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| My H4 review - Campaign (Gameplay and Story) | |
| Posted By: Avateur <avateur@gmail.com> | Date: 12/29/12 10:10 p.m. |
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Halo 4 is filled with surprises. I had MANY of my own opinions about Halo 4 before the game launched based on videos of people playing, from commentaries that friends of mine and the internet in general said about it from conventions, and general marketing. I was very, very excited for campaign and Spartan Ops, but multiplayer looked like it was going to be a huge disaster. I've found myself surprised about a great many things since the launch, and I feel I've played it enough to finally express my opinions about Halo 4. What is Halo 4 trying to be? What was 343 Industries' intent? First and foremost, the UI for H4 is terrible. Someone needs to go back and study H2, H3, and Reach to see how to design a UI for a Halo game, because this design choice was terrible. Now, onto the campaign! Obviously, spoilers ahead. Let's begin with: Gameplay and Design The first cinematic with Halsey set the tone for the game. I was very, very intrigued. Where was this game heading? Why exactly are they asking Halsey these questions? Then we wake up from cryo, the game gets off to a very interesting start, and honestly the first level is pretty gripping. What a way to start things off. 343 Industries absolutely captured me and sucked me in, even with the quick time events. Even the second level was great. I'm not going to get into a level by level breakdown, but I had to make clear that this game starts out with the right pace and footing. The levels themselves were gorgeous. 343 Industries absolutely did a fantastic job as far as graphics are concerned. As for the game's audio, I'm at a total loss. Plasma Pistols that sound like UNSC Pistols, the Warthog sounds awful, the BR sounds weak, and in general I don't know how they got all of the audio so wrong. The soundtrack is excellent, but music just seems to play whenever it wants as opposed to trying to fit certain moments or emotional tones. As a whole, particularly in regards to gampelay, I found that I wasn't being challenged. I started on Heroic and played solo. Most of the deaths I experienced I felt were extremely cheap deaths (Knights warping over to me to do an awesome one hit kill while I'm zoomed in and fighting off another Knight or a bunch of Crawlers), and the new Promethean enemies in general were a very boring enemy to fight. The Covenant have gotten stale, and I wasn't thrilled to be dealing with them so much again in H4, but at the same time they were the only enemy in the game giving me any sort of challenge. As such, the encounters with the Covenant were much more rewarding and worth while interactions than those with the Prometheans. It doesn't help that the level design wasn't all that fantastic. Absolutely unnecessary invisible barriers in places that seem like they don't need any. Largely linear environments (granted many of the previous Halo games had linear missions), but the linearity grew frustrating at certain points. The level with the Mammoth was obnoxious, slowing the pace of the game and killing me if I tried to drive across what, at the time, I thought were normal waterfalls. 343 Industries loves to talk about not impeding the natural flow of gameplay (in multiplayer and campaign), but did a great job of it here. In other missions (many), they forced you into the same area and wanted you to go destroy the three power generators. Over and over. People were not happy with Bungie for making you go through the same levels backwards in previous games. Well, although 343 Industries didn't have us do this here, having to repeat what feels like identical cookie cutter areas in the same level or throughout multiple levels gets old very quickly, especially when there's a never ending supply of Prometheans who are more tedious and boring to fight than enthralling and difficult. Honestly, I didn't enjoy playing H4 that much by myself. I see almost no replay value in it. And that's where things get interesting, because I have played Co-Op on Legendary through the game and have absolutely had a blast. 343 Industries has somehow succeeded in making a VERY fun game to play with friends, but not so fun or interesting at all by myself. This is both a success and a failure, and a very big surprise. I never expected to be so disappointed and let down by campaign, nor did I expect to have even more fun playing co-op than I do alone (considering my personal trend with previous Halo campaigns). As an aside, why do they have to rip you from the gameplay each and every time you have to press a button? Same with Spartan Ops. It was an absolutely awful game design choice and should NEVER be repeated in future Halo games. Story The story itself is where things get the most interesting. The tone that was set for me early on begins to wear as the game begins to make it fairly clear that Halsey is never going to show up again. And sure enough, she never does. Cortana and Chief go on and on about finding Halsey and pushing forward to get back. How might they do this? Well, conveniently (and I am aware that it's a plot device, so I'll overlook the unlikelihood of this event) the Infinity has happened to stumble upon the Chief's location right as stuff is about to go down and right as Master Chief is getting into trouble again for the first time since H3. Great. Maybe Halsey's on board. Or at the very least maybe we can get back to Earth. But in trying to warn the Infinity to stay back for fear of them being sucked in, we accidentally unleash an ancient evil that has been waiting forever and ever to bring humanity to its doom! The Didact is actually very compelling and his reveal was masterfully done. He rips you from the ground and right to him... only to throw you away like a busted toy, re-enter his Floating Sphere of Doom, and leave. Well, we get off lucky. But he is a super evil guy, so he's probably got some master plan he's been waiting to unleash forever. Benefit of the doubt. The issue is now whether or not we can get to Halsey with a threat to humanity so huge being unleashed. This conflict in the story is well executed. We have a duty, but at the same time the one Chief loves is slowly but surely losing it. What can we do? It's from this point that all major plot points start to fall apart. We follow the Didact's