Halo 4 is the first game in a new trilogy by 343 Industries who took over the Halo franchise from after Bungie decided to leave Microsoft. It goes without saying 343 Industries have a big task on their hands as Bungie’s Halo is considered one of the first person shooters of recent times.

Now let’s take a look at the game.

Halo 4 takes place four years after the events of Halo 3 and sees a new fight begin as you fight Didact a powerful Forerunner Promethean who wishes to wipe out the galaxies greatest threat, humanity.

The game kicks off with the Covenant attacking Master Chief’s ship and Cortana waking the Chief up to defend it. As you fight your way through Covenant forces to defend it a giant Forerunner world open up and drags the Covenant forces and the Master Chief into the Forerunner world known as Requiem.

On Requiem you continue to fight the Covenant when you learn the UNSC Infinity is on its way to save you, you rush to try and stop it from getting stuck inside Requiem along with you.

While fighting through various Covenant forces you come across and fight with an unknown enemy called the Prometheans. As you fight pas them to try and shut down the gravity well you accidently awaken Didact, a powerful Forerunner Promethean who imprisoned by his fellow Forerunners. On his awaking he takes control of the Prometheans and announces his plans to wipe out humanity.

As the game progresses the Infinity gets trapped inside Requiem too and your mission to save the Infinity and humanity really begins. You work with the other UNSC to defeat Didact and the Covenant forces that have teamed up with him and save humanity.

There is far more to the games story then that as there is also another story with Cortana, Master Chief’s AI which is beginning to deteriorate as she fights off rampancy, but as she tries to fight it off she is slowly beginning to go mad.

The missions in the game are well rather bland once you look past the story. The missions are basically fight off all the enemies in the area around you and reach your target goal.The missions are varied up between on foot and in vehicle, which does break up the fact you are just killing waves of enemies to get to a goal. The vehicles available are all pretty well known apart from one or two which are the ‘Mantis’ a powerful mech like vehicle and the ‘Broadsword’ which is used to fly close to the hull of Didact’s ship avoided the moving walls and shooting shields and turrets in an attempt to get to him and a powerful artefact called the consumer.

As I mentioned above Master Chief and Cortana have their own story alongside the overall story of trying to stop Didact. Their story is brilliant, funny, and at times kind of sad. You can tell from this game that both characters respect and even to a degree love each other very much and one would do anything to protect the other, which happens several times during the campaign. The story between the two is told mainly in two ways and that is through their comm. Chatter and the various cutscenes the game has, both these show Cortana’s struggle against the rampancy that is consuming her and Chief’s desire to save her.

Now with good there is also bad and Halo 4 is no exception. While there is nothing truly bad in the game there is one thing that annoys me and that is the Covenant forces in the game. At times you could be forgiven for thinking that the Covenant are games main bad guys and the Prometheans are working for them, as the Prometheans rarely show up apart from when you are inside Forerunner structures. It is nice to see the Covenant, but I felt after been told we would be getting a new enemy I didn’t expect to be fighting the Covenant as much as I thought. Also it is unexplained if the whole Covenant joined Didact or what the state the Covenant is in right now after the war between the Covenant and humans ended four years ago.

My overall impression of the campaign is that it is among the best Halo campaigns yet. It has its poor moments, but it also has its great emotional moments from start to finish.

Halo 4 sees a lot of new additions in the way of enemies, weapons, and abilities.

In terms of enemies the most striking new enemy are the Prometheans a robotic like race which comes in three types: crawler, watcher, and knight, each enemy has at least 3 different variants apart from the watcher of which there is only one variant. Crawlers are abundant and are the most common enemy you will run into on Requiem, they are easy to kill but due to their large numbers you can easily become overwhelmed if you are not careful. The knight and watcher is an interesting pair as they usually fight side by side The watcher which it is pretty easy to defeat can be annoying as they defend the knights and crawlers by deploying shield in front of them, they can revive knights at times, and catch and throw back grenade at you. The knight is the most powerful and it can take a good few hits especially if it has a watcher with it. Some knight variants can be tougher to beat than other with the ability to teleport away from you or to zigzag at speed and attack you with a sword. Moving away from the Prometheans we have the covenant, there is no major change to them apart from the fact that the Brutes no longer feature in the game. It is good to see a new array of enemies which at times can be rather difficult to beat.

Weapons in Halo 4 have changed a bit with the introduction of Promethean weapons which come in several forms including a shotgun, assault rifle etc. Promethean weapons like themselves are very robotic with some neat animations when you pick them up (they basically appear to form in your hand), the weapons are pretty powerful and pack a nice punch. There is also a Promethean shock grenade, personally I didn’t find them effective in the campaign but they could potentially be better in multiplayer. Humans and Covenant get new weapons with the likes of the sticky detonator, SAW, and storm rifle to name but a few. Some existing weapons have had a graphical improvement. The new Promethean weapons are impressive, but thankfully they aren’t super weapons that you need to have to defeat tough enemies.

