Halo 4 review

 

“Halo 4” is like a love letter to the Halo franchise. Almost all of the memorable parts of every mission throughout the single-player campaign brought back fond memories of previous Halo titles. The best parts of the multiplayer portion of the game are throwbacks to fan favorites from previous Halo titles. This is the Halo game that fans wanted. This is the Halo that gives players the experience they've always loved. It's the closest we can come to playing “Halo: Combat Evolved” for the first time again, but with the awesome pre-rendered cutscenes from “Halo Wars,” the impressive multiplayer from “Halo 3,” the strong, strong personal story from “Halo 3: ODST” and the (good) armor abilities from “Halo: Reach,” and it's a damned good time.

Campaign

The direct continuation of the story of Master Chief, now often referred to as John, and Cortana floating aboard the disabled aft section of the frigate Forward Unto Dawn picks up roughly four and a half years after players left the two floating through space toward a mysterious alien planet now know as Requiem.

The story this time around focuses much more on the emotional strife that Cortana and Master Chief undergo throughout their adventures, and attempts to humanize the typically silent super soldier most players have come to recognize as a sort of surrogate for their own experiences within the game world through the degradation and impending insanity of the artificial intelligence that has been at his side through the past three games.

This filling of the shell that was Master Chief by 343 Industries, the group now in charge of all things “Halo” from here on out, while more fully developing his character and his interactions with other characters within his universe, also takes away the ability for players to insert their own feelings and emotions into their vessel throughout the events of the game.

That's not to say that Master Chief is constantly voicing his emotions and opinions to Cortana, he is still a very silent protagonist, but he does ask more questions and often offers his companion some emotional support during her more violent episodes of what is referred to as AI rampancy – essentially a being like Cortana reaches the age of seven and thinks itself to death.

All this tugging of heartstrings does quite a good job of making players feel sadness for the Chief, who is losing the closest thing to a friend he's had for the duration of “Halos” one through four.

Aside from the shift in storytelling, gameplay is true to the franchise's tradition of solid, balanced first-person shooter mechanics.

Fan favorite weapons like the battle rifle, designated marksman rifle (DMR) and beam rifle return alongside the light rifle, suppressor and boltshot, which belong to a new class of weapons used by the first new enemy class in the “Halo” franchise, the Prometheans.

The Promethean Knight is the toughest of Chief's new foes.

This new enemy class includes flying Watchers, Crawlers that attack in packs and the very tough Promethean Knights, which are slightly tougher than the franchise's old standby Elites.

Watchers will actively seek out and protect and even resurrect Knights from the dead, while crawlers will group up and overwhelm players.

This teamwork from the Prometheans forces players to adapt new strategies during firefights that serve to spice up the typical formula from past games in the franchise.

Multiplayer

Competitive Multiplayer:
“Halo” multiplayer has always been what keeps fans playing for years after release, and “Halo 4” is likely to hold onto players well into the next few years.

A major new feature to multiplayer is the ability for players to create loadouts similar to the custom classes in recent “Call of Duty” games. These loadouts allow players to choose starting weapons, grenades, an armor ability and tactical package like unlimited sprinting or extra grenades.

Competitive modes like capture the flag, oddball, king of the hill and standard slayer return as well as an updated version of the fan-made zombie gametype, now called Flood mode, in which two players infected with the Flood from previous games seek and and infect players. There is also a new capture-and-defend mode called Dominion, in which players take control of bases and build shields and turrets to defend the positions for as long as possible.

Flood mode is not without faults. Team confusion and players finding ways to hide inside walls plague the game mode, making it near impossible to play at times. These kinds of things are fixable via post-release patches, but for the time being entering a game in Flood mode is hit or miss.

Dominion is the most impressive new mode in my opinion. It is very similar to king of the hill, in which teams capture and hold bases on a map for as long as possible, but with the added ability to fortify each base. Over time, players controlling a base can build one or two defense turrets and spawn in vehicles to use in battle.

Flag carriers are now armed with a magnum for self defense.

In addition to new modes, one new vehicle appears in the game: the Mantis. It is essentially a bipedal tank with a machine gun on one arm and a missile launcher on the other.

