Halo 4 First Impression

[Twinreaper]

As I am sure a lot of people have seen from my ranting in the shoutbox, I have very mixed emotions regarding Halo 4. So rather than spam the shoutbox and hash it out with other members, I felt it best to list my quarrles with it here, with comparative items to show why my opinion is such....

 

1. For once, for the love of god, can we have a campaign or story that does not almost mimic every other Halo title?!? We start off on a ship, fight our way through the ship and crash land on a planet (Halo CE, Halo 2 - crashing, Halo 3 - ship crashing)

To top it off, we are greated with a lame Halo CE / Halo 3 style vehicle run on the 3rd level. I almost felt as if I was playing the last level. No originality or great story direction.

 

2. Gameplay. The player controls and physics constraining the character felt as if I was playing a completely different game. The turning and general movements feel clunky, and at times it feels like a struggle to move your character towards the goal. The radar is useless and enemies appear to sometimes just come out of nowhere. With previous Halo games, the radar worked...period. And the Ai, seems to have been beefed up heavily even while playing on easy missions. For example I decided to play a level on Easy, and the ammo on weapons were gone in a blink of the eye. The plasma Pistol in particular gets about half the shots off as the previous versions, and gets worse on harder difficulties. Aiming is clunky and unsteady, and just god awefull. The melee system no longer will boost you a bit if your close enough to normally hit someone. I attacked an Elite head on and hit the button a second too soon and nothing happened...complete miss. In previous Halo titles, you had a bit of magnetism to aid you in melee'ing someone in the form a quick little boost. nothing here.

 

3. Graphics. Forget those nice shiny polished pre-baked cinemarics we got early on, or the carefully published gameplay. Every single texture I have encountered has no real detail map applied, and further the LOD is horrid. Yes they look nice from far away, but when I get up close, it shouldn't look like looking through a dirty smudged Coke bottle. The shaders they employ are lacking any real HD textures. I wouldn't be suprised to find not one single 2048x2048 or 1024x1024 texture in the entire game. Most of them look like poorly made 512 textures with even ****tier mipmaps. Even MC's visor lacks any real luster. it almost reminds me of a poorly spray lackered plastic turd. It's shiny and plastic looking and at times during the game, it almost looks as if it doesn't belong there. Even the bump maps blow. When we see chief after he crashes on the planet and you see his hand next to the assault rifle....the bumpy textured hand/suit mesh thing, doesn't even stand out. it looks flat and lifeless. it should be emplying a high hes bump map to bring those etches in the mesh to life. Don't even get me started on the material effects....

 

4. Environments. The Forerunner stuff looks good, but at times it looks very plain and lifeless. I can only take flat angled pillars with basic grey/white for sooo long. it almost reminds me of Halo 2 cut and paste levels like Sentinel Walls. The outdoor environments are almost completely devoid of secondary objects like decorators and grass, trees, or any other item. The water is just plain ******. Run through the water, and there is almost no splash or ripple. I took a hog thru one early on, and I was Wad-da-faq just happened?!? Before we used to get a nice splash and water spread that came up as a material effect applied to the shader for it. Nope...gone. The skiyboxes are ok, but not as great as I expected. For instance the interior of the world. I expected to see something much better than orange and faded lines. very boring and poorly done. For that matter...did you actually look at the Capital ships during that segment. Seriously...go back and zoom in on them when they slipspace in.....they look like complete ****! Way to go on the active scenery guys!

 

5. vehicles. banshee?!?! What the ****?!?!?! Why on earth would the controls of the banshee not be the same as the player would have them without the vehicle In all other Halo titles, the controls never changed when you got inside one. I play with Legacy Inverted, and because they are not inverted when i get inside a banshe...I can never ever use a banshee. The Warthog. it looks like a Tonka truck with rollbars. it's big, clunky and sounds like a dying deisel generator. it sounds horrible and handles even worse. It hss almost no stopping power. It took me 4 direct hits head on as fast as it would go, to kill one grunt. The turret was nerfed greatly as well. They said before it was going to be unlimited use.....but oh yeah...it overheats still....thanks for lying and thanks for diminishing the value of having a warthog in your arsenal. If you dont believe me, perhaps you need to go back through and play Halo 2 and 3....

 

6. Sound. Every single sound reverbs horribly and almost sounds as if they are coming from a muffled megaphone. Seriously guys, you spent how long on this, and yet the sounds are worse than an old Betamax recorded video. every weapon sound does not fit the game. Halo is a fantasy/alien shooter and yet everytime I hear a weapon fire, I think I'm playing something else. there is a reason why Bungie never made any drastic weapon sound changes..BECAUSE THEY WERE PERFECT THE WAY THEY WERE! The ambient music for normal play is blahhh...and the overture music for certain sequences seems forced and does not fit the moment. A few times I'm playing and it's frantic as hell...but it's soft mellow music playing?!? What?!?

