Review - Halo 4 (Xbox 360)

Halo, the game the put console first-person shooters on the map, is back for its fourth installment with Halo 4. This is the first Halo game without Bungie at the helm; instead, Microsoft entrusted 343 Industries with the job of continuing the story of the Master Chief. When Halo: Combat Evolved was shown at E3 in the year 2000, John-117 was a cyborg… super-soldier… guy, since then the Halo series has evolved and sold countless units. What players didn’t realize then was that in 12 years time, the Master Chief Petty Office John-117 would being able to express more emotion from beneath the cover of his helmet than any Final Fantasy or Call of Duty character ever could. But to tell you the truth, the story of Halo 4 is really about Cortana, the AI that the Chief has carried with him since their departure from the Pillar of Autumn in Combat Evolved, the Chief is just the force that drives the story forward.

Like previous entries in the Halo series, players are required to run, gun and kill as many covys as possible while trying to stop the games antagonist, the Didact, and an army of ‘Prometheans’, the AI defense drones that populate the planet Requiem. The catch though is that Cortana, a flash cloned copy of Dr. Catherine Halsey, is showing signs of rampancy, a condition where an AI’s think themselves to death after obtaining too much knowledge. In the Halo universe, artificial intelligences possess an average lifespan of 7 years. The Chief must attempt to deliver Cortana back to earth and somehow salvage her still-working components.

The game is presented beautifully, with characters showing more emotion than any other Halo game and a lot of current games in the market for that matter. The facial animations here are only matched by those of Rockstar’s L.A. Noire and voice acting helps players connect to the story and characters more than ever before. The architecture of the world has a gleam and shimmer to it, which lends a clean sci-fi experience to the player, much like Star Trek.

The competitive multiplayer portion of the game is right up there with Halo 3. 343 provides a heap of game types and plenty of character customization options that give the player something to strive for while at the same time, offering hundreds of commendations to mix up the experience. A new feature this time round is Spartan Ops, an episodic co-op campaign that delivers a new episode every week (the first 5 weeks after the games launch = season 1) with plans for season 2 on the way.

You play as Crimson Squad as they fight to unravel the mysteries of an ancient Promethean artifact. These missions can range from defending an objective, killing ‘X’ number of enemies or getting from point A to B. Although is this a really good feature and something that will keep players coming back, the missions are made a little stale and repetitive due to constant re-use maps and a slightly confusing story. It’s worth mentioning that this feature replaces the Firefight mode introduced in Halo 3: ODST.

The Halo series has come a long way in its 12 years; we’ve seen humorous co-op, extremely competitive multiplayer and some of the most intense campaigns to date. With there being 2 more scheduled games in the series, it’s easy to say that this will be classed as one of the best and most influential series of all time.

Halo 4 gets 9.5 ‘Muted Microphones’/10

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