Multiplayer is scored differently this time around. Rather than winning based on total number of kills per team, players get points for performing various actions during matches.

Assisting other players get kills nets you points, which encourages teamwork more than in any other installment in the series.

The point system can frustrate in slayer matches occasionally because there are instances where the player on the winning team with the most kills doesn't come out on top because another player with less kills made provided assists and netted more points overall.

Certain game modes like slayer and SWAT allow for instant respawn, which is another first for the franchise. Instead of waiting the normal 5 to 10 seconds to respawn between deaths, players can press the X button to instantly re-enter the battle, which serves to speed up the action and the match overall. This ability unfortunately encourages some players to rush into potentially dangerous situations without proper planning, sometimes resulting in defeat of the entire team.

The instant respawn ability is only present in these few gametypes, however. So you don't have to worry about it in capture the flag or dominion gametypes.

Cooperative Multiplayer:
While players still have the opportunity to play through the main campaign cooperatively in “Halo 4,” the developers have included a weekly episodic cooperative campaign called Spartan Ops with every copy of the game so that players can get fresh content for at least ten weeks after launch.

Each episode contains a short movie telling the story of the Spartan IV soldiers aboard the human ship Infinity roughly three months after the events of the single-player campaign as well as five missions that are ideally played with a group, but are possible to play alone.

I found that playing the missions over Xbox Live is very laggy most of the time, and most players don't use microphones to communicate during missions, so I may as well have been playing alone.

Players take control of Spartan team Crimson essentially running errands for Spartan Commander Palmer, who pipes up periodically throughout missions to make fun of the scientists aboard Infinity and tell you so kill all hostiles in the area.

Spartan Ops offers weekly missions for players and their friends.

Every missions eventually breaks down to that simple objective: kill all the bad guys.

So far two episodes of the Spartan Ops missions have been released, and episode two's missions are the exactly the same levels as episode one's except they are played in reverse. I don't know is this is going to be a common trend throughout the episodic content, but I find it to be very disappointing.

If I want to play the same levels over and over again, I would. Don't try and tell me I'm getting “new” content each week and just flip over the content I already have.

The short movies included with each episode are entertaining, and the animation is stellar. Not much has been done yet in terms of character or story development, but there are still several weeks left of content, so I will reserve judgment of it until season one is finished.

How do you sell a problem like Next Gen?

Games Industry International had a really poignant article written by Johnny Minkley that really began to dissect the next gen launches of previous systems and what might be necessary to sell the ever looming new systems on the horizon.

The article mentioned, of course, how tired consumers are getting of the current gen systems and the cyclical money machine that the industry has become. Whatever the next gen systems are like, Minkley hit the nail on the head when he said that "the first thing to say is it had bloody better be a 'quantum leap' from the creaking innards of today's systems."

A quantum leap would be nice. More processing power, graphical capability, memory and refined tech could really help those suffering from constant Red Ring fear. Not to mention some tighter online security. Yes, Sony, I'm looking at you. But even shiny bells and whistles will not really "sell" the consoles to consumers. Sure, people will buy the systems out of habit, but will we really see them as the next gen that we've been waiting for?

Minkley said "looking at every single launch title across PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360 and PS3, I see only a single, clear system-seller in there: the original Halo." I have to agree with him, despite my own indifference to the series. When "Halo" came out with the original Xbox system, that was what I associated Microsoft's gaming platform with, "Halo." I couldn't for the life of me tell you what came out with the PlayStation 2, and the only thing that stuck out for the PS3 was "Uncharted" due to its graphical glory and interesting story. The Wii, obviously, was heralded in with "Red Steel" and other such failures, much to Nintendo fans' dismay.

Remember this? Of course you do.

"Halo" stands strong as a game that really sold a system though. You could only play it if you had an Xbox and therefore, you needed one. There are some folks who never upgraded their Nintendos, PlayStations, and even Xbox's, but merely moved from one system to another's more advanced counterpart. We all know that person who has a PS2 and an Xbox 360 or that one guy that still has his Xbox but seven thousand Sony titles to fill his time on his PS3.

