Just wanted to voice my opinion here and get some thoughts. I'm an indie dev myself and everytime I play anyone else's game I try and be as objective and go in with no expectations, but again this is halo and I'm a fan. lol. No spoilers in this btw.
First the good.
The visuals were much improved over previous iteriations. The clean look that is known for halo games is there, but even better effects in halo 4. I really like the backdrops and texture work, especially the enviroments. The face models are vastly improved as well.
Sound FX. The guns and little sound effects are amped to the max. It honestly sounded like battlefield 3's audio FX at some points, very visceral and in your face. Bravo.
Armor abilities were an improvement over Reachs to me, their placement and useage seem decent enough.
Voice acting. Superb. ZERO complaints, every single voice over was top notch nearly.
Now the bad.
Level design. In my opinion the level design was poor. The environments seemed smaller than any other halo game with the exception of maybe halo 2, thats a toss up. Lots of corridors and wrap around 1 path enviroments with little space to roam in most cases. Hit a switch, backtrack, rinse and repeat. I did like the pacing for a decent % of the campaign, but overall it seemed very redundant.
Scale. Which is connected to level design. In my opinion this game didn't have the sense of scale considering the story. Some of the levels with tank etc came close.
Characters. Wheres the dual sworded crazed elite mini boss character, leader of the rogue splinter faction? I wanna see him take out a few spartan 4s and be Master Chief and save the others, showing them all who the real spartan is with the halo drums POUNDING in the background while I kickass. Thats just something I just tossed out, but you get the idea. I understand the focus on cortana and MC, but come on, even then we need experiences to strengthen the bond.
AI. To me it seem the AI in combat was really focused on showing you their ability to move laterally, or jump hop. Many times elites will allow you shoot them without moving, even on legendary. Thats not happening on halo 1-3, or even reach. Overall the AI was the least impressive of the series to me. Knights do some interesting things, but their actions seem pretty telegraphed. Friendly AI drivers? Terrible beyond words. Spartan 4s in combat? Basically marines with cool voiceovers and shields. I never once seen them do anything that made me think wow, thats a spartan. I want to see that type of stuff, not pasted over behaviors. I saw them standing around more than anything.
Music. Easily the worst in the series in game, where is the music? You can't tell me while testing this game no one brought that up?? The menu music etc isn't bad, but ingame I felt we were missing something constantly.
Overall the entire campaign had a vacant feel, lots of great effects and sound, felt very AAA, but just a shell. The discovery element seemed absent still. I liked the attempt, but it was as if a COD producer rolled in with all these tools and designed the campaign, not quite Micheal Bay style, but more of a quick summer popcorn flick halo with some pasted over elements from previous games. Not sure where to rank the campaign, I liked it ok, but the actual game just didn't match the visually fidelity and polish to the senses. I wouldn't mind seeing chief have a shoulder charge while running armor ability, a cyborg stampede of sorts if you will, extra damage smashing enemies into walls etc. Something. The MC is just so large and imposing he should have some incredibly visceral movements, but overall he controls like 90% of the other grunts in other games. In crysis they let you do some of these type of things, but in reality, MC is even more powerful and imposing than that character. He sounds tough, looks badass, but like the rest of the game, it's mostly a bluff. I'm hoping 343i gets a huge whiff of inspiration working with new tech coming up. Not a terrible first take on halo.