Halo 4 comes with eight armour abilities, some like the hologram are from reach, but the majority are new. The new abilities are pretty good with the likes of the auto sentry great for when you need some extra fire power and the hardlight shield is great when you are beginning to get overwhelmed and you need to find cover. The full list of abilities include: Hardlight shield, hologram, Promethean vision, thrusters pack, jetpack, auto sentry, active camouflage, and regeneration field. The new abilities are all pretty situational in campaign, but while you can say the same about some abilities in multiplayer some abilities aren’t as great in multiplayer as they would be in campaign for example the thruster pack which is for quick dodging doesn’t work as well in the multiplayer as it does in campaign. The sprint ability is not in Halo 4 because player can now sprint by pressing down on the left analog stick.

Now it is take a look at the part which most people will be playing and that is the multiplayer. Multiplayer is split into two parts: One is ‘war games’ which are competitive multiplayer and the other is ‘Spartan ops’ which are story driven operations which can be done on your own or with friends.

One of the first things you will likely notice is the ‘Spartan hub’ which is where you customize your Spartan IV’s armour, emblem and loadout, and check your career and what daily and weekly challenges are available for you to do for bonus experience.

As I said above there is loadout customization which is something new to Halo as before you were given a number of fixed loadouts you couldn’t change, but now with Halo 4 you can customise your loadout to your liking. In loadouts you can pick your primary and secondary weapons, grenades, armour ability, tactical package, and support upgrade. Everything up to the tactical and support have being always been in the series but these two are new. Tactical package and support upgrade are permanent bonus abilities you can give your Spartan such as increasing the speed your shields regenerate etc.

To use certain items in your loadout you have to unlock them by levelling your character and using Spartan point which are gained every time you, both level and correct number of SP are needed to unlock and use a particular item.

The changes to the loadout system could be seen by some to make it like its competitors , but honestly the changes to loadout system is great as it allows more diversity in your play style as you can choose more freely how you want your character setup. Also in game you can call in a weapon or support drop by getting a required score from kills, assists etc.

Now let’s look at the actual gameplay. First of all we have ‘War Games’ which as I mentioned above is the competitive multiplayer side of the game. In War Games there a good number of modes to choose from including team slayer, oddball, capture the flag etc. there is one noticeable new mode and that is ‘flood’ which is an infection style game featuring the parasitical flood. There are also more than 10 maps on offer, but some are only available for certain maps.

‘War Games’ is fast, fun, and competitive just like previous Halo multiplayer. The addition of the loadouts brings more of an unknown to the game as you don’t fully know what the enemies will have loadout wise.

Now there is Spartan Ops which is a continuation of the Halo 4 campaign. Spartan Ops takes place six months after the events of Halo 4 and brings a story driven campaign where you play as your Spartan IV in a series of chapters by yourself or with up to 3 other players. Spartan Ops missions are broken down into seasons with each season containing 10 episodes, 50 playable chapters, and 10 CGI videos to continue the story of the season along.

Spartan Ops missions are rather interesting when you put them in context of a story, but once you remove the story element the missions are pretty bland as they involve killing waves of enemies and getting to your objective.

Also available is the map editing tool ‘Forge’ which feels the same as the previous version with some additions that address the issues people brought up from the last version of Forge in Halo Reach.

There is one minor issue with multiplayer as a whole and that is you have to install the multiplayer component from a second disc, so make sure have about 8GB of free space on your hard drive.

Halo 4 looks rather stunning and really does push what the Xbox 360 can pull off. When you finally walk into your first outdoor mission you will see just how stunning the game as everything looks crisp and clear. The just didn’t improve the look of the game, 343 industries has improved the animation, AI, physics, sound (this is practically good on the first mission in my opinion), and more.

Now for the issues with Halo 4, there was in fact only one major issue I came across and that was when I was playing the campaign the frame rate pretty much dropped off the cliff to I would say make 3 frames per second, but it only happened for a few seconds and it never happened again.

343 Industries have done a phenomenal job with Halo 4, creating a great emotional and memorable campaign and a great fast paces and story driven multiplayer.

SCORE: 90%

I highly recommend this game for both Halo and non Halo fans alike.

Halo 4 Information

• Developer: 343 Industries (Certain Affinity developed forge mode)
• Publisher: Microsoft Studios
• Genre: first person shooter
• Rating: 16
• Platform: Xbox 360
• Release date: November 6, 2012
• Website: http://www.halowaypoint.com/halo4/en-US/