Though Halo: Reach was Bungie’s last outing with the series, it was made abundantly clear by Microsoft that Halo would go on without them. Microsoft went one further and set up a development studio specifically for the Halo games, who did actually lend a hand in 2010’s Halo: Reach development, 343 Industries.
343 tested the waters in 2011 with Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary; it was well received and the upgrades it provided to the ten-year-old game were welcomed by all, and it is often considered the superior version of the game. But 2012 would prove to be 343’s real proving with the release of their first fully fledged mainline Halo title, Halo 4.
Picking up four years after the end of Halo 3, Master Chief and Cortana are still floating among the stars aboard the remains of the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn. They are awoken by a beam of light coming from a nearby Forerunner planet scanning the ship and also realise that a group of Covenant fanatics have taken up residence on the ship. The Forward Unto Dawn crashes into the planet, Requiem, where they also discover the signal of the UNSC Infinity. With Cortana now aged well beyond her standard operational limits, Chief intends to get the Infinity off Requiem and back to Earth to find Dr. Catherine Halsey and try to save Cortana. However Chief unwittingly awakens an imprisoned Forerunner warrior, The Didact, who also desires to find Earth and eradicate humanity believing them to be the cause of the downfall of the Forerunner race.
343 tested the waters in 2011 with Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary; it was well received and the upgrades it provided to the ten-year-old game were welcomed by all, and it is often considered the superior version of the game. But 2012 would prove to be 343’s real proving with the release of their first fully fledged mainline Halo title, Halo 4.
Picking up four years after the end of Halo 3, Master Chief and Cortana are still floating among the stars aboard the remains of the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn. They are awoken by a beam of light coming from a nearby Forerunner planet scanning the ship and also realise that a group of Covenant fanatics have taken up residence on the ship. The Forward Unto Dawn crashes into the planet, Requiem, where they also discover the signal of the UNSC Infinity. With Cortana now aged well beyond her standard operational limits, Chief intends to get the Infinity off Requiem and back to Earth to find Dr. Catherine Halsey and try to save Cortana. However Chief unwittingly awakens an imprisoned Forerunner warrior, The Didact, who also desires to find Earth and eradicate humanity believing them to be the cause of the downfall of the Forerunner race.
Halo 4’s plot is much narrower in scope but much richer in character development than other Halo titles up to this point. It’s very clear from the outset that 343 and Microsoft want you to digest as much Halo as humanly possible as it does draw from the comics, novels, animations, and films. But unlike its successor, Halo 5, it doesn’t require a base level of knowledge to understand what’s even happening. Instead, Halo 4 is simply enhanced if you have an understanding of the Halo universe beyond the events of the games as a lot has happened since the events of Halo 3 which the game never really explains to you.
The core of the story centres around Cortana’s rampancy and descent into madness. AI’s, like all machines, don’t last forever and Cortana has lived well past her expiration date at this point. Her character is fractured and now coming to terms with her own mortality, which does lead to some great moments for her and Chief. Chief has more dialogue in this one game than he did in the entire Bungie trilogy, and whilst for some that is irritating, I personally love that 343 are trying to make Master Chief more than a soldier with a gun.
The secondary characters are interesting but aren’t given a whole lot of depth. Character’s like Commander Laskey are brought in from the extended universe material and so can seem underdeveloped if you haven’t already been introduced to them. Whereas characters like Sarah Palmer are introduced but swiftly forgotten about as the game really only serves as an introduction to them as they will play a bigger role in extended universe stories from this point onwards.
It’s Chief and Cortana’s story, and whilst that certainly has it strengths, it does seem like everything else gets side-lined in favour of giving them as many emotionally driven moments as the game can. Even The Didact, this big bad guy who wants to end humanity, we don’t learn anything about him other than he’s a former Forerunner warrior who was imprisoned because he wanted humanity dead in the time before the Forerunner’s fired the Halo rings.
Gameplay to Halo 4 is reminiscent of Halo: Reach for the most part. Sprinting is now a permanent ability, but armour abilities make a return as well. Most of them are themed around the new Promethean enemy types and include the ability to temporarily see-through walls, create a drone that will fight alongside you, or produce a hard light shield in front of you.
