MY limited editon has been payed NOW WE WAIT<\/h3><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>notdrew<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>98<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>1225<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 2<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By notdrew<\/a><\/div><\/div>I never really cared for the Halo series story, but after reading this i am intrigued about Halo 4's story arc. I suppose that was the mission of this article, even so, it sounds more interesting than the weirdly religious past Halo games.<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>Marz<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>6097<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>755<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 5<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 11<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By Marz<\/a><\/div><\/div>Halo 4 graphics look pretty good, must be the lighting.<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>big_jon<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>6533<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>2539<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 2<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 18<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By big_jon<\/a><\/div><\/div>Looks amazing.<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>zombie2011<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>5628<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>8742<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 5<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By zombie2011<\/a><\/div><\/div>Since the E3 demo this has been the game i'm most looking forward to this year.<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>villainy<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>819<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>141<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 0<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By villainy<\/a><\/div><\/div>Halo? Halo!<\/p>Holy crap 4 years and finally here I am at the top of the posts.<\/p>I have nothing useful to add except that I used to put fratboys to shame at Halo 1 on a nearby college LAN even though I never owned an Xbox. Co-op was awesome as well. I have to work in a few hours so I should probably sleep... Halo!<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>Brad<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>6955<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>9601<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 4<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By Brad<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/a><\/figure>Halo 4<\/a> is probably the most interesting thing that's happened to the Xbox's most crucial first-party series in ages. I mean that from a faraway, academic point of view, though. It's the first time in the franchise's long lifespan that anyone other than Bungie<\/a> has taken a stab at creating a core Halo first-person shooter. Will it play like Halo? Will it feel<\/i> like Halo? Is there any more room for fresh storytelling in a decade-old franchise that already wrapped up its initial trilogy with a nice tidy bow? Those were the questions that swirled in my head as Drew and I flew up to 343<\/a> Industries in Washington last week to get our hands on just about every aspect of the game Microsoft<\/a>'s flagship studio has been slaving over.<\/p>Campaign. It's what I personally care the most about in Halo 4, and it's what 343 has shown the least of since that banner gameplay demo<\/a> kicked off the Xbox press conference back at E3. So let's talk about it (unless you're sensitive to very light, first-couple-of-mission-type spoilers--but if that's you, why are you even reading a Halo 4 preview?). What we got to play was mission one and mission three of the Halo 4 campaign. There's a prologue at the very beginning the contents of which I know not, and then 343 said some momentous stuff also happens in mission two. So I don't have the whole picture yet, but I've started to form a concrete idea of what Halo 4 is actually going to be about, and how the story bridges the gap from the natural conclusion of the last game.<\/p>Maybe my expectations for the starting premise of this game were a little overblown, but there's really no great mystery to it. Master Chief<\/a> and Cortana<\/a> were adrift at the end of Halo 3<\/a>, with Chief entering cryo-sleep against a promise to Cortana that he'd wake up when needed. Five years later, with rogue Convenant<\/a> forces boarding the ship for unknown reasons, he's definitely needed, so you pop right out of that cryo pod and get down to the business of mowing down grunts<\/a>, jackals<\/a>, and even elites<\/a> (!) as you make your way through what's left of the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn<\/i>. While the greater organized Covenant was handily dealt with at the end of Halo 3, this splinter faction doesn't seem too worse for wear; they've surrounded the Dawn<\/i> with half a dozen capital ships, and getting Chief and Cortana the hell out of there is your immediate priority, nevermind the giant Forerunner<\/a> vortex that's rapidly sucking all these ships in...