: Heheh, Halo 4 is all over the map. Some of the sound design is really neat,
: like the fuel rod gun's explosion's distance-based effect, and some areas
: in campaign (like the start of Forerunner, if you're wearing headphones)
: just plain work .

: But there's definitely some weird muffledness to the sound, and you have
: stuff like the plasma staplers.

Never heard "plasma staplers", but I love it.

First time I've heard someone saying that the Halo 2 SMG sounded that powerful. If you're looking for oomph in your sound effects Halo 2 was probably the nadir for a lot of weapons--Reach, CEA and Halo 4 generally improved in that regard.

A lot of it is just personal preference, though. I really like how the Needler in Halo 4 sounds crystalline in its firing (as opposed to only having that sound effect when it supercombined in previous games.) For a lot of people the Hammer was a massive step back, but I kind of enjoy the plink sound effect. The Sniper Rifle loses the sentimentality of its fire and reload sounds from the previous games, but from an objective standpoint I think I like the Halo 4 one more. The FRG feels like the base sound was made by dropping a manhole cover, so that association stains it :)

I do hope we get a sound comparison like we did with CEA, though. We haven't really gotten great clean sound to compare things as of yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUs2-D-ah_g