 

7. Servers and stats. It was broken before we played. First thing they post up at launch is "we are having problems yadda yadda. **** should not be broken 1 minute after launch. Bungie never had any network issues for any Halo title a minute after launch, and certaintly not stat resseting. For a company as large as Microsoft to **** up that abd on an important title like this..makes me doubt MS and 343i's commitment to quality products. No dedicated servers?!? yet again we revert back to the failed newtrok model of client hosting being passed off. How and when is this even a good idea? Halo should never be left to client hosting. By doing so, you completely say "**** you" to the customer by basically saying that Live is useless since their service and hardware is doing nothing but initially pairing you up and checking map checksums. Everything else, gets passed off to a player. So why am I paying money for Live, if I or another player is hosting a match?!? Seriously...give me a good thought out explanation someone...

 

Overall I cannot understand why people will jump up to defend this game against my opinion. Everything I point out can be compared to Halo 2/3/Reach, and you can clearly see where my points are valid. I could understand if I was pulling this out of my ass, but the proof is in the game. And before soemone goes and tells me my TV is screwy...I just bought a brand new Samsung 55" HDLCD. and have played Halo 4 on a total of 3 different HD LCD TV's and I have seent he same thing over and over again. It's not my TV's and it's not my eyes or ears...the game graphically and audibly took about 3 steps back. You would think that a developer would be able to produce a much better product in 4 years than what we have. And don't give me a load of **** about how they wanted to go ina different direction. Their intention ewas to make a good Halo game, not reinvent the wheel. They specifically stated that they wanted to take the game back to the core of what made Halo, Halo. All I got for my $60 + dollars was something that is NOT Halo and is almost a complete waste of my time.

 

End rant!

[Vendetta]

I agree completely on the helmet, looks like ****.

The water, i also agree with, as well as the inverse on the banshee.

Oh yeah, and the plasma pistol. sounds crap.

 

But the grunt going head on with the warthog... Obviously not head one. I can kill an elite and a few grunts not going full speed.

[The Director]

We didn't crash in Halo 3 though... o.O And I'm pretty sure we didn't crash in Halo 2 was well...

 

And at least there wasn't a warthog run at the end of this one. lmao

[Cry0G3n1c]

To me its a cool game. Just enjoy the damn thing. Who cares what it sounds like. This is halo not real life

[UncagedRage]

Some good points in there...but really dude? I'm with Cry0 here. Just enjoy the game for what it is. I only played the first level last night and a couple games of match making and over all I was pretty blown away. I would agree that some of the sounds are off...hate the Warthog sound, but I'll get used to them. I'm too busy playing the game to critique every little subtle aspect of it.

[Rei]

I haven't played campaign yet -- was playing team death match with friends all night, and it was just crazy fun. I haven't touched a Halo game in over a year so it was quite refreshing to see the fast action gameplay again (was adjusted to COD camping style) and figuring out what guns and equipments to use. I was getting owned in a lot of matches...and loving it! This means days of practices for me lol. My only complaint so far is the lack of maps rotation in team slayer. I'd love to play 4v4 on Valhalla. Oh, I don't like the new lobby either but it isn't a biggie.

 

So far I feel at home with Halo 4. I'm definitely a happy camper.

[Twinreaper]

You don't understand. I don't play matchmaking, I play halo purely for custom fun and campaign only. This is the only time in my long long history with Halo that I have ever been disappointed with the campaign or game overall. I doubt time will afford me a different view, but I am trying. I'm not saying I am done with it, I am just simply stating my first impression of playing it for a few hours. So please, commenting with a reply like "just enjoy it" or "give it a chance" are really irrelevant. If I do not enjoy it, it is just that. Nothing can change it, and every Halo game is not for everyone. Look how many people hated Reach, and yet I seem to be getting more hate and spam about my feelings with 4, than anyone else did with Reach.

[Stargazer_10]

^{I will agree with pretty much everything on your list. However, i don't want you to lose your desire to finish playing the campaign if you haven't already finished it.. There are some really good missions in the game. Two of my most memorable missions (I don't remember the names or there numbers) are the ones where your kind of racing.. One is when your in a ghost and your trying to get through a canyon and the canyon walls are moving in trying to cut you off.. This one is memorable to me because i was playing it in co-op with a buddy of mine and when we saw a wall closing in we would try to ram each other into it and it just provided an enjoyable experience between me and my buddy.. The other one is when your in some sort of space jet that looks kinda like a pelican, i guess, and your inside the shields of a bigger ship, a much bigger ship, and your trying to reach the core or something.. The whole mission was like a star wars reference to when luke was in the x-wing and hes flying down the path avoiding laser turrets and stuff... I'd have to say that was my favorite mission out of every halo mission in any of the games. Keep in mind that i did it in co-op and i probably won't feel the same way if i do it alone.}

 

Oh, and i also agree 150 percent about how its stupid for such and important franchise to not have dedicated servers.