<\/p><\/a><\/figure>Playing Halo 4 in that first level is like pulling on an old pair of gloves pretty much from the second you pop out of the pod, and maybe that's not surprising since Halo steward Frank O'Connor<\/a> told me that Bungie's existing codebase served as a starting point for every aspect of this new game. The basic movement and shooting are pretty much exactly like you remember, to the point that I immediately went into settings and adjusted my look sensitivity the way I remembered liking it. I also played that first level on Heroic to get a better sense of how faithful Halo 4 is to the \"combat puzzle\" that's so central to the series. Most of that first level is a lot of tight corridor-crawling where you're only taking on a few enemies at a time--punctuated by a couple of scripted first-person action sequences that felt out of place, if not unwelcome, in a Halo game. But the end culminates in a wide-area low-grav battle in the part of the Dawn exposed to space. Out there with enemies coming at me from all sides and a couple of jackals sniping me from up on a ledge, I died several times, and each time it felt like the battle played out noticeably differently as I tried different positioning and going for different weapons. It was a relief getting that big battle in at the end of the level, since that kind of fresh replayability is exactly what I'm looking for in the Halo combat experience.<\/p>As familiar as the game feels in that first level, though, the little things here and there that aren't the same really stick out like a sore thumb. Why does the assault rifle sound like a different gun? That one really threw me off.<\/p><\/iframe><\/div>It's in the third mission, \"Forerunner,\" where things really get interesting. Having missed the previous level, I don't know how Master Chief and Cortana got from that vortex into a dark, rocky canyon area full of Forerunner technology and architecture. But you don't have much time to think about it, because you almost immediately start fighting the new Promethean enemies 343 has devised as an entire new faction for Halo 4. These guys obviously behave completely differently than the Covenant and create some different combat dynamics as a result. The knight<\/a> seems to be the Promethean heavy, the way he strides around with a giant energy sword and can leap at you from far away to beat the crap out of you. He's hardly invincible though, as I found one point-blank shotgun blast was often enough to end a knight, assuming one of the flying watchers<\/a> wasn't hovering nearby. I made a point of going after the watchers first in every new encounter since they can generate shields around ground-based Promethean enemies, as well as grab and return your thrown grenades. The four-legged crawler<\/a> can also cause a lot of problem, since they tended to show up in packs and can swarm you pretty readily. Oh yeah, they can shoot at you from a distance too. The Covenant and Prometheans aren't fans of one another, so I found myself in more than one three-way battle with everyone shooting everyone else in that third level.<\/p>
I never really cared for the Halo series story, but after reading this i am intrigued about Halo 4's story arc. I suppose that was the mission of this article, even so, it sounds more interesting than the weirdly religious past Halo games.<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>Marz<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>6097<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>755<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 5<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 11<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By Marz<\/a><\/div><\/div>Halo 4 graphics look pretty good, must be the lighting.<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>big_jon<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>6533<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>2539<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 2<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 18<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By big_jon<\/a><\/div><\/div>Looks amazing.<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>zombie2011<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>5628<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>8742<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 5<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By zombie2011<\/a><\/div><\/div>Since the E3 demo this has been the game i'm most looking forward to this year.<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>villainy<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>819<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>141<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 0<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By villainy<\/a><\/div><\/div>Halo? Halo!<\/p>Holy crap 4 years and finally here I am at the top of the posts.<\/p>I have nothing useful to add except that I used to put fratboys to shame at Halo 1 on a nearby college LAN even though I never owned an Xbox. Co-op was awesome as well. I have to work in a few hours so I should probably sleep... Halo!<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>Brad<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>6955<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>9601<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 4<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By Brad<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/a><\/figure>Halo 4<\/a> is probably the most interesting thing that's happened to the Xbox's most crucial first-party series in ages. I mean that from a faraway, academic point of view, though. It's the first time in the franchise's long lifespan that anyone other than Bungie<\/a> has taken a stab at creating a core Halo first-person shooter. Will it play like Halo? Will it feel<\/i> like Halo? Is there any more room for fresh storytelling in a decade-old franchise that already wrapped up its initial trilogy with a nice tidy bow? Those were the questions that swirled in my head as Drew and I flew up to 343<\/a> Industries in Washington last week to get our hands on just about every aspect of the game Microsoft<\/a>'s flagship studio has been slaving over.