Halo 4

Firstly could I say thank you to everyone who has been clicking like and finding my reviews helpful. I am really keen to add some good quality reviews to this Amazon.co.uk website. I felt that I had to do this as there have clearly been a lot of trolls posting dud biased reviews on various tech products.

Onto Halo 4, does anyone remember making their way through Call of Duty Modern Warfares firing range and thinking to themselves what does this mean? Well Halo 4 is not a rollercoaster / gun range Halo 4 is a real First Person Shooter / Adventure game.

The game is awesome. I was quite worried when I heard that 343 had taken over Halo development but alas I should have had more confidence in them. 343 have done a brilliant job. I won't spoil the story but this exposition into the Chief's Humanity and his relationship with Cortana (his A.I. sidekick make for a landmark adventure). We see the best of the Chief and are left wanting more.

Halo 4 takes the best bits from the trilogy and builds on them, set pieces, planet drops and battles are all epic and you will find that the guns in this Halo feel more powerful than ever. If it wasn't for the fact that this was the fourth game in the series you could argue that this the best Halo ever.

Halo 4's graphics are among some of the best. Guns look great, cut scenes look brilliant and are rendered with the in game engine but sadly some textures suffer when you see them close up equally you will find that many of the enemies disappear if they are at a draw distance which is further than the game can load/process. Nonetheless, the bright open environment are a great showcase for how beautiful Halo 4 is.

The Halo 4 combat engine feels like it truly evolved and the chief handles like a true war machine. You will find yourself hammering the Xbox pad until the very end taking down Prometheans and covenant with your rifle, butt of you gun and then a grenade. Never has the Master Chief felt this bad ass. The controls are perfect and the enemy AI will remind you of how dumbed down some of the recent shooters you've played are, play on Legendary and you will be punished the enemies do not want to die and don't want to run into your bullets you will be challenged and I strongly recommend that you prepare to die. These enemies have their own patterns and the new Promethean Knights feel very much at home and thankfully if you've read any of the Halo novels a lot is explained too.

Halo 4's multiplayer is one word. Halo 2,3 and 4 on steroids. You will love it, the new maps cater for both close-quarters and ranged combat, they've taken out the respawn timer and added ordinance drops. But these changes do make for a better game. My advice is to design a Spartan load up Ragnarok pick up a assault riffle and start blasting. Halo gamers will initially feel out of their depth but will soon feel right at home in Halo 4's multiplayer mode once they get their head around the new scoring system. There is also a new mode called Spartan Ops, its an episodic DLC themed game mode which is an episodic co-op based game mode. The level was set within a huge sandbox and had me killing enemies and pressing through to objectives, this was alot of fun and I cant wait for the next free episode.

Wrap-Up
Should you buy Halo 4?, yes. Halo 4 is new but at the same time its still the same Halo we know and love, the gameplay is brilliant and really marks the return of the first person shooter. The controls are slick and the multiplayer gameplay is as fun as ever. You will enjoy Halo 4.

+ The Master Chief is back
+ Fantastic Multiplayer
+ The story

- Close up textures
- Frame rate on system link drops considerably
- Limited replayability if you haven't got Xbox Live

With 343 Industries taking over the Halo Franchise from Bungie I had huge expectations for their first Halo game designed from scratch after the amazing job they did with the revamp of the first original game Halo Anniversary. Needless to say they never let me down, graphically the game looks stunning which is noticeable from the off, they have really put a huge effort into Halo 4 and it really shows that they are taking good care of the franchise.

If you are a fan of the series you will notice from the start that 343 have changed a few things; the guns have more realistic sound and weight to them, the grunts are now a lot more serious. At first I missed the old style Grunt which were colorful and stupid but now they sound much more serious and hold heavier guns & armor which lead to me shouting out "I can't believe I got killed by a Grunt!" or something close to that anyway, something I would hardly ever say in previous Halo games as they were a species that got in my way.

One of the only issues I had with the new Halo game was the introduction of the Prometheans or more to be precise the Promethean Knights who for me are just bullet sponges. Personally I would just shoot and shoot and shoot at them to find that have run out of ammo and if that's not bad enough there are watchers flying around healing or casting a shield over them. I know I am not the only person who dislikes them especially when playing on Legendary and you empty a clip into them to find they have teleported away from you. Along with new enemies you have new weapons, some are pretty decent like the Incineration Cannon which is brilliant when you have one in your procession however not so great when you sense the last few seconds of your Spartans life as you are caked red light of death. Other weapons like the Light Rifle, Scattershot are just revamps of current weapons and don't get me started about how useless a Pulse Grenade is, they are pointless! Yes they are!

This aside Halo 4 really does have some beautiful moments. The campaign is a pleasure to play, graphically stunning with a fantastic soundtrack that has some very memorable tunes. The Weapons sound and feel the way they should and the game feels much more serious than any of the previous in the series.
Also let me add that Co-Op is back and just as fun to play apart from two area's which forces you both to use a vehicle, if you don't keep up with your partner you are as good as dead!

Everything other than The Single Player Campaign forces you to have a Gold Xbox Live account, if you don't have one you simply can't play any of the extra features which I can understand a lot of peoples frustrations. Multiplayer I can look past as you are playing with others and this has also been a Gold privilege but the Spartan Ops should be allowed under the Silver membership as like the Campaign being a single player or Co-Op event.

This is the sole reason I have waited so long to publish my review as I never had a Gold account until recently and have only just been able to play the Spartan Ops missions and Multi Player.

The Spartan Ops missions are short story based games split over (currently) 10 Episodes which consist of 5 Chapters, most of which will have you traveling from point A-B whilst being heavily attacked from all angles or it will have you defending a point......................... whilst being heavily attacked from all angles. The levels are fun and short but hardly Imaginative in the slightest.

Multi Player is just like previous Halo games however I believe it's gone back to the days of Halo 2 online where it's actually fun to play. My only issues are slight and that's respawning next to enemies or in the middle of battles and the fact there are still people who cheat to their advantage glitching all over the place on purpose making them near impossible to hit.
In Conclusion Halo 4 is back on track, you get loads of value for your monies so long as you have a Gold account and it's everything a Halo fan should want and need until 5 comes out. I love a comment that was previously made on one of the reviews "343 have out bungie'd bungie" and that's a true saying right there. 343 obviously know what the fans want and I believe they can move the series forward without derailment.

First off let me start by saying that I am a big fan of the Halo series. After getting the game the first thing I did was to play through the campaign - Its epic! Enjoyed everything about it. I was pleasantly surprised at the graphics as well - Native 720p with FXAA implemented as well as plenty of particle effects. The framerate is also decent with it only dropping on occasions with heavy particle effects. Then I tried the multi-player....

The servers - They are so slow! Considering 343i are a Microsoft owned & set up developer this is simply unacceptable. Sometimes getting into a match can take 10 seconds and other times it can take a few minutes.

The menu's - For some reason they seem unresponsive and a little laggy. Nothing major but it bugs me.

The style - What I liked about Halo was all starting off on a level playing field. With all this "Create a class" "Killstreak/weapon drops" & "Perks" my first thought was not a good one.... Sounds like COD?

The gameplay - No more are the epic close quarter battles, the feeling of unpredictability of where the enemy maybe hiding & that feeling that your involved in something epic. Instead its a matter of who can hide around a corner and shoot long range with a rifle. It soon becomes repetitive and boring- Its far to similar to COD. Unfortunately the core Halo experience is lost.

The campaign is excellent but the multi-player is a massive let down! Its like playing Call Of Duty with Halo's graphics & art style.