Strix
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Game Information
Release Date : November 6th, 2012
Developed By: 343 Industries
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Platform: Xbox 360
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Synopsis (Wikipedia)
Halo 4 is a first-person shooter video game developed by 343 Industries for the Xbox 360 console. It is the first installment in a new trilogy of Halo games, named the Reclaimer Trilogy. The game was released worldwide on November 6, 2012, with the exception of Japan where the game was released on November 8, 2012. Halo 4's story begins four years after the ending of Halo 3; the player assumes the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier. The story is mainly set on a Forerunner planet, where Master Chief encounters the alien race known as the Covenant and ancient warriors of the Forerunner empire known as the Prometheans. Master Chief is accompanied by the artificial intelligence construct Cortana.
Halo 4 was officially announced on June 4, 2011, at E3 2011. On September 26, 2012, it was announced that the game's development was complete. Halo 4 grossed US$220 million on its launch day, with an estimated gross of $300 million in its opening week, marking a new record for the franchise. The game received generally positive reviews from professional critics on release.
Campaign
The Campaign takes place several years after the events of Halo 3, where Master Chief and Cortana are boarded on a ship known as Forward Unto Dawn. They are traveling through space until Cortana wakes Chief telling him that the Covenant are on the ship. After you fight off the enemies, you get sucked into this gravity well, and land on a new planet called Requiem where most of the story line takes place. As time goes on, Cortana starts acting a bit strange and Chief questions her, and Cortana reveals that an AI's lifespan is normally seven years, and she is eight years old so she's going though this mode called Rampancy which will end up killing her. Throughout the Campaign you manage to come across a new breed of enemies, they are known as the Prometheans. These new enemies and the Covenant Forces end up creating an alliance later on in the story and are commanded by the Didact. I'd tell you some more about it but I don't want to spoil to much so you should try it out yourself, if you read the books and watched all of the cinematics and things like that, it would probably make more sense to you.
Generally, the campaign had a lot of effort put into it, which made me like it. The cut scenes were amazing and 343 Industries did a great job exploring the Halo Universe to an extent that Bungie never told.
Multiplayer
343 Industries decided to change up a lot of things in Matchmaking starting off with its name. In previous games it was called Matchmaking, and now its called Infinity, or War Games. Either way they're the same thing.
So they decided to introduce a lot of things that previous Halo Games didn't have, some of those include Join in Progress, Ordnance Drops, The ability to always sprint, and having Perks. Let me get into a little bit of detail on how I feel about some of these changes that they made.
First off we have Join in progress, I personally thought it shouldn't have been added in the first place. There is no need for join in progress, it does nothing to ones experience but make the searching times faster which shouldn't be a problem at all, I can wait about five more seconds to find a game. When you search for a game and join one mid-match, chances are you're going to be losing because people quit when they are losing, not when they're winning unless they get disconnected. Another problem with this feature is that when you are in the Pre-game lobby it doesn't balance everything out, there could be five people on your team and two people on the other and it'll still start the game, its uneven and shouldn't be that way.
Now we have Ordnance Drops, I thought this was a great feature in the game when playing Infinity. To sum up what happens is that when you get an assist or something like that to help out your time your meter fills up, once its full all the way you'll receive an Ordnance drop which allows you get get some grenades, a power weapon, or a power up. A problem with it is that if you pick a power weapon or find a power weapon spawn on the map and die with it, it'll take about ten seconds for it to disappear. In past Halo games you could pick up a Sniper, die with it, go back to it thirty seconds later and it'll still be there, now when you back to your body your gun will be gone. This was intentional by 343 Industries because they didn't want too many power weapons on the map which I find very frustrating. I'm not sure if they put this in place because there were Ordnance drops or what.
Then there is Sprint which plays out very cleanly in Halo 4. Its nice to always sprint because it makes everything more fast-paced and on top of that I could have my own Armor Ability whereas in Reach I either have Sprint, or something else.