<\/p>Campaign. It's what I personally care the most about in Halo 4, and it's what 343 has shown the least of since that banner gameplay demo<\/a> kicked off the Xbox press conference back at E3. So let's talk about it (unless you're sensitive to very light, first-couple-of-mission-type spoilers--but if that's you, why are you even reading a Halo 4 preview?). What we got to play was mission one and mission three of the Halo 4 campaign. There's a prologue at the very beginning the contents of which I know not, and then 343 said some momentous stuff also happens in mission two. So I don't have the whole picture yet, but I've started to form a concrete idea of what Halo 4 is actually going to be about, and how the story bridges the gap from the natural conclusion of the last game.<\/p>Maybe my expectations for the starting premise of this game were a little overblown, but there's really no great mystery to it. Master Chief<\/a> and Cortana<\/a> were adrift at the end of Halo 3<\/a>, with Chief entering cryo-sleep against a promise to Cortana that he'd wake up when needed. Five years later, with rogue Convenant<\/a> forces boarding the ship for unknown reasons, he's definitely needed, so you pop right out of that cryo pod and get down to the business of mowing down grunts<\/a>, jackals<\/a>, and even elites<\/a> (!) as you make your way through what's left of the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn<\/i>. While the greater organized Covenant was handily dealt with at the end of Halo 3, this splinter faction doesn't seem too worse for wear; they've surrounded the Dawn<\/i> with half a dozen capital ships, and getting Chief and Cortana the hell out of there is your immediate priority, nevermind the giant Forerunner<\/a> vortex that's rapidly sucking all these ships in...<\/p><\/a><\/figure>Playing Halo 4 in that first level is like pulling on an old pair of gloves pretty much from the second you pop out of the pod, and maybe that's not surprising since Halo steward Frank O'Connor<\/a> told me that Bungie's existing codebase served as a starting point for every aspect of this new game. The basic movement and shooting are pretty much exactly like you remember, to the point that I immediately went into settings and adjusted my look sensitivity the way I remembered liking it. I also played that first level on Heroic to get a better sense of how faithful Halo 4 is to the \"combat puzzle\" that's so central to the series. Most of that first level is a lot of tight corridor-crawling where you're only taking on a few enemies at a time--punctuated by a couple of scripted first-person action sequences that felt out of place, if not unwelcome, in a Halo game. But the end culminates in a wide-area low-grav battle in the part of the Dawn exposed to space. Out there with enemies coming at me from all sides and a couple of jackals sniping me from up on a ledge, I died several times, and each time it felt like the battle played out noticeably differently as I tried different positioning and going for different weapons. It was a relief getting that big battle in at the end of the level, since that kind of fresh replayability is exactly what I'm looking for in the Halo combat experience.<\/p>As familiar as the game feels in that first level, though, the little things here and there that aren't the same really stick out like a sore thumb. Why does the assault rifle sound like a different gun? That one really threw me off.<\/p><\/iframe><\/div>It's in the third mission, \"Forerunner,\" where things really get interesting. Having missed the previous level, I don't know how Master Chief and Cortana got from that vortex into a dark, rocky canyon area full of Forerunner technology and architecture. But you don't have much time to think about it, because you almost immediately start fighting the new Promethean enemies 343 has devised as an entire new faction for Halo 4. These guys obviously behave completely differently than the Covenant and create some different combat dynamics as a result. The knight<\/a> seems to be the Promethean heavy, the way he strides around with a giant energy sword and can leap at you from far away to beat the crap out of you. He's hardly invincible though, as I found one point-blank shotgun blast was often enough to end a knight, assuming one of the flying watchers<\/a> wasn't hovering nearby. I made a point of going after the watchers first in every new encounter since they can generate shields around ground-based Promethean enemies, as well as grab and return your thrown grenades. The four-legged crawler<\/a> can also cause a lot of problem, since they tended to show up in packs and can swarm you pretty readily. Oh yeah, they can shoot at you from a distance too. The Covenant and Prometheans aren't fans of one another, so I found myself in more than one three-way battle with everyone shooting everyone else in that third level.<\/p>
Halo 4 graphics look pretty good, must be the lighting.<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>big_jon<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>6533<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>2539<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 2<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 18<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By big_jon<\/a><\/div><\/div>Looks amazing.<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>zombie2011<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>5628<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>8742<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 5<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By zombie2011<\/a><\/div><\/div>Since the E3 demo this has been the game i'm most looking forward to this year.<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>villainy<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>819<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>141<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 0<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By villainy<\/a><\/div><\/div>Halo? Halo!