The Covenant enemy types are reduced down to what you would find in Halo: CE, so just Grunts, Elites, Jackals, and Hunters. But the game does introduce the Prometheans which fight for The Didact. These enemies do function differently to the Covenant in multiple ways, but more often than not they prove only to be an annoyance rather than a fun enemy to battle. You have Crawlers which are dog like creatures, they’re very quick but also very easy to kill. Knights which largely function the same as Elites, however they can teleport and also produce the third enemy type; Watchers. Watchers fly around and produce the other Promethean enemy types with shields, throwback grenades you toss, and resurrect dead Knights. So, fights with Prometheans always boil down to killing all the Crawlers and Watchers as soon as you can, then mopping up the Knights last, always. Unlike Covenant encounters where you strategically pick off the units that have the best vantage point, or are more likely to be on the offensive, with the Prometheans it’s all offensive all the time and it’s just about working out where the Watchers are so everything else is defenceless. Unfortunately, you have to do it quick too before the Knights spawn in more Watchers. It just becomes tedious very quickly.
The Prometheans bring their own weapons with them, but they are more often than not just variations of weapons that humans or Covenant use anyway so they don’t really need a great deal of explanation.
The missions in Halo 4 aren’t inherently bad, but they are all underwhelming as there’s no real key identifying features or unique aspects to them. Almost all of them simply rely on you to go through samey environments and clear out rooms of enemies. A few of the missions are very long too which makes them feel like a chore to play. Vehicle sections are very limited and infrequent, and especially following Halo 3 which has some great large scale levels Halo 4 feels very underwhelming and forgettable in comparison.
The core of the story centres around Cortana’s rampancy and descent into madness. AI’s, like all machines, don’t last forever and Cortana has lived well past her expiration date at this point. Her character is fractured and now coming to terms with her own mortality, which does lead to some great moments for her and Chief. Chief has more dialogue in this one game than he did in the entire Bungie trilogy, and whilst for some that is irritating, I personally love that 343 are trying to make Master Chief more than a soldier with a gun.
The secondary characters are interesting but aren’t given a whole lot of depth. Character’s like Commander Laskey are brought in from the extended universe material and so can seem underdeveloped if you haven’t already been introduced to them. Whereas characters like Sarah Palmer are introduced but swiftly forgotten about as the game really only serves as an introduction to them as they will play a bigger role in extended universe stories from this point onwards.
It’s Chief and Cortana’s story, and whilst that certainly has it strengths, it does seem like everything else gets side-lined in favour of giving them as many emotionally driven moments as the game can. Even The Didact, this big bad guy who wants to end humanity, we don’t learn anything about him other than he’s a former Forerunner warrior who was imprisoned because he wanted humanity dead in the time before the Forerunner’s fired the Halo rings.
Gameplay to Halo 4 is reminiscent of Halo: Reach for the most part. Sprinting is now a permanent ability, but armour abilities make a return as well. Most of them are themed around the new Promethean enemy types and include the ability to temporarily see-through walls, create a drone that will fight alongside you, or produce a hard light shield in front of you.
The Covenant enemy types are reduced down to what you would find in Halo: CE, so just Grunts, Elites, Jackals, and Hunters. But the game does introduce the Prometheans which fight for The Didact. These enemies do function differently to the Covenant in multiple ways, but more often than not they prove only to be an annoyance rather than a fun enemy to battle. You have Crawlers which are dog like creatures, they’re very quick but also very easy to kill. Knights which largely function the same as Elites, however they can teleport and also produce the third enemy type; Watchers. Watchers fly around and produce the other Promethean enemy types with shields, throwback grenades you toss, and resurrect dead Knights. So, fights with Prometheans always boil down to killing all the Crawlers and Watchers as soon as you can, then mopping up the Knights last, always. Unlike Covenant encounters where you strategically pick off the units that have the best vantage point, or are more likely to be on the offensive, with the Prometheans it’s all offensive all the time and it’s just about working out where the Watchers are so everything else is defenceless. Unfortunately, you have to do it quick too before the Knights spawn in more Watchers. It just becomes tedious very quickly.
The Prometheans bring their own weapons with them, but they are more often than not just variations of weapons that humans or Covenant use anyway so they don’t really need a great deal of explanation.
