So Now that I've had a good amount of time, and have played enough halo 4 to say I have a good feel for it, I gotta give my run down.
Campaign: IN a word. Awesome. That was such an amazing experience! I had a great time from moment one. The story had me hooked, the mechanics felt good, the coop is good, everything is good. I couldn't find anything bad about this campaign. The graphics are gorgeous, I just can't say enough about it.. The only thing I could've wished for was a longer story in all, but give the direction 343 has chosen I can't really see a whole lot more being added. Finally, the way the chief is portrayed, the view into him as a human, not just a mindless soldier, it's just incredible.
Spartan ops: Mostly good here. I like how its episodic, how my friends can join me or I'm on my own, and no limit to deaths really. However, I feel like the second episode putting us over the exact same locations again felt really weak. I'm hoping it's just because the direction of the story demanded it, and that next we will have new locations to fight, but only time will tell there.
War games: This is where things get dicey for me a bit. I'm a long time halo fan. I personally thought the last good halo mp was halo 3. Halo reach just didn't do it for me, felt like bungie had lost direction. Now the newest is fighting very hard for the top position for me, but there are flaws that may bury it for me.
Good: Team work. Without it a team based game will be lost even to the biggest group of noobs. A single player will be hard pressed to take down two opponents at once. Sometimes a well place grenade. Smart tactics with a shotty, but just a straight up br to br fight, don't hold your breath. Intelligent team play is the name of the game here. Weapons balancing is extremely good, each weapons with its place in the world and having a slight advantage over one in a certain area. IE br55's amazingly easy headshots vs the dmr's extreme range ease. These are all great and when used right will dominate your opponent and also determine how you fight. Also I like the loadouts and the armor abilities and so on, none of them seem particularly over powered.
The single thing that has killed soooooo many good mp experiences that this is showing issues with is the lag comp. I have a good connection, 30 down and 10 up. My latency is always extremely low, and I have good equipment for routers and so on, so I have no choke points and when I get the rare game where everyone is on par with me it works great. However, when I get penalized and literally am dying from what seems like a prolonged burst from a battle rifle it's extremely annoying. It's not as bad as say MW3 was, but this isn't what halo is supposed to be, giving the guy with a bad connection the advantaged. In one instance of flood a guy jumped into the middle of us, and since we all saw him coming we all four shot at him several times. I reviewed it in theater mode, lag comp had them so far ahead of us that we literally all dropped while what seemed like we just stood there. In reality we all fired at him but then just suddenly died on my screen. I never even saw him swing. It's moments like there that are severely damaging. Add to this some really odd glitches, like showing up in flood able to kill everyone and having an ar? Showing up as an enemy to your friendly being betrayed because your match made team mates are too damn stupid to figure out what's up? Come on 343, that's bad! Don't tell me you didn't know about this before release either, it happens far too often to not realize it.
The future of the updates will determine how much I play this game. I honestly am blown away by the campaign, the spartan ops will hopefully bring more fun, but that multiplayer is too much of a mixed bag. I want to love it, but if they don't curve that lag comp, or find a better way to match me with better connections so I don't have to worry about this, then I'm gonna have to put the mp behind me. It simply gets too annoying to shoot someone in the had and not have it count.