<\/p>Holy crap 4 years and finally here I am at the top of the posts.<\/p>I have nothing useful to add except that I used to put fratboys to shame at Halo 1 on a nearby college LAN even though I never owned an Xbox. Co-op was awesome as well. I have to work in a few hours so I should probably sleep... Halo!<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>Brad<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>6955<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>9601<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 4<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By Brad<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/a><\/figure>Halo 4<\/a> is probably the most interesting thing that's happened to the Xbox's most crucial first-party series in ages. I mean that from a faraway, academic point of view, though. It's the first time in the franchise's long lifespan that anyone other than Bungie<\/a> has taken a stab at creating a core Halo first-person shooter. Will it play like Halo? Will it feel<\/i> like Halo? Is there any more room for fresh storytelling in a decade-old franchise that already wrapped up its initial trilogy with a nice tidy bow? Those were the questions that swirled in my head as Drew and I flew up to 343<\/a> Industries in Washington last week to get our hands on just about every aspect of the game Microsoft<\/a>'s flagship studio has been slaving over.<\/p>Campaign. It's what I personally care the most about in Halo 4, and it's what 343 has shown the least of since that banner gameplay demo<\/a> kicked off the Xbox press conference back at E3. So let's talk about it (unless you're sensitive to very light, first-couple-of-mission-type spoilers--but if that's you, why are you even reading a Halo 4 preview?). What we got to play was mission one and mission three of the Halo 4 campaign. There's a prologue at the very beginning the contents of which I know not, and then 343 said some momentous stuff also happens in mission two. So I don't have the whole picture yet, but I've started to form a concrete idea of what Halo 4 is actually going to be about, and how the story bridges the gap from the natural conclusion of the last game.<\/p>Maybe my expectations for the starting premise of this game were a little overblown, but there's really no great mystery to it. Master Chief<\/a> and Cortana<\/a> were adrift at the end of Halo 3<\/a>, with Chief entering cryo-sleep against a promise to Cortana that he'd wake up when needed. Five years later, with rogue Convenant<\/a> forces boarding the ship for unknown reasons, he's definitely needed, so you pop right out of that cryo pod and get down to the business of mowing down grunts<\/a>, jackals<\/a>, and even elites<\/a> (!) as you make your way through what's left of the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn<\/i>. While the greater organized Covenant was handily dealt with at the end of Halo 3, this splinter faction doesn't seem too worse for wear; they've surrounded the Dawn<\/i> with half a dozen capital ships, and getting Chief and Cortana the hell out of there is your immediate priority, nevermind the giant Forerunner<\/a> vortex that's rapidly sucking all these ships in...<\/p><\/a><\/figure>Playing Halo 4 in that first level is like pulling on an old pair of gloves pretty much from the second you pop out of the pod, and maybe that's not surprising since Halo steward Frank O'Connor<\/a> told me that Bungie's existing codebase served as a starting point for every aspect of this new game. The basic movement and shooting are pretty much exactly like you remember, to the point that I immediately went into settings and adjusted my look sensitivity the way I remembered liking it. I also played that first level on Heroic to get a better sense of how faithful Halo 4 is to the \"combat puzzle\" that's so central to the series. Most of that first level is a lot of tight corridor-crawling where you're only taking on a few enemies at a time--punctuated by a couple of scripted first-person action sequences that felt out of place, if not unwelcome, in a Halo game. But the end culminates in a wide-area low-grav battle in the part of the Dawn exposed to space. Out there with enemies coming at me from all sides and a couple of jackals sniping me from up on a ledge, I died several times, and each time it felt like the battle played out noticeably differently as I tried different positioning and going for different weapons. It was a relief getting that big battle in at the end of the level, since that kind of fresh replayability is exactly what I'm looking for in the Halo combat experience.<\/p>As familiar as the game feels in that first level, though, the little things here and there that aren't the same really stick out like a sore thumb. Why does the assault rifle sound like a different gun? That one really threw me off.<\/p><\/iframe><\/div>It's in the third mission, \"Forerunner,\" where things really get interesting. Having missed the previous level, I don't know how Master Chief and Cortana got from that vortex into a dark, rocky canyon area full of Forerunner technology and architecture. But you don't have much time to think about it, because you almost immediately start fighting the new Promethean enemies 343 has devised as an entire new faction for Halo 4. These guys obviously behave completely differently than the Covenant and create some different combat dynamics as a result. The knight<\/a> seems to be the Promethean heavy, the way he strides around with a giant energy sword and can leap at you from far away to beat the crap out of you. He's hardly invincible though, as I found one point-blank shotgun blast was often enough to end a knight, assuming one of the flying watchers<\/a> wasn't hovering nearby. I made a point of going after the watchers first in every new encounter since they can generate shields around ground-based Promethean enemies, as well as grab and return your thrown grenades. The four-legged crawler<\/a> can also cause a lot of problem, since they tended to show up in packs and can swarm you pretty readily. Oh yeah, they can shoot at you from a distance too. The Covenant and Prometheans aren't fans of one another, so I found myself in more than one three-way battle with everyone shooting everyone else in that third level.<\/p>