The missions in Halo 4 aren’t inherently bad, but they are all underwhelming as there’s no real key identifying features or unique aspects to them. Almost all of them simply rely on you to go through samey environments and clear out rooms of enemies. A few of the missions are very long too which makes them feel like a chore to play. Vehicle sections are very limited and infrequent, and especially following Halo 3 which has some great large scale levels Halo 4 feels very underwhelming and forgettable in comparison.
Visually Halo 4 was the best-looking game on the Xbox 360. It was the last major exclusive the console had before the Xbox One released just over half a year later, and it does for the most part look like an Xbox One title even on the 360. The Xbox One version which comes as part of the MCC really only smooths out the framerate to 60FPS and if playing on a 4K compatible console then can upgrade the textures to 4K. It looks good from start to finish, but it does lack the visual flair of the Bungie titles. Forerunner structure’s in particular feel like almost any other sci-fi architecture with its imposing grey towers and blue highlights. Bungie were certainly fans of grey architecture but at least it felt unique in design, 343’s feels too clean and too generic much of the time.
The audio is also great as ever but is also the first Halo title not scored by Marty O’ Donnell. This time Neil Davidge takes the reigns. The memorable songs are very good but a fair few of them do tend to fade into the background. His best is sometimes better than what Marty produced, but the quality is inconsistent at times.
Halo 4 also has a second campaign, Spartan Ops. Intended to be played co-op, Spartan Ops tells the story of the UNSC Infinity crew following the events of Halo 4. You play as a member of Fireteam Crimson and witness the discovery of various key items which play a key role in setting up the events of Halo 5. As well as giving a bit more insight into Dr. Halsey’s involvement with the enemy Covenant forces which is alluded to at the start of Halo 4. This mode is only worth playing in co-op, and even then, isn’t a whole lot of fun. It simply dumps you in locales from the main campaign or multiplayer maps and throws enemies at you until it feels you’ve had enough. There’s no challenge as nothing is lost if you die, you simply respawn nearby with all progress remaining intact. Plus the story isn’t particularly interesting and it doesn’t answer many questions, instead just raising more to get you hyped for Halo 5.
Halo 4 is nothing short of underwhelming. Whilst the gameplay is fun (when not fighting Prometheans) and it looks great, the story often falls short of the expectations it sets and as a result will give you little reason to want to experience the story again unlike previous Halo titles. Spartan Ops is tedious and unfulfilling which doesn’t make up for anything.
The audio is also great as ever but is also the first Halo title not scored by Marty O’ Donnell. This time Neil Davidge takes the reigns. The memorable songs are very good but a fair few of them do tend to fade into the background. His best is sometimes better than what Marty produced, but the quality is inconsistent at times.
Halo 4 also has a second campaign, Spartan Ops. Intended to be played co-op, Spartan Ops tells the story of the UNSC Infinity crew following the events of Halo 4. You play as a member of Fireteam Crimson and witness the discovery of various key items which play a key role in setting up the events of Halo 5. As well as giving a bit more insight into Dr. Halsey’s involvement with the enemy Covenant forces which is alluded to at the start of Halo 4. This mode is only worth playing in co-op, and even then, isn’t a whole lot of fun. It simply dumps you in locales from the main campaign or multiplayer maps and throws enemies at you until it feels you’ve had enough. There’s no challenge as nothing is lost if you die, you simply respawn nearby with all progress remaining intact. Plus the story isn’t particularly interesting and it doesn’t answer many questions, instead just raising more to get you hyped for Halo 5.
Halo 4 is nothing short of underwhelming. Whilst the gameplay is fun (when not fighting Prometheans) and it looks great, the story often falls short of the expectations it sets and as a result will give you little reason to want to experience the story again unlike previous Halo titles. Spartan Ops is tedious and unfulfilling which doesn’t make up for anything.
STORY: 7/10
GAMEPLAY: 6/10
PRESENTATION: 9/10
LIFESPAN: 6/10
SCORE: 6/10
Whilst it is good to see 343 try to make the Master Chief a more engaging character and tell an emotionally driven story akin to that of Halo’s Reach and ODST, Halo 4 doesn’t quite stick the landing and instead just awkwardly wobbles around trying to be dramatic.