Halo 4 Review

Microsoft Game Studios, Bungie Software | Nov 13, 2010

Score: 10.0

"While closet virgins will surely criticize the game's mainstream appeal and near-perfection, anyone who isn't a nerdgineer will find the wait has been worth it."

The Good

Blurry graphics make fighting hordes of monsters difficult in an exciting way • Great promotional campaign to got us hyped to play this game • Game-altering glitches make every game a new experience • Doesn't do anything new, which is a good thing • Master Chief's body armor looks awesome

2007 was ultimately a lackluster year for video gaming carried on the Heruclean shoulders of Halo 3™, which comfortably secured "Game of the Year" awards with its palpable and mammoth sense of greatness. The series' cornerstone, released to minimal commercial hype, went on to become the "Fifth-Largest Economy in the World" as lauded by publisher Microsoft. Given the fairly modest revenues that the Halo™ franchise has created for the company, it shocked many here at the GameSpot offices to learn the trilogy was coming back for one more installement. Like its predecessors, Halo 4™ leaves little room to question its quality and will become a true centerpiece in the patriotic American household. While closet virgins will surely criticize the game's mainstream appeal and near-perfection, anyone who isn't a nerdgineer will find the wait has been worth it.

Halo 3™ urged its fan base to "Finish the Fight", and had a popular culture impact so rampant that it inspired the Western World to "Finish the Fight" with last year's nuclear salvo directed towards the Muslim world. But don't be misled by the tagline for Halo 4™: "Lynch the Illegals"™ is merely a reference to the protagonists' backlash against the atrocities committed by the foreign Covenant™ army. Anyone who is offended by such an innocuous slogan should probably go eat a taco or something.

Hardcore gamers who go below the surface of the buzz words and slick advertising will find out why the single-player odyssey packaged with Halo 4™ will delight and shatter your emotions with its deliberate recklessness. Christianity, moral awareness and lapel flag pins are merely a few of the sub-themes gracing this carefully-crafted story of patriotic duty. Liberals and other sub-human creatures will probably find the references in Halo 4™ disparaging to their tastes, but real patriots will find a sense of self-sufficience within this shoot-first, reload-after devotion to the American way of life. People who found themselves underwhelmed by the Halo: Combat Evolved™, Halo 2™, and Halo 3™ campaigns will jovial to learn that Halo 4™ does what they couldn't: create the most engaging level designs of this generation. Morons and malcontents will probably attempt to criticize that the final six missions are actually "ripped" straight from 1993's Doom, but intelligent gamers will come to appreciate Bungie capitalizing on a franchise that, compared to the Halo™ saga, never offered an entertaining moment. We don't want to spoil the storyline for you, but consider ourselves swerved when we learned that the perpretrator of the Covenant invasion was Master Chief™...herself. Where will Halo 5™ take us? The Halo™ series is notable for its cliffhangers, and it's not surprising that after a lengthy forty-minute campaign, the ending left us wanting more.

Over the last nine months, we've been intrigued by the fifteen-million dollar campaign dedicated merely to earning feedback for what Halo™ fans wanted in this latest installment. They were the primary power fueling the Mountain Dew Presents: "How Would You Dew Halo 4[™]?" Essay Contest and the bacon behind the debilitating "Win a Copy of Halo 4[™] By Opening This Attachment" virus. Bungie has put this user input to the test scored big by pouring it into Halo 4™. How did it end up affecting the gameplay? Ecko clothing add-ons for Master Chief™ and marijuana-induced bullet-time functions may seem cosmetic, but fans will wonder how they ever lived without their legendary hero toting that gangster, red hoody.

Perhaps the most compelling renovation in Halo 4™ is the addition of four new "Chiefs", genetically-engineered to assist the Genetically-Engineered Super Soldier™. Haxx0r Chief™ has the weakest offensive capabilities, but can "haxx0r" his opponents to attack the people he fights alongside. Faster Chief™ is a scout with little armor, but as his name implies, he can walk up dust clouds around his slower opponents. Blaster Chief™ is a walking armory that can attach a gun into his helmet to triple-wield his armaments. And finally, Pastor Chief™ can summon the powers of the Robot Gods to annihilate his more secular opponents. Nobody at GameSpot has a calculator to work with, but assuming there are five Chief classes (including Master Chief™), the possible combinations for a four-man team's makeup has to run into the tens of thousands. The addition of class-based gameplay in a First-Person Shooter is unlike anything we've ever seen, and Bungie deserves credit for creating such a system.

Weaponwise, Halo 4™ features two new and unique weapons: the UNSC™ Plasma Gun, which shoots blue bolts of plasma at a rapid rate, and the Covenant™ BFG 9000, which shoots a large ball of plasma that incinerates everything in its blast range. Both of these weapons use a similar "Cell" ammunition, forcing an extra-thick layer of decision-making on a player who possesses both these guns in his or her inventory, and will have to choose between whittling down a single foe or destroying everything on the screen at once. The sexually frustrated may find the cast of weapons in Halo 4™ breaks little new ground, but Halo 3™ was one of the greatest games of our generation, so why should Bungie be compelled to fix a cast of weapons that was already spectacular? Bonus points goes out to Bungie for (pun intended) sticking to their guns, something other video game companies rarely do.

Any Halo™ fan knows that possessing the most memorable story, weapons, characters, and gameplay of any video game this generation means nothing without an exciting multiplayer contest to fall back on. Fortunately for the X-Box Live crowd, it's returned for its most balanced installment yet. From the very moment the GameSpot crew logged onto Live, we were pleased to receive a patch that allowed us to play the single player campaign, a sign that Bungie is continually at work attempting to make their game as good as it can be. The major change in Live play revolves around the automatic matchmaking system, which has been replaced by using the new X-Box Live Neurological Brain Scanner packaged with Halo 4™. When enabled, the system allows you to play against any other Live player you want to punch in the face, which translated to even shorter waiting times than the previous Halo™ games. Another winning feature.

To conclude, it can be argued that any part of the game is the weakest portion of Halo 4™. This lends itself to the amazing achievement that every part of the game is, in-fact, perfect. No game from this generation or a previous generation (with the exception of another game in the Halo™ franchise) can even compare.

Buy this game. Now.

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