Looks amazing.<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>zombie2011<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>5628<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>8742<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 5<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By zombie2011<\/a><\/div><\/div>Since the E3 demo this has been the game i'm most looking forward to this year.<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>villainy<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>819<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>141<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 0<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By villainy<\/a><\/div><\/div>Halo? Halo!<\/p>Holy crap 4 years and finally here I am at the top of the posts.<\/p>I have nothing useful to add except that I used to put fratboys to shame at Halo 1 on a nearby college LAN even though I never owned an Xbox. Co-op was awesome as well. I have to work in a few hours so I should probably sleep... Halo!<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>Brad<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>6955<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>9601<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 4<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By Brad<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/a><\/figure>Halo 4<\/a> is probably the most interesting thing that's happened to the Xbox's most crucial first-party series in ages. I mean that from a faraway, academic point of view, though. It's the first time in the franchise's long lifespan that anyone other than Bungie<\/a> has taken a stab at creating a core Halo first-person shooter. Will it play like Halo? Will it feel<\/i> like Halo? Is there any more room for fresh storytelling in a decade-old franchise that already wrapped up its initial trilogy with a nice tidy bow? Those were the questions that swirled in my head as Drew and I flew up to 343<\/a> Industries in Washington last week to get our hands on just about every aspect of the game Microsoft<\/a>'s flagship studio has been slaving over.<\/p>Campaign. It's what I personally care the most about in Halo 4, and it's what 343 has shown the least of since that banner gameplay demo<\/a> kicked off the Xbox press conference back at E3. So let's talk about it (unless you're sensitive to very light, first-couple-of-mission-type spoilers--but if that's you, why are you even reading a Halo 4 preview?). What we got to play was mission one and mission three of the Halo 4 campaign. There's a prologue at the very beginning the contents of which I know not, and then 343 said some momentous stuff also happens in mission two. So I don't have the whole picture yet, but I've started to form a concrete idea of what Halo 4 is actually going to be about, and how the story bridges the gap from the natural conclusion of the last game.<\/p>Maybe my expectations for the starting premise of this game were a little overblown, but there's really no great mystery to it. Master Chief<\/a> and Cortana<\/a> were adrift at the end of Halo 3<\/a>, with Chief entering cryo-sleep against a promise to Cortana that he'd wake up when needed. Five years later, with rogue Convenant<\/a> forces boarding the ship for unknown reasons, he's definitely needed, so you pop right out of that cryo pod and get down to the business of mowing down grunts<\/a>, jackals<\/a>, and even elites<\/a> (!) as you make your way through what's left of the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn<\/i>. While the greater organized Covenant was handily dealt with at the end of Halo 3, this splinter faction doesn't seem too worse for wear; they've surrounded the Dawn<\/i> with half a dozen capital ships, and getting Chief and Cortana the hell out of there is your immediate priority, nevermind the giant Forerunner<\/a> vortex that's rapidly sucking all these ships in...<\/p><\/a><\/figure>Playing Halo 4 in that first level is like pulling on an old pair of gloves pretty much from the second you pop out of the pod, and maybe that's not surprising since Halo steward Frank O'Connor<\/a> told me that Bungie's existing codebase served as a starting point for every aspect of this new game. The basic movement and shooting are pretty much exactly like you remember, to the point that I immediately went into settings and adjusted my look sensitivity the way I remembered liking it. I also played that first level on Heroic to get a better sense of how faithful Halo 4 is to the \"combat puzzle\" that's so central to the series. Most of that first level is a lot of tight corridor-crawling where you're only taking on a few enemies at a time--punctuated by a couple of scripted first-person action sequences that felt out of place, if not unwelcome, in a Halo game. But the end culminates in a wide-area low-grav battle in the part of the Dawn exposed to space. Out there with enemies coming at me from all sides and a couple of jackals sniping me from up on a ledge, I died several times, and each time it felt like the battle played out noticeably differently as I tried different positioning and going for different weapons. It was a relief getting that big battle in at the end of the level, since that kind of fresh replayability is exactly what I'm looking for in the Halo combat experience.