After finally checking out how the original Bungie-developed Halo titles fared with the PC release of The Master Chief Collection, I was curious to see how the series would go from where Reach left off. ODST and Reach story campaigns were genuinely entertaining and the definite highlights for me, but at the same time I wouldn’t mind to see more of the adventurous grand space opera of Halo 2 either. Sadly, Halo 4 turned out to be none of the above. Not bad, but not particularly exciting either.
The basics of Halo 4 aren’t wildly different from previous numbered games in the series. You play as Master Chief, he’s a pretty cool guy with a regenerating shield and this time there’s no health to be healed with medkits, just like in Halo 2 and 3. You carry 2 weapons and can change them on the go if a different one is dropped by an enemy or is found on the level. The controls are intentionally more “floaty” and less heavy, closer to the classic 90s FPS, so jumping around during firefights or to quickly traverse the level can be helpful (and fun). Special suit abilities returned too and get expanded a bit, though this time you can simply sprint at any time, it’s no longer a special ability. Controlling vehicles is also still and thing and is occasionally forced in missions. Dual-wielding, though, is completely gone for whatever reason.
Even the story setup here is in many ways similar to the simplicity of the original Halo – stranded on a weird world with ancient technology, oops released an ancient being now everyone might die, gotta fix that. Very few characters, a decent amount of open levels, though thankfully varied and not copy and pasted. It all looks pretty good as well, even if the soundtrack is in general rather forgettable and boring. The story is stupidly primitive and requires you to care about a power fantasy player avatar and his relationship with his virtual friend, both of whom were never much of characters in previous games, so why even bother now. Unless, I suppose, you read all related media, in which case you might even understand some of the plot points that are brought up as if the player is fully aware of them and not like they’re being mentioned for the first time in the game franchise (I bet it’s been in some Halo-based book somewhere, though).
None of this is outright bad, even for the singleplayer campaign (as usual, I didn’t check anything else), just… well, competent. It plays well. New weapons are good (even though the lack of the plasma rifle is a shame), the controls are fine, the levels are okay, there are some neat moments, it’s almost never frustrating or anything. But I can’t say that the game ever elevates beyond being just “fine”. Perhaps for the multiplayer-focused content things are more exciting, but as a single-player campaign, this one is simply pretty dull and unexciting. I’m glad to have finally played Halo 4, but I feel like I won’t even remember what this game was in a few years.