I liked infinity slayer and the new capture the flag. Both were clearly designed to prioritize individual achievement and to make playing with randoms more bearable, and I think they succeeded. Playing Bungie-style CTF with a committed, communicating team is preferable, but when you have to play with randoms, the new CTF did a good job keeping everyone on task and focused on the objective.

I didn't think I would like custom loadouts, but I ended up thinking they were pretty cool. I've never played COD so I can't compare Halo 4 to the player investment system it was apparently based on, but I thought 343 succeeded in creating a system focused on customization, rather than becoming more powerful. There are only two slots for perks, so the player is choosing what works best with their play style, rather than grinding to accumulate powerups. As an aside, I know lots of people were unhappy with having to unlock weapons and abilities, but honestly everything was unlocked so fast it didn't effect the game at all. I think I had everything I wanted within two hours. The unlocking feature was assuredly pointless, but it wasn't the colossal hindrance its been made out to be.

Finally, I liked that the machine gun-style weapons could hold their own against precision weapons, which was definitely not the case in H3 and Reach.