<\/p>As familiar as the game feels in that first level, though, the little things here and there that aren't the same really stick out like a sore thumb. Why does the assault rifle sound like a different gun? That one really threw me off.<\/p><\/iframe><\/div>It's in the third mission, \"Forerunner,\" where things really get interesting. Having missed the previous level, I don't know how Master Chief and Cortana got from that vortex into a dark, rocky canyon area full of Forerunner technology and architecture. But you don't have much time to think about it, because you almost immediately start fighting the new Promethean enemies 343 has devised as an entire new faction for Halo 4. These guys obviously behave completely differently than the Covenant and create some different combat dynamics as a result. The knight<\/a> seems to be the Promethean heavy, the way he strides around with a giant energy sword and can leap at you from far away to beat the crap out of you. He's hardly invincible though, as I found one point-blank shotgun blast was often enough to end a knight, assuming one of the flying watchers<\/a> wasn't hovering nearby. I made a point of going after the watchers first in every new encounter since they can generate shields around ground-based Promethean enemies, as well as grab and return your thrown grenades. The four-legged crawler<\/a> can also cause a lot of problem, since they tended to show up in packs and can swarm you pretty readily. Oh yeah, they can shoot at you from a distance too. The Covenant and Prometheans aren't fans of one another, so I found myself in more than one three-way battle with everyone shooting everyone else in that third level.<\/p>
Since the E3 demo this has been the game i'm most looking forward to this year.<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>villainy<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>819<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>141<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 0<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By villainy<\/a><\/div><\/div>Halo? Halo!<\/p>Holy crap 4 years and finally here I am at the top of the posts.<\/p>I have nothing useful to add except that I used to put fratboys to shame at Halo 1 on a nearby college LAN even though I never owned an Xbox. Co-op was awesome as well. I have to work in a few hours so I should probably sleep... Halo!<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>Brad<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>6955<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>9601<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 4<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By Brad<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/a><\/figure>Halo 4<\/a> is probably the most interesting thing that's happened to the Xbox's most crucial first-party series in ages. I mean that from a faraway, academic point of view, though. It's the first time in the franchise's long lifespan that anyone other than Bungie<\/a> has taken a stab at creating a core Halo first-person shooter. Will it play like Halo? Will it feel<\/i> like Halo? Is there any more room for fresh storytelling in a decade-old franchise that already wrapped up its initial trilogy with a nice tidy bow? Those were the questions that swirled in my head as Drew and I flew up to 343<\/a> Industries in Washington last week to get our hands on just about every aspect of the game Microsoft<\/a>'s flagship studio has been slaving over.<\/p>Campaign. It's what I personally care the most about in Halo 4, and it's what 343 has shown the least of since that banner gameplay demo<\/a> kicked off the Xbox press conference back at E3. So let's talk about it (unless you're sensitive to very light, first-couple-of-mission-type spoilers--but if that's you, why are you even reading a Halo 4 preview?). What we got to play was mission one and mission three of the Halo 4 campaign. There's a prologue at the very beginning the contents of which I know not, and then 343 said some momentous stuff also happens in mission two. So I don't have the whole picture yet, but I've started to form a concrete idea of what Halo 4 is actually going to be about, and how the story bridges the gap from the natural conclusion of the last game.<\/p>Maybe my expectations for the starting premise of this game were a little overblown, but there's really no great mystery to it. Master Chief<\/a> and Cortana<\/a> were adrift at the end of Halo 3<\/a>, with Chief entering cryo-sleep against a promise to Cortana that he'd wake up when needed. Five years later, with rogue Convenant<\/a> forces boarding the ship for unknown reasons, he's definitely needed, so you pop right out of that cryo pod and get down to the business of mowing down grunts<\/a>, jackals<\/a>, and even elites<\/a> (!) as you make your way through what's left of the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn<\/i>. While the greater organized Covenant was handily dealt with at the end of Halo 3, this splinter faction doesn't seem too worse for wear; they've surrounded the Dawn<\/i> with half a dozen capital ships, and getting Chief and Cortana the hell out of there is your immediate priority, nevermind the giant Forerunner<\/a> vortex that's rapidly sucking all these ships in...