Original Halo 4 review (Owen)

Halo 4 Review – Owen

 

When I saw Halo 4 on play.com for a mere 30 quid, it was a straight grab.

 I’d recently bought Fifa 13 but was fed up of getting absolutely welted online, I decided to try and take my custom elsewhere.

 

The hype around the new Halo game was at its usual immensity, hard-line Xbox fans all around the world had all been eager for its release and I wanted to get in on the excitement. I wasn’t going to take it too far, I don’t fall under the category of gamer that’s willing to stay up way past my bedtime and go to the midnight launch, and I always feel like I can wait till the morning. Plus it was cheaper on play. The midnight launches do work though, and this year Halo proved it, it opened up in 10 000 stores worldwide for a midnight release and the game brought in a staggering $200 Million in the first 24 hours!

 

When the game arrived through the door, just two days after purchase (well done play.com) I was pretty giddy about it, the wait had caused me to go online and look at the flurry of newly uploaded game play footage from its huge online community and that had certainly got me thinking about it. It looked good, really good.

 

A secondary disc is provided and must be installed to unlock all of Halos features, it’s a big game, loading it up I definitely got a Halo 1 nostalgic buzz, while you wait for the install you get hit with that traditionally very epic music and amazingly vivid scenery, I was ready to get down to it.

 

The menu system is slick and very different from the older Halo games made by Bungie. You can tell 343 industries (the new developers to take the franchise) have really tried to shake things up and turn the game into their own masterpiece and not just make it a rehash of an older Halo model. Successfully done as well, navigating the menu is a breeze; everything can be accessed easily and it makes for a quick and snappy play if you have ten minutes and just fancy blasting a few heads off online.

 

I’ve admittedly rather loosely followed the Halo saga, campaign wise; I massively enjoyed 1 and 2 and got in to it big time. 3 was great and immersed me nicely, skipped Halo Wars, ODST was sufficient but I didn’t finish it, and Reach was below par, just didn’t hold me in its gravity well (just my opinion) so the campaign in Halo 4 for me at least, needed to be something ff I was to spend an couple of days in its grip. It didn’t fail to entertain that statement at all.

 

The campaigns length isn’t as impressive as some of its predecessors, with only a roughly six hour run time but it does make up for this however in depth and magnitude. The introduction of the new enemy, ‘The Prometheans’ was great way for 343to start shaking things up, this new force includes three new unit types, Crawlers, Knights and Watchers, each come with their own problems for you, like the ability to cling to any surface, float, warp and just generally try and do everything in their power to get under your skin and into your head.

Halo 4 feels a lot less cartoony, it’s more serious, more grown up, it seems to have shed its quirky skin and adopted a more grounded, mature one. The campaign caters for existing Halo fans and new comers who seek to understand its amazing universe! Creative director Josh Holmes was quoted as saying the new approach to the Halo design was‘sophisticated’ and that is seen explicitly throughout. Halo 4 has a darker, more moody feel to it this time round; tactically this was a great play. By reanimating this classic with a fresh new, rather more aggressive feel to it, 343 industries have most probably set themselves for at least ten more years worth of Halo games to grace our shelves, I hope so anyway.

Its huge sandbox environments are the cornerstone of the campaigns success; they keep you welded to the screen as you pass through the galactic adventure, it’s a game that allows you to really see how far the gaming industry has come along in the past few years graphically. Some missions in the campaign feel subtly familiar to former Halo games but everything is presented with this new edginess that crushes any feeling of romantic Déjà vu.

Online was pretty much what I expected, amazingly fun as per, some new modes have been added that beef the experience up a notch from the other Halo’s. There’s more to do. The only qualm I will ever have with Halo online is that it is just packed full of extremely homophobic and racist twelve to fourteen year olds, if you have particularly hardened skin and can ignore the sea of insults you may get via mic online, then you’ll be fine, if not, then maybe you should pick up another title to play online. I spent a good few hours exploring the online modes before review and there’s definitely enough to keep any Halo 4 fan going until the next instalment.

Halo 4 is a title bound to rock the shelves the Christmas, and for good reason, it’s fantastically immersive universe and reliably fun online experience make it a great challenger amongst all the other massive titles being released this winter.