derivative of familiar ideas to really excel, it was wise from a gameplay perspective to keep the old enemy force in the picture. A long-running series often has that benefit of building off what already worked and the attempts to add changes to effective ideas like the odd weakening of the Forge mode didn’t pay off, but most of the structure remains sound enough that the problems with new approaches don’t push Halo 4 into mediocrity. The clearest point of improvement feels like actually fleshing out the story properly, since Cortana’s Rampancy could definitely be a compelling character angle if Master Chief really reacted to it or it was portrayed as something besides a way to introduce sudden conflict in a scenario where Cortana shouldn’t have been trusted to do something important. The Didact being such an empty but incredibly powerful foe would definitely need some retooling to make him an antagonist worth fighting, but even just smoothing him out into some generic villain to face while dealing with the attempt at more emotional storytelling properly would have been preferred to the mess we have here.
Having covered the Gears of War series before Halo on The Game Hoard, it’s easier to point at that continuation of the series after the original trilogy as a way a new team can build off a legacy while Halo 4 seems to be the step in the wrong direction. While Gears of War can’t reach the same heights it did under Epic Games, it still produces quality gameplay and introduces new ideas better whereas Halo 4 has to lean on the preexisting effective elements to make up for 343 Industries’s flubbed attempts at exploring new angles for Halo. It can still stand above shooters that don’t have the same strong relationships between combat options that Halo 4 retains and most of the bigger flaws of this title are thankfully easy enough to push aside because they don’t dominate how you are made to interact with it, but the new directions pursued here do not bode well unless more thought and care are put into how they are executed rather than including them just to be different from the previous titles.