Last we have our Loadouts. These seem to be fine with me because nothing would get me more upset in a past Halo game than to start off with an Assault Rifle. This time around I don't have to start off with one and could choose any gun I want to and a lot of these Primary Weapons are balanced out which sort of makes everything just fine. In the loadouts you could also chose a Tactical Package and Support Upgrade which are pretty much perks. I find them to be alright just as well because they give more some extra support when playing and an advantage over others.
To give some information about the Gameplay, I find everything to work out pretty positive. Just some polishing could fix up some things like tweaking the BR and Carbine and make it able to compete with the DMR would be nice, and another thing would be good is if when you get shot there would be no flinch and you'll just get hit out of scope.
At its core, Halo 4's Multiplayer could be something really significant here. It meets the criteria to be possibly the best Halo Multiplayer around beating out Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo: Reach but 343 Industries did some things to make it fall under Halo 3 and just a little bit over Halo: Reach. I find Multiplayer to be fun, just please fix some things up!
Forge
To start off, the Halo 4 Forge Mode isn't something totally different than how it was in Halo: Reach. It's an amazing feature in Halo 4, but really isn't that different than the previous title at all. The only difference was that there were some 'tweaks' or minor changes.
Certain Affinity didn't do much to make Forge this outstanding feature. Sure, they gave us three different maps to Forge on but that isn't enough. A bad thing is that when you get near the water on Ravine, you will die from the Hard Kill zone so its pretty much impossible to add water into your maps which wasn't a problem with Halo: Reach's Forge Mode. Something that they should of added was to just give us a flat environment to Forge on, since right now its too bumpy or something to Forge on the grass or rock terrain or whatever map you're forging on. A simple, flat piece of land could benefit the Forge Community in a positive way because that's pretty much what we've been wanting for a long time. (Even though I'm not that much involved in Forge ever since the middle of Reach's lifespan)
Anyways, they did decide to add some useful things and those were the magnets, duplicating objects, and the option to lock an item in place. The magnets make it easier for new comers to get into Forge and makes it so you have a much more cleaner map. I find that Duplicating an object is probably the best out of all because there is no need to scroll through the menu to get your desired piece. You could easily just duplicate it which makes the whole process much faster. Locking an object in place can be useful as well, especially if you're merging many different objects together because you won't have to worry about screwing something up.
Overall, I do appreciate Forge for what it is. It gives us players to do something when we want to get away from Matchmaking. I'm a bit disappointed because more things weren't added, but it's still something extraordinary and hope it gets major improvements as time goes on.
Custom Games
I didn't get to screw around much in Custom Games so far, but I found out that this time it seems more limited than past games. They removed some variants like Juggernaut which I guess was replaced with Regicide, which I didn't find too appealing. It seems that currently Custom Games don't seem to be a bit part in Halo 4 yet because of 343s lack of support on the File Browser.
I honestly have no clue on why the File Browser in-game hasn't been fixed yet, or Waypoint File Browser. They had a lot of time to get these things ready and they aren't even ready several weeks after the launch. I wonder if they thought that they should just disregard it for a while because they figured no one would want to share their map anyways or what.
343 stated that this time around things will be more customizable, and right now I'm not getting that. I hope in the future they do a Title Update to change all of that.
Controls
At first I thought the Controls were going to be something hard to adjust to since all the people at E3 2012 were saying that it was confusing. Once I played I thought it was all easy as could be. I play on Bumper Jumper and figured it would be hard to manage my Armor Abilities because there is Sprint as a default Ability but now everything works just fine. I could easy crouch, use my armor ability, and sprint whenever needed.
It seems like they wanted to focus on new comers as well so they added a new Control Layout that's extremely similar to the Call of Duty's default layout where to zoom in you'd press LT and to crouch its B, well there is a layout just like that!
So getting used to this game shouldn't be something that is totally confusing at all, although playing this game then going to a previous Halo title may cause some confusion.
Rating
9.9/10
Overall, this is a fantastic game. There are some issues that need to be addressed but I'm sure that they'll be fixed and altered soon as time goes on. If you haven't played it then I say you should go out and rent it and see if its worth buying or not.
