Now that I got some time behind it, time to review.

[theprim8]

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.

[SpaceWolf4]

It's funny you should mention the whole lag thing, because the same thing used to happen to me all the time in Halo 3. People blamed my connection, but I knew it wasn't since I have 50 down and 5 up - not to mention that I haven't played any other game that was as bad. It's just how the Halo games are from the look of things. Even Halo 2 suffered from lag in some cases. In my opinion, Reach had the best netcoding. It rarely lagged for me in that game, and shots almost always registered. I think all the Halo 4 servers need is a bit of an update now that we have a bit of a consistent population, rather than it jumping from a few hundred thousand to a million during the first couple of days or so during the game's release.

 

As for the changes, I don't really care what they do to change the game. I personally liked some of the changes. Loadouts need some work done, but they have potential to be "Halo". I think as long as ways of accessing the classic Halo gameplay are there, the community would be happy enough. This is probably where 343i messed up the most, because there is a huge lack in Custom Game options when compared to both Halo 3 and Reach, not to mention that there aren't any classic playlists. We have Slayer Pro, but from my experience that's more similar to Infinity Slayer than Classic Slayer.

 

What I do like however is that 343i made a decision that Bungie didn't make with Reach, and ultimately left a lot of fans disappointed: Having the BR and DMR in the same game. Bungie were so self-convinced that the DMR was going to work well as a replacement for the BR that they didn't include the BR in case if they needed a weapon to fall back on in future playlist updates should the DMR and Needle Rifle not meet fans' expectations. This tore the community in half, as half were happy with the DMR and the other half wanted the BR back. Of course, the solution to that problem is to have both weapons in the game, which is exactly what 343i have done. It's just a shame that there are some minor balance issues, but I suspect that it's nothing that can't be fixed through a title update.