<\/p><\/a><\/figure>Playing Halo 4 in that first level is like pulling on an old pair of gloves pretty much from the second you pop out of the pod, and maybe that's not surprising since Halo steward Frank O'Connor<\/a> told me that Bungie's existing codebase served as a starting point for every aspect of this new game. The basic movement and shooting are pretty much exactly like you remember, to the point that I immediately went into settings and adjusted my look sensitivity the way I remembered liking it. I also played that first level on Heroic to get a better sense of how faithful Halo 4 is to the \"combat puzzle\" that's so central to the series. Most of that first level is a lot of tight corridor-crawling where you're only taking on a few enemies at a time--punctuated by a couple of scripted first-person action sequences that felt out of place, if not unwelcome, in a Halo game. But the end culminates in a wide-area low-grav battle in the part of the Dawn exposed to space. Out there with enemies coming at me from all sides and a couple of jackals sniping me from up on a ledge, I died several times, and each time it felt like the battle played out noticeably differently as I tried different positioning and going for different weapons. It was a relief getting that big battle in at the end of the level, since that kind of fresh replayability is exactly what I'm looking for in the Halo combat experience.<\/p>As familiar as the game feels in that first level, though, the little things here and there that aren't the same really stick out like a sore thumb. Why does the assault rifle sound like a different gun? That one really threw me off.<\/p><\/iframe><\/div>It's in the third mission, \"Forerunner,\" where things really get interesting. Having missed the previous level, I don't know how Master Chief and Cortana got from that vortex into a dark, rocky canyon area full of Forerunner technology and architecture. But you don't have much time to think about it, because you almost immediately start fighting the new Promethean enemies 343 has devised as an entire new faction for Halo 4. These guys obviously behave completely differently than the Covenant and create some different combat dynamics as a result. The knight<\/a> seems to be the Promethean heavy, the way he strides around with a giant energy sword and can leap at you from far away to beat the crap out of you. He's hardly invincible though, as I found one point-blank shotgun blast was often enough to end a knight, assuming one of the flying watchers<\/a> wasn't hovering nearby. I made a point of going after the watchers first in every new encounter since they can generate shields around ground-based Promethean enemies, as well as grab and return your thrown grenades. The four-legged crawler<\/a> can also cause a lot of problem, since they tended to show up in packs and can swarm you pretty readily. Oh yeah, they can shoot at you from a distance too. The Covenant and Prometheans aren't fans of one another, so I found myself in more than one three-way battle with everyone shooting everyone else in that third level.<\/p>
Halo? Halo!<\/p>Holy crap 4 years and finally here I am at the top of the posts.<\/p>I have nothing useful to add except that I used to put fratboys to shame at Halo 1 on a nearby college LAN even though I never owned an Xbox. Co-op was awesome as well. I have to work in a few hours so I should probably sleep... Halo!<\/p><\/article>11 years ago<\/time><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a>Brad<\/a><\/svg><\/i> Follow\n <\/a><\/div><\/header>6955<\/p>Forum Posts<\/p><\/div>9601<\/p>Wiki Points<\/p><\/div>0<\/p>Followers<\/p><\/div><\/section>Reviews:<\/span> 0<\/p>User Lists:<\/span> 4<\/p><\/section><\/div><\/div>\n Edited By Brad<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/a><\/figure>Halo 4<\/a> is probably the most interesting thing that's happened to the Xbox's most crucial first-party series in ages. I mean that from a faraway, academic point of view, though. It's the first time in the franchise's long lifespan that anyone other than Bungie<\/a> has taken a stab at creating a core Halo first-person shooter. Will it play like Halo? Will it feel<\/i> like Halo? Is there any more room for fresh storytelling in a decade-old franchise that already wrapped up its initial trilogy with a nice tidy bow? Those were the questions that swirled in my head as Drew and I flew up to 343<\/a> Industries in Washington last week to get our hands on just about every aspect of the game Microsoft<\/a>'s flagship studio has been slaving over.<\/p>Campaign. It's what I personally care the most about in Halo 4, and it's what 343 has shown the least of since that banner gameplay demo<\/a> kicked off the Xbox press conference back at E3. So let's talk about it (unless you're sensitive to very light, first-couple-of-mission-type spoilers--but if that's you, why are you even reading a Halo 4 preview?). What we got to play was mission one and mission three of the Halo 4 campaign. There's a prologue at the very beginning the contents of which I know not, and then 343 said some momentous stuff also happens in mission two. So I don't have the whole picture yet, but I've started to form a concrete idea of what Halo 4 is actually going to be about, and how the story bridges the gap from the natural conclusion of the last game.<\/p>Maybe my expectations for the starting premise of this game were a little overblown, but there's really no great mystery to it. Master Chief<\/a> and Cortana<\/a> were adrift at the end of Halo 3<\/a>, with Chief entering cryo-sleep against a promise to Cortana that he'd wake up when needed. Five years later, with rogue Convenant<\/a> forces boarding the ship for unknown reasons, he's definitely needed, so you pop right out of that cryo pod and get down to the business of mowing down grunts<\/a>, jackals<\/a>, and even elites<\/a> (!) as you make your way through what's left of the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn<\/i>. While the greater organized Covenant was handily dealt with at the end of Halo 3, this splinter faction doesn't seem too worse for wear; they've surrounded the Dawn<\/i> with half a dozen capital ships, and getting Chief and Cortana the hell out of there is your immediate priority, nevermind the giant Forerunner<\/a> vortex that's rapidly sucking all these ships in...