Release Date : November 6th, 2012
Developed By: 343 Industries
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Platform: Xbox 360
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Synopsis (Wikipedia)
Halo 4 is a first-person shooter video game developed by 343 Industries for the Xbox 360 console. It is the first installment in a new trilogy of Halo games, named the Reclaimer Trilogy. The game was released worldwide on November 6, 2012, with the exception of Japan where the game was released on November 8, 2012. Halo 4's story begins four years after the ending of Halo 3; the player assumes the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier. The story is mainly set on a Forerunner planet, where Master Chief encounters the alien race known as the Covenant and ancient warriors of the Forerunner empire known as the Prometheans. Master Chief is accompanied by the artificial intelligence construct Cortana.
Halo 4 was officially announced on June 4, 2011, at E3 2011. On September 26, 2012, it was announced that the game's development was complete. Halo 4 grossed US$220 million on its launch day, with an estimated gross of $300 million in its opening week, marking a new record for the franchise. The game received generally positive reviews from professional critics on release.
Campaign
The Campaign takes place several years after the events of Halo 3, where Master Chief and Cortana are boarded on a ship known as Forward Unto Dawn. They are traveling through space until Cortana wakes Chief telling him that the Covenant are on the ship. After you fight off the enemies, you get sucked into this gravity well, and land on a new planet called Requiem where most of the story line takes place. As time goes on, Cortana starts acting a bit strange and Chief questions her, and Cortana reveals that an AI's lifespan is normally seven years, and she is eight years old so she's going though this mode called Rampancy which will end up killing her. Throughout the Campaign you manage to come across a new breed of enemies, they are known as the Prometheans. These new enemies and the Covenant Forces end up creating an alliance later on in the story and are commanded by the Didact. I'd tell you some more about it but I don't want to spoil to much so you should try it out yourself, if you read the books and watched all of the cinematics and things like that, it would probably make more sense to you.
Generally, the campaign had a lot of effort put into it, which made me like it. The cut scenes were amazing and 343 Industries did a great job exploring the Halo Universe to an extent that Bungie never told.
Multiplayer
343 Industries decided to change up a lot of things in Matchmaking starting off with its name. In previous games it was called Matchmaking, and now its called Infinity, or War Games. Either way they're the same thing.
So they decided to introduce a lot of things that previous Halo Games didn't have, some of those include Join in Progress, Ordnance Drops, The ability to always sprint, and having Perks. Let me get into a little bit of detail on how I feel about some of these changes that they made.
First off we have Join in progress, I personally thought it shouldn't have been added in the first place. There is no need for join in progress, it does nothing to ones experience but make the searching times faster which shouldn't be a problem at all, I can wait about five more seconds to find a game. When you search for a game and join one mid-match, chances are you're going to be losing because people quit when they are losing, not when they're winning unless they get disconnected. Another problem with this feature is that when you are in the Pre-game lobby it doesn't balance everything out, there could be five people on your team and two people on the other and it'll still start the game, its uneven and shouldn't be that way.
Now we have Ordnance Drops, I thought this was a great feature in the game when playing Infinity. To sum up what happens is that when you get an assist or something like that to help out your time your meter fills up, once its full all the way you'll receive an Ordnance drop which allows you get get some grenades, a power weapon, or a power up. A problem with it is that if you pick a power weapon or find a power weapon spawn on the map and die with it, it'll take about ten seconds for it to disappear. In past Halo games you could pick up a Sniper, die with it, go back to it thirty seconds later and it'll still be there, now when you back to your body your gun will be gone. This was intentional by 343 Industries because they didn't want too many power weapons on the map which I find very frustrating. I'm not sure if they put this in place because there were Ordnance drops or what.
Then there is Sprint which plays out very cleanly in Halo 4. Its nice to always sprint because it makes everything more fast-paced and on top of that I could have my own Armor Ability whereas in Reach I either have Sprint, or something else.