Floating Sphere of Doom to the Infinity to find that Didact is not doing anything at all whatsoever. Okay, so he's gathering intel and preparing for his actual plan of attack. He may be a tactical genius, considering that he's been out of commission forever, why rush into a battle blind? Who knows where humanity's progressed to since he last dealt with them. Which leads to the next problem. No one is asking any questions about anything. Not Master Chief. Not Cortana. No one. Who is this Didact guy? Why's he doing what he's doing? Humanity was around back in the day? He's had issues with them? Thank goodness the Librarian's ghost showed up to help evolve us and give us almost no backstory or understanding to that. To be frank, if I didn't know as much about the Halo Universe and games as I do, even with the Terminals in H3, I would have no clue about what the heck is going on at this point. I'm still not entirely sure how Librarian happened to genetically enhance the Chief or the extent of what said enhancements can do (aside from surviving Composer blasts). All of this aside, there's a lot of talk about the Mantle, humanity's failure to obtain it because we can't even get creatures like the Covenant or beings like Prometheans to bow to us, and how that means we still need to be wiped out. This is where the Terminals come in handy. They're actually very well done. It's unfortunate that they rip me from the story and the gameplay and make me go to Waypoint to view them (I didn't see a single one until after I'd beaten the game). The Terminals do a great bit of explaining about this entire situation. At the same time, it's made pretty clear that the Flood (Precursors?) are the largest problem here, yet when the Didact awakens he's still all about dealing with humanity instead of the Flood. We get no indication that he's even wondering if the Flood is still around. Alas, there are sequels for that, I guess. Back to the game's story, Captain Del Rio is basically a moron and completely overblown in the way he's written so that the player learns to just hate this guy. How dare he talk to Master Chief this way. Well, the writing so bombastic that it served to make me laugh and pull me out of the story. He's not a believable character. He should have just jumped up on the projection table, started jumping up and down stomping his feet, and yelling, "I AM MAD AND IN CHARGE AND HOW DARE ANYONE ELSE TELL ME WHAT TO DO OR NOT LISTEN TO ME!" We get it, he's a jerk. And then Lasky helps us leave the ship. No problems. The Captain doesn't even try to stop us? He just wants to head right back to Earth and have us arrested? Well, all of that really doesn't matter because in the end we get to leave the ship and go after the Didact anyway, and if not for the Infinity leaving, we're probably screwed at the end of the game. Plot device, also convenient. The Didact still does nothing. We find him again, literally just floating there. But it's all good because he's going to go somewhere else. And we're going to follow. And we do. Halo Installation 03. We're not going to ask about that? We're not even surprised? Yeah, the Composer, I get it, but aren't there Flood down on that Halo ring, too? Remember what happened with the Flood on the first two rings? We could have a SERIOUS problem on our hands. Then again, the people on the space station are looking at ways to decommission them, so it must be in good hands. We need to nuke the Composer and find Halsey and get to Earth. Unfortunately, none of that happens and everyone on board gets zapped and the Didact gets his Composer. To this point we have still had no direct confrontation with the Didact or felt the impact of the Composer. We had no chance to gain emotional attachment to the people who just got zapped by it. Time to head to Earth to stop him. So we do. Thank goodness the Infinity is there to help us out. We might finally get our showdown with the Didact now. And we do. Quick time event showdown, Cortana doing all of the fighting for us through the light bridge, and us detonating a nuke in our very own hands after Didact falls into the Doom Beam. Earth got blasted, but we never feel its impact. How many died? Did he take out an entire city? State? What just happened? When he fell through, did it zap him, or is he still around? Yes, these are left unanswered for sequels, but even at the end of the game we've had no real struggle or emotional conflict with the Didact beyond the fact that he's a bad guy and we need to stop him because he doesn't like humanity. The emotional punch came when I thought that 343 Industries actually killed off Master Chief. Just whoa. Where's Halo 5 going? Nope. Somehow Cortana put us in a box and grew a physical form for a temporary moment. Cortana's "death" is absolutely emotional and touching, but all of the illogical circumstances surrounding that final cutscene completely ripped me out of the story and gameplay and destroyed my suspension of disbelief. In the end, we never found Halsey because Halsey was never really a plot point. Even though the game opened with her and the entire game was spent talking about her with the goal of reaching her, there was never even a possibility that it would happen because 343 Industries never even intended to bring her into the rest of the game. And the Didact, aside from the first and last encounters with him (if you can call them as such considering the quicktime event and our total lack of interaction with him and his never posing any real threat), never did anything. The game had absolutely no urgency to it, the story wasn't exciting, and by the end became a huge letdown. Conclusion Overall, the H4 campaign has far more things going against it than positives, but can still be an extremely fun and good time with friends. I can't say I have any desire to really play through the campaign again solo (a first), but I'll gladly play with buddies. The level design is at times illogical, tedious, and repetitive, while the story itself falls flat due to the poor tone settnig opening with Halsey that has absolutely nothing to do with the story, and a villain who is nothing more than a paper tiger that poses no real threat or challenge to the player or to the emotional impact of the game. The ending with Chief and Cortana doesn't feel earned, and it also feels cheap due to the nuke situation, and thus does not redeem the other shortfalls.
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