RisingPho3nix

I personally couldn't be happier with Halo 4. To say the graphics are worse than Halo 3 is something I just don't get. Except for the Master Chief's model, Halo 3 has not aged well. The level of detail in the character models is far higher than it was in Halo 3, and the facial animations are much smoother. I also think the campaign is one of, if not the, best in the series. It took me about 7 hours 33 minutes to solo it on normal, and I remember thinking on a number of occasions that the firefights I was getting into were particularly intense. Much more than those in Halo 3 and Halo 2. For me, Halo 4 is exactly what I wanted it to be. The same, but different. I do agree though that the multiplayer user interface is flat out broken compared to Halo: Reach's. It is anything but user friendly.

I adored the campaign. I think Halo 4 has the best one out of the whole series. Knowing that this was the first in a new trilogy certainly helped, as that let me know straight up front that not everything would be explained or shown. I can't wait to see where Halo 5 goes.

In my opinion, Halo 4 has the best campaign and story of the series. I love that we're finally getting to see a more human side of the Master Chief. Also,

I personally thought Halo 4 had THE best ending of any video game I've played. The Master Chief is an awesome character, but like the games, he needed to change and evolve. What better way to make a character do so than by having them experience something that is utterly beyond them? John-117's relationship with Cortana is the closest thing he's ever had to an actual relationship, and so losing her would make him feel things he's never felt before. It would make him face his own humanity in a way that nothing else could. The Master Chief has been the impervious, invincible badass for three amazing games. It is high time we see some cracks in his armor.

One of my favorite things about Halo 4 that I didn't cover in my own thread was how smoothly the cinematics run. My BIGGEST problem with Halo: Reach was how roughly a lot of the cinematics played. The level of detail in the character models was incredible, but so many of the cinematics did not play smoothly at all. Then Halo 4 comes out and has the best presented cinematics in the entire series. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I could not be happier with Halo 4.

Absolutely. Custom loadouts are a big step up. To me, Halo 4's multiplayer feels like a hybrid of Halo 2 and Halo: Reach. I think perhaps my favorite thing about the multiplayer so far is that the Assault Rifle isn't useless anymore. I thought it was an absolutely pitiful weapon in both Halo 3 and especially in Reach. I also like how the DMR works now. I don't know what they did to it, but it feels like a true marksman rifle now instead of just a BR replacement.

Yeah, I hear you with the whole "new trilogy needs new music", but while I think it suits the game quite well, it's not as memorable or unique as Marty's music was. I do like however All in all, the abscence of Martin O'Donell's music is one of only two negatives I have found in Halo 4. The other being that the armor options for your custom Spartan are almost all ugly as hell.

I also think they knocked the story right out of the park. It was exactly the kind of story I was hoping for.

Long story short, in my opinion, Halo 4 is the best Halo game so far. (TL;DR Version: Halo 4 is the same, but different, and that's exactly what I was hoping for.) Perhaps my feeling this way is because I didn't go in with any real expectations. If anything, I only expected it to play the same, but feel different. I was not expecting it to feel like I was playing a Bungie Halo. Perhaps one of my biggest, and longest standing, hopes for Halo was one that grew after reading Fall of Reach and First Strike. That hope was that in future games, we'd get to see a more human side of John-117. And this is why I absolutely adore the ending of Halo 4. For 3 games, John-117 has been the embodiment of the perfect, invincible soldier. And for those 3 games, it was awesome! But I have always played Halo for the story, first and foremost, and I my initial excitement for Halo 4 was limited because I thought that it was going to be more of the same on that front. I didn't think the Master Chief would go through anything that would really test him, and so I was less excited to step back into his armor. I am so happy that I was proven wrong. Also, on another note, I don't want the Master Chief to die at the end of this new trilogy. At the same time, I also know that unless he changes and evolves into a more human character, he won't have a place in a more peaceful world, and so the writers would have to either kill him off, or pull another Halo 3 ending. So because I don't want either of those endings, I want the Chief to evolve and become a little more truly human. Since that is the direction Halo 4 seems to be steering him, I could not be happier with his continuing story. I do miss Marty's music though.