But hidden in the middle of the article and a little at the tail end is the real point that Minkley nailed. Microsoft may pull ahead if it begins to make deals with cable providers and offer some sort of package deal with the new next gen Xbox's to give television as well as gaming. This would be a brilliant move and that kind of diversification of tech is what is selling most frequently these days.

Many bought a PS3 solely due to the fact that it came with a Blu-ray player installed in it. Even Blu-ray, though, had difficulty achieving widespread success. Had it become the dominant form of in-home digital media, the PS3 would have trounced any sort of effort by Microsoft or Nintendo, simply because of the system's versatility.

Next gen systems may begin fighting to provide the consumer with a jack-of-all-trades rather than a quality gaming experience alone. Personally, this makes me weep for the future of gaming if we're just trying to make compact computers that display on televisions rather than machines built to provide us with the most streamlined gaming experience we can. Really, that's what these machines have become, and if I had wanted that I would have just upgraded my PC over the years and not cared about getting a system at all.

Minkley says that the war might be fought over contracts and who can give us more bang for our buck when it comes time for release. I think he's right. What the fight should be over, though, is who can make the next "Halo" type game and really make something that draws people to buying the system rather than just giving us a load of expected next gen titles and then waiting a year for something truly special.

Rely on your squad

It's tough being a squad leader, isn't it? What with having to make sure your team doesn't suffer critical damage, ordering them around and fighting enemies things tend to get a little hairy. What doesn't help is if your squad is as dumb as a sack of Deku nuts.

Squad-based gameplay has taken some leaps and bounds in the last few years, and some tragic and hilarious crashes. Everyone remembers games like "S.W.A.T." and the original "Rainbow Six" that had artificial intelligence that was just okay. Then there are games like "Skyrim," in which your companion character's battle tactics are sometimes the subject of horrific ridicule. Oh, Lydia, will people ever forgive you?

Then there are games like "Ghost Recon: Future Soldier" that really surprise you with how good the squad is and actually make you excited when utilizing their abilities. When the squad actually does what it's told and you can rely on them, you tend to enjoy the mechanic rather than loathe it.

What is the key to this, though? Why is "Ghost Recon: FS" so much better with squad AI than "Mass Effect?" Perhaps it is the design and purpose of the squad itself.

In games like "Halo," "Mass Effect" and even "Dragon Age: Origins," your squad is meant to supplement your playstyle and abilities. Instead, your marines end up getting in front of you or holding better weapons. Or Morrigan will stand her ground in front of a horde of Darkspawn rather than run or cast a large AoE spell. And let's not forget Liara just sort of sitting there instead of tossing her biotic powers willy-nilly at Geth to help even out the playing field.

Luckily, in "Mass Effect" and "Dragon Age," you're able to pause the game and tell your squad where to go and to do certain things to avoid outright death. Frankly, telling them what to do actually makes them more effective in the first place, and one wonders why they're AI controlled at all.

Sometimes it's almost like they're just there to model their outfits.

Unfortunately, in games like "Halo" and "Call of Duty," you're left shouting "Why are you shooting at that guy two stories up and in cover and not the three people standing right in the middle of the road?!"

Games like "Ghost Recon: FS" make you weep with joy when you have AI that can lay down effective suppressing fire or actually take out an enemy that you tell it to. The big difference is that these AI characters are actually meant to be played by other human beings rather than just be a squad for the sake of being a squad.

Games like "Dungeon Siege III" prove this, too. Alone, with a single AI companion, you are able to go through the game rather easily with an AI character that can do the most area damage (rather than picking one that you feel will do precise damage) and wound everything enough for you to make kills quickly. Replace the AI character with three other human players and the team becomes an unstoppable cadre of magic, swords and guns. Honestly, it's something to try if you haven't played that game with other people. Again, these AI characters are made to be played by other people.

If "Dragon Age" had a cooperative campaign that allowed for online players to outfit and level the teammates accordingly to fit their playstyles or the style of the team, the game could be much more difficult but exceedingly more fun. Put in the dialogue system from "Star Wars: The Old Republic" and you've got yourself a game of the year.

