: Um. No. Those levels are awesome. I love it when the flood are coming at me
: from all angles and that one Carrier form, somehow, sneaks in from behind.
: There's ALWAYS cover and vantage points. The only time I disliked the
: Flood is during the one section of Cortana where there were nothing but
: Flood Ranged Forms. On Legendary that section is a absolute nightmare, b/c
: there's not enough range ammo to take them out without great risk. I
: always considered that section of Halo3 as Bungie's great "screw
: you" to Flood haters.

No, those levels are repetitive, boring, and Cortana was literally scrapped together when they decided to shorten Floodgate and just pasted the terrain into Cortana.

: I think you don't like these levels because you prefer to deal with AI that
: expresses tactical movement. Dodging, grenade throwing, flanking, etc.
: That plus the Covie don't rush you at every turn. There's nothing wrong
: with that, but we get that with EVERY level in Halo. Minus these select
: few. These Flood only levels are a chance to let loose without giving you
: much time to catch your breath. And that's why I love them.

Being overwhelmed by overly aggressive AI is never fun. That's part of the problem with the Promethean design in Halo 4, something which 343i has admitted was a bad decision. Your basic encounter scenario should have a player safe zone, a neutral zone, and enemy zone. You progress through a level by pushing into the neutral zone and trying to eliminate the enemy and take their zone. The AI should push back into the neutral zone but should never overwhelm the player's own safe zone.

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Let's talk about the end of Sierra-117.

You come to the dam and see the enemy controls the majority of the field. You can fire at them with your sniper or BR and they'll return fire, but you're up on a cliff and can back up to cover to recharge your shields.

You jump down into the neutral zone once you've cleared some grunts and brutes out. You see a carbine jackal and more grunts firing at you. You can push into their zone and melee or shoot them, back into the building behind you into a safe zone and recharge your shields, etc.

The entire time, you know that Brute Chieftain is over on the end of the bridge with his hammer. He's waiting and you need to push through enough of the enemy zone to reach the end of the encounter and take out the big objective. Once you've pushed through the entire enemy zone and cleared it out, you now control the entire dam with your marines. You've got an entire safe zone.

But Phantoms come in and drop troops on the opposite side of the river and make a new enemy zone. You turn around and push backwards into what had been your safe zone that is now an enemy zone again. The entire time, phantoms are keeping the center of the map a hostile zone too, until Hocus blasts them out of the sky and you clean up the stragglers.

There was a really cool article about map design on BNET awhile ago. I'll see if I can find it, but it basically describes how you setup an encounter in a map design.

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My problem with the Library, Cortana, etc. is that these Flood levels push from all sides and don't give the player a lot of safe zones. Cortana is better about this, but even your few safe areas are underwhelming and the Ranger Pure Forms prevent it from being overly safe.

You can see how Prometheans teleporting into your safe zone, Crawlers charging into it, and Watchers flying over and shooting you can ruin this concept. Players need to be able to fall back and catch their breath so that when they are pushing into enemy zones, they can feel overwhelmed but never that the level is impossible.

That's why a lot of people and developers criticize the Library and other Flood-heavy levels. Combine that with the potentially infinite respawning enemies and you've got a bad time. Now, those types of encounters can be fun occasionally but should not comprise an entire level. There should be a few spots in a level where you don't have the option for a lot of cover and you have to stop and think about how you want to approach the encounter.

Basically, map design and enemy AI behavior on those levels isn't the best and could be better, in my personal opinion. :P