Last we have our Loadouts. These seem to be fine with me because nothing would get me more upset in a past Halo game than to start off with an Assault Rifle. This time around I don't have to start off with one and could choose any gun I want to and a lot of these Primary Weapons are balanced out which sort of makes everything just fine. In the loadouts you could also chose a Tactical Package and Support Upgrade which are pretty much perks. I find them to be alright just as well because they give more some extra support when playing and an advantage over others.
To give some information about the Gameplay, I find everything to work out pretty positive. Just some polishing could fix up some things like tweaking the BR and Carbine and make it able to compete with the DMR would be nice, and another thing would be good is if when you get shot there would be no flinch and you'll just get hit out of scope.
At its core, Halo 4's Multiplayer could be something really significant here. It meets the criteria to be possibly the best Halo Multiplayer around beating out Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo: Reach but 343 Industries did some things to make it fall under Halo 3 and just a little bit over Halo: Reach. I find Multiplayer to be fun, just please fix some things up!
Forge
To start off, the Halo 4 Forge Mode isn't something totally different than how it was in Halo: Reach. It's an amazing feature in Halo 4, but really isn't that different than the previous title at all. The only difference was that there were some 'tweaks' or minor changes.
Certain Affinity didn't do much to make Forge this outstanding feature. Sure, they gave us three different maps to Forge on but that isn't enough. A bad thing is that when you get near the water on Ravine, you will die from the Hard Kill zone so its pretty much impossible to add water into your maps which wasn't a problem with Halo: Reach's Forge Mode. Something that they should of added was to just give us a flat environment to Forge on, since right now its too bumpy or something to Forge on the grass or rock terrain or whatever map you're forging on. A simple, flat piece of land could benefit the Forge Community in a positive way because that's pretty much what we've been wanting for a long time. (Even though I'm not that much involved in Forge ever since the middle of Reach's lifespan)
Anyways, they did decide to add some useful things and those were the magnets, duplicating objects, and the option to lock an item in place. The magnets make it easier for new comers to get into Forge and makes it so you have a much more cleaner map. I find that Duplicating an object is probably the best out of all because there is no need to scroll through the menu to get your desired piece. You could easily just duplicate it which makes the whole process much faster. Locking an object in place can be useful as well, especially if you're merging many different objects together because you won't have to worry about screwing something up.
Overall, I do appreciate Forge for what it is. It gives us players to do something when we want to get away from Matchmaking. I'm a bit disappointed because more things weren't added, but it's still something extraordinary and hope it gets major improvements as time goes on.
Custom Games
I didn't get to screw around much in Custom Games so far, but I found out that this time it seems more limited than past games. They removed some variants like Juggernaut which I guess was replaced with Regicide, which I didn't find too appealing. It seems that currently Custom Games don't seem to be a bit part in Halo 4 yet because of 343s lack of support on the File Browser.
I honestly have no clue on why the File Browser in-game hasn't been fixed yet, or Waypoint File Browser. They had a lot of time to get these things ready and they aren't even ready several weeks after the launch. I wonder if they thought that they should just disregard it for a while because they figured no one would want to share their map anyways or what.
343 stated that this time around things will be more customizable, and right now I'm not getting that. I hope in the future they do a Title Update to change all of that.
Controls
At first I thought the Controls were going to be something hard to adjust to since all the people at E3 2012 were saying that it was confusing. Once I played I thought it was all easy as could be. I play on Bumper Jumper and figured it would be hard to manage my Armor Abilities because there is Sprint as a default Ability but now everything works just fine. I could easy crouch, use my armor ability, and sprint whenever needed.
It seems like they wanted to focus on new comers as well so they added a new Control Layout that's extremely similar to the Call of Duty's default layout where to zoom in you'd press LT and to crouch its B, well there is a layout just like that!
So getting used to this game shouldn't be something that is totally confusing at all, although playing this game then going to a previous Halo title may cause some confusion.
Rating
9.9/10
Overall, this is a fantastic game. There are some issues that need to be addressed but I'm sure that they'll be fixed and altered soon as time goes on. If you haven't played it then I say you should go out and rent it and see if its worth buying or not.