"Halo: Reach" worked well enough when you play the co-op campaign, but other than that it feels like you're the only one fighting the enemy and the friendly AI is along for the ride. "Gears of War" co-op is also really fun to play and can be even more enjoyable than the competitive multiplayer (more enjoyable if you ask me).

When thinking about putting co-op in your game, don't think about doing it just because you've got a squad in your game and you want to capitalize on multiplayer madness. If a player can outfit and command the AI enough to where she's playing all four members of her team, then maybe you should think about implementing a co-op system to make it less challenging for them and promote teamwork. Maybe even give the players rewards for doing so. Whatever you do, for the love of Kratos, make the AI smart enough that they don't run four miles down a hill to attack a dragon you've been trying to avoid because you're too weak. Please, stop it Lydia. I love you, but stop it.

Probably one of the best and most challenging multiplayer experiences to date.

Hands on Halo 4's multiplayer modes

Master Chief has a posse, apparently.

Less than one hundred days remain until the newest (chronologically and developmentally) installment in the “Halo” series is released, and every day the hype train grows by a few cars.

Many fans early on in the development of “Halo 4” feared that is was being driven toward “Call of Duty”-style gameplay, but having gotten hands-on time with it at both E3 and San Diego Comic-Con this year I can safely say that is not the case.

This game stills looks and feels like the “Halo” you know and love, only with a few more characters and a new coat of visual and aural paint.

At E3 I got the chance to play a round of War Games, which is what the company now helming all things “Halo,” 343 Industries, calls the competitive multiplayer portion of the game. If you’ve ever played a round of competitive multiplayer in a “Halo” game, you’re going to feel right at home in this mode. It’s the same basic premise of red team versus blue team in a variety of game types including deathmatch, which is the mode I played, oddball and king of the hill.

Players take on the identity of their own Spartan-IV in War Games.

There are few new game modes including one called Regicide, in which the player with the highest score becomes the primary target for all other players.

Several fan-favorite weapons return in “Halo 4,” including the DMR (designated marksman rifle) from “Halo Reach” and Battle Rifle from “Halo 2” and “Halo 3.” Brand new weapons added to the playable arsenal include a shotgun-type weapon called the Scattershot and the Light Rifle, which acts like a fancy alien sniper rifle.

These new weapons are available for use in both competitive multiplayer and "Halo 4's" new cooperative multiplayer story dubbed "Spartan Ops."

Spartan Ops follows the crew of the UNSC (United Nations Space Command. The good guys) Infinity a few months after the end of the main, single-player storyline. It will be delivered to players over ten months after the release of "Halo 4," and one chapter will be made available for download free of charge each week. Each chapter will consist of five missions as well as a few-minute long cutscene of story material.

Not much has been revealed in terms of story for this mode because it takes place after the events of the main game, which inevitably means spoilers galore, so at San Diego Comic-Con I got a chance to play one chapter in an episode of Spartan Ops without being given any story background.

Promethean Knights are one of the new enemy units in "Halo 4."

The chapter I played involved myself and three other players moving through a mountainous, lava-ridden area toward some kind of artifact of unknown use or origin. Covenant enemies return to bar the Spartans from reaching their goals as well as a few new enemies of a species that has not yet been revealed by the developers aside from being related in some way to the mysterious Forerunners.

These new enemies are highly advanced artificial intelligence constructs, according to in-game dialog, and they work together to take down the player characters much more cohesively than the Covenant ever has in past games. If a grenade is thrown at one enemy, another can catch the airborne attack and hurl it back at the player. This type of enemy cooperation leads players to rethink their strategies, and mixes up the game just enough to make it fresh and new.

An issue I had with my time with the game was that the chapter only took about 15 minutes to complete, and consisted mainly of walking to a door and fighting off a wave of enemies while we waited for it to open, only to move onto another door and then onto the final objective. It seemed quite simple and repetitive, but that could have been because the developers chose a mission that was not too heavy on story content as not to spoil it for those who played.

One of the biggest qualms I had with the game is that none of the weapons felt hefty enough to take down the massive Spartan-IVs I was up against. I think this feeling of lack of weight comes directly from the revamped sound design, which actually threw me off pretty good for the better part of the match.

