blustrkr's Halo 4 Review Xbox 360, 50-100 hours played

This is where the downfall of Halo began. Microsoft had a huge marketing budget and a huge development team (343 Studios, formed solely to work on Halo titles after Bungie left the franchise) taking on this project, but it wasn't able to capture the same essence of Halo that Bungie was, sadly. It feels like everything in the game lost its weight and significance, and the result is another generic futuristic "shoot aliens" game. Really not what you'd hope for from a huge brand new studio taking on a beloved series such as Halo.



The graphics can be nice to look at though. A lot of glow and ambient occlusion was added to the environment. Despite this, I enjoyed the environments in Halo 4 less than any of the previous games.

The audio saw a downgrade, as Marty O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori are no longer involved, since they followed Bungie to work on Destiny. The music score was noticeably worse along with the sound effects and folly.

The new weapons and the new Promethean race feel very boring and uninspired. I found myself not caring for the story anymore either because it just got kind of ridiculous.



It seems to me like 343 tried so hard to change everything up and "bring something fresh to the franchise" just for the sole purpose of being different than Bungie, which was a mistake of colossal proportions.

I'm pretty disappointed with it, but I still played all the way through and spent hours on multiplayer because Halo was near and dear to me. If you really love Halo or need a decent FPS on sale, this might be a good option for you. Overall there are better shooters out there though (like any of the previous Halo games).



Hopefully I don't sound like too much of a debbie downer, but this was a huge bummer to see what they did with such a legendary franchise. Unfortunately, this trend continued with Halo 5 and Infinite...