While I've been working my way through the Halo series on MCC, and trying to 100% it with one of my friends, we've played through Halo 4 semi-recently and after some time to play it several times to get any achievements that may be tied to the game. Over all I've enjoyed all of the games, but anything in this game felt like a complete slog.

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The Aesthetic:

The aesthetic of this game was my least favorite of all the games, I didn't care much for reach before this, but the Covenant in this game are ugly AF. It doesn't feel like I'm fighting the same enemies. I feel as though it's like they tried reinventing them completely and it doesn't feel the same. While the Covenant are the largest offender, but far from the only one. The new, shiny look for fore-runner buildings just didn't sit with me. It feels like a departure from the forerunner buildings in Halo CE, 2, and 3. Finally, while I don't mind most of the UNSC look, something about the new spartan armor (especially in multiplayer) just looks like shit.

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Sound Design:

I never thought I cared too much for this aspect in games. There were a couple games where I was impressed with how sound was handled, but I have never been so disappointed in the sound design as I was in this game. I liked the music of Halo. I never was a person to fawn over it, but I enjoyed it. I remember reaching a point on my first play through, on the very last level, and I stopped and realized. I hated the music. It just wasn't Halo. I don't think of myself as a music snob, but this just wasn't Halo's music. I think they were going for a synthetic sound added to the Halo music, but it just felt... generic?

The sound of the guns was overall fine, nothing to write home about. I can't even say the guns sounded bad.

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Game Play:

This is really where I think the game hit's its low point. While I mentioned the sound of the guns was fine, I felt the feel of the guns was trash. The game had 3 guns that may as well of been the same, the BR, DMR, and Light Rifle. I don't see how they're really different. The Covenant weapons don't feel great. The carbine doesn't feel great, but is one of the better ones along with the plasma pistol. That said the loss of the plasma rifle sucks. The Promethean weapons are amazingly unsatisfying, the few that are just feel like they could have been another gun. The light rifle is an interesting concept, however I feel like I may as well be using the BR. The scattershot doesn't feel impactful, the repeater feels less than useless, and the boltshot doesn't stand out even with it's secondary fire. The only one that felt enjoyable was the binary rifle. Did I mention they ruined my tank!?

The Prometheans felt off. The crawlers were fine, but the knights just felt like sponges. They weren't a large challenge, but they were bullet sponges. Not only were they bullet sponges but they didn't flinch. It just felt like I wasn't doing anything. The watchers were a unique idea. Playing the roll of an enemy support class, but god were they annoying. Taking 4 DMR shots and flying away before you can finish it off. Just nothing about them felt satisfying.

Quick time events felt out of place and just broke the flow of the game. I don't have much to say about this.

Finally, the abilities. None of them felt satisfying. auto turret and hologram were somewhat useful on legendary, but the thrust ability and the hard shield felt useless. Jet pack was fine I guess in the two places you can use it. If I didn't find myself with auto turret or hologram, I don't think I ever found myself using them.

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The Campaign:

This is by far the most disappointing campaign in the series. The Cortana story felt interesting and gripping, but the Diadact felt like a B plot that wasn't interesting at all. I understand they couldn't just have the story be about getting Cortana to earth, (or maybe they could have, IDK. I'm just an internet person and this is a Wendy's.) but the Diadact never felt like a real threat, and definitely didn't feel satisfying to beat. It's not that I feel that the Diadact shouldn't have been a character, but I feel it could have been handled better. Fighting the Covenant again didn't make sense. Talking to my friend this is different Covenant, but this seems like a cop out.

The levels seem fine, but I still don't quite get why this jackass is trying to kill me and has a hate boner for humanity. There's not any time where I felt a shit ton of emotion. Not every game needs to end with a warthog run, but damn even the attempt at one in this game wasn't great. I just never found myself attached to more than just saving Cortana, but more than that, I just never found myself having fun.

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Spartan Ops:

Not much to say here, but I'd like to touch on this but combined with all Prometheans feeling like bullet sponges and fighting off waves of them. Trying to get the achievement for playing through the same 5 maps by fighting off different waves of enemies. I can't help but feel it was just tacked on so it had more combat. When I had first heard of this I had initially thought it would be similar to the spec ops missions in CoD:MW. But there wasn't anything really unique. Missions didn't stand out. It was just kill x in this map, and maybe you have vehicles this time, maybe you don't.

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Multiplayer:

The final thing I would like to touch on is multiplayer. While I haven't been the largest multiplayer player for a few years, I will say I enjoyed this one, at least the MCC version. My first exposure to the MP was when it first came out playing local multiplayer on my friends Xbox at a debate tournament. I hated it, it felt like CoD multiplayer. While maybe I just had a bad first impression of it initially, I believe that this game actually improved a lot here. The H4 Squad battle is some of my favorite multiplayer competitively and when it comes to swat, H4 is my favorite gameplay. While I don't care for the maps, it's definitely not the worst experience.

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TL;DR

Aesthetic - Awful

Sound Design - Not great

Game Play - Doesn't feel impactful, everything is a sponge, the weapons are bad and should feel bad.

Campaign - Not particularly gripping, never feels impactful.

Spartan Ops - Missed opportunity, fine if you just want to shoot waves of enemies.

Multiplayer - Award for most improvement. It's fine. Maybe good.