Everything sounds different than in past "Halo" games. Guns, vehicles and even the characters’ footsteps have been rethought and rerecorded

The Covenant have been redesigned to look more fearsome.

There are a considerable amount more customization options for players to choose from as well, and 343 Industries hasn't even revealed all the different armor permutations, skins and emblems yet.

Despite some fans' fears, "Halo 4" appears to be keeping in tune with the legacy left behind by its creators, Bungie, and will most likely be a huge success for 343 and Microsoft come Nov. 6 when it's released.

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Review

Fans of the Halo series won’t be disappointed by “Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary,” which delivers an incredibly loyal remake of the first game in the series’ history with an impressive graphical overhaul, and manages to add a little fan service without breaking the game.

“Halo: CE Anniversary,” developed by 343 Industries, is a celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Halo franchise. Die-hard fans will appreciate the fact that this is exactly the same game they played 10 years ago, but with a pretty substantial face lift that brings the old game into the new generation nicely. The team literally used the game code from the original “Halo,” but added a layer on top of it that updates the graphics to fit in with current-generation games.

The downfall of the graphical updates comes in the form of sporadic frame rate slow down and some textures popping in late.

These slight shortcomings do very little to affect the gameplay, and can be easily overcome by a simple press of the back button on the controller, which activates what is probably the most impressive feature in the game – the ability to flip back and forth between the updated graphics and the original graphics in real time at any point in the game. This feature allows players to meticulously scan every inch of the game to see just how far the video game industry has come in 10 years, and to experience the first chapter of the “Halo” series in a whole new way.

The updates to the game don’t simply serve as eye candy, but also make certain aspects of the original game fit better with the current direction of the franchise as a whole by adding small nods to other areas of the extended universe.

Those who play through the game using the updated graphics also have access to terminals that  give some background for one of the main characters, 343 Guilty Spark. The terminals also flesh out the story of the Forerunners, whom created the Halo on which the game takes place, and tease fans with hints at what is to come in the next installment in the series, “Halo 4,” which is slated for release next year.

The entire soundtrack, originally scored by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori, has been re-recorded for this release by the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra. Unfortunately, the updated soundtrack skips and stops regularly throughout the menus, loading screens and during gameplay. This problem is avoidable, though,  as players have the option to switch between the remastered and original soundtracks at any point during the game.

One of the more surprising features in the game is the ability for players with the Kinect add on for the Xbox 360 to issue voice commands during gameplay. Voice commands include the ability to switch between old and new graphics, pause the game and throw grenades.

The most interesting aspect of the Kinect voice functionality is the ability to scan enemies and objects, which adds information and a 3D model of the scanned object to a library that players can access from the main menu. Players without the Kinect add on do not have access to this feature, but they’re not missing much because the library adds nothing to the overall game aside from detailed descriptions of characters and weapons.

Unfortunately, actually using the voice commands is a challenge for anyone playing with their volume at a normal level because the sounds of gunfire and alien screams often drowns out the player’s voice. Even waiting until the fighting has died down isn’t enough to make the Kinect functionality worthwhile because it often takes several tries to get any of the commands to recognize.

Another ancillary feature added to the game is the ability to play the entire campaign in 3D for those players with 3D-capable televisions. I was unable to test this feature because I did not have access to a TV with 3D capabilities.

Multiplayer in “Halo: CE Anniversary” is the only place where the sense of nostalgia is lost because 343 Industries chose to run it within the “Halo: Reach” engine.

The developer included with the game a map pack for “Halo: Reach” that contains six visually reimagined multiplayer spaces that they believed to be fan favorites from previous Halo games as well as the first downloadable Firefight map.

Tweaks have been made to specific matchmaking playlists within the multiplayer component of “Halo: Reach” to emulate the same gameplay as “Halo: Combat Evolved,” but the changes don’t feel exactly spot on. The choice to use a different game engine for the multiplayer component of the game makes the single-player and multiplayer experiences feel distinctly separate, and dulls the nostalgic feelings that this game is meant to evoke.

“Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary’s” single-player experience hits all the right marks for  fans of the original game while still managing to cram in some extra story for truly invested players, but the multiplayer side of things lacks the ability to bring players back to where they were 10 years ago.