<\/p><\/a><\/figure>Playing Halo 4 in that first level is like pulling on an old pair of gloves pretty much from the second you pop out of the pod, and maybe that's not surprising since Halo steward Frank O'Connor<\/a> told me that Bungie's existing codebase served as a starting point for every aspect of this new game. The basic movement and shooting are pretty much exactly like you remember, to the point that I immediately went into settings and adjusted my look sensitivity the way I remembered liking it. I also played that first level on Heroic to get a better sense of how faithful Halo 4 is to the \"combat puzzle\" that's so central to the series. Most of that first level is a lot of tight corridor-crawling where you're only taking on a few enemies at a time--punctuated by a couple of scripted first-person action sequences that felt out of place, if not unwelcome, in a Halo game. But the end culminates in a wide-area low-grav battle in the part of the Dawn exposed to space. Out there with enemies coming at me from all sides and a couple of jackals sniping me from up on a ledge, I died several times, and each time it felt like the battle played out noticeably differently as I tried different positioning and going for different weapons. It was a relief getting that big battle in at the end of the level, since that kind of fresh replayability is exactly what I'm looking for in the Halo combat experience.<\/p>As familiar as the game feels in that first level, though, the little things here and there that aren't the same really stick out like a sore thumb. Why does the assault rifle sound like a different gun? That one really threw me off.<\/p><\/iframe><\/div>It's in the third mission, \"Forerunner,\" where things really get interesting. Having missed the previous level, I don't know how Master Chief and Cortana got from that vortex into a dark, rocky canyon area full of Forerunner technology and architecture. But you don't have much time to think about it, because you almost immediately start fighting the new Promethean enemies 343 has devised as an entire new faction for Halo 4. These guys obviously behave completely differently than the Covenant and create some different combat dynamics as a result. The knight<\/a> seems to be the Promethean heavy, the way he strides around with a giant energy sword and can leap at you from far away to beat the crap out of you. He's hardly invincible though, as I found one point-blank shotgun blast was often enough to end a knight, assuming one of the flying watchers<\/a> wasn't hovering nearby. I made a point of going after the watchers first in every new encounter since they can generate shields around ground-based Promethean enemies, as well as grab and return your thrown grenades. The four-legged crawler<\/a> can also cause a lot of problem, since they tended to show up in packs and can swarm you pretty readily. Oh yeah, they can shoot at you from a distance too. The Covenant and Prometheans aren't fans of one another, so I found myself in more than one three-way battle with everyone shooting everyone else in that third level.<\/p>
<\/a><\/figure>Halo 4<\/a> is probably the most interesting thing that's happened to the Xbox's most crucial first-party series in ages. I mean that from a faraway, academic point of view, though. It's the first time in the franchise's long lifespan that anyone other than Bungie<\/a> has taken a stab at creating a core Halo first-person shooter. Will it play like Halo? Will it feel<\/i> like Halo? Is there any more room for fresh storytelling in a decade-old franchise that already wrapped up its initial trilogy with a nice tidy bow? Those were the questions that swirled in my head as Drew and I flew up to 343<\/a> Industries in Washington last week to get our hands on just about every aspect of the game Microsoft<\/a>'s flagship studio has been slaving over.<\/p>Campaign. It's what I personally care the most about in Halo 4, and it's what 343 has shown the least of since that banner gameplay demo<\/a> kicked off the Xbox press conference back at E3. So let's talk about it (unless you're sensitive to very light, first-couple-of-mission-type spoilers--but if that's you, why are you even reading a Halo 4 preview?). What we got to play was mission one and mission three of the Halo 4 campaign. There's a prologue at the very beginning the contents of which I know not, and then 343 said some momentous stuff also happens in mission two. So I don't have the whole picture yet, but I've started to form a concrete idea of what Halo 4 is actually going to be about, and how the story bridges the gap from the natural conclusion of the last game.<\/p>Maybe my expectations for the starting premise of this game were a little overblown, but there's really no great mystery to it. Master Chief<\/a> and Cortana<\/a> were adrift at the end of Halo 3<\/a>, with Chief entering cryo-sleep against a promise to Cortana that he'd wake up when needed. Five years later, with rogue Convenant<\/a> forces boarding the ship for unknown reasons, he's definitely needed, so you pop right out of that cryo pod and get down to the business of mowing down grunts<\/a>, jackals<\/a>, and even elites<\/a> (!) as you make your way through what's left of the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn<\/i>. While the greater organized Covenant was handily dealt with at the end of Halo 3, this splinter faction doesn't seem too worse for wear; they've surrounded the Dawn<\/i> with half a dozen capital ships, and getting Chief and Cortana the hell out of there is your immediate priority, nevermind the giant Forerunner<\/a> vortex that's rapidly sucking all these ships in...<\/p><\/a><\/figure>Playing Halo 4 in that first level is like pulling on an old pair of gloves pretty much from the second you pop out of the pod, and maybe that's not surprising since Halo steward Frank O'Connor<\/a> told me that Bungie's existing codebase served as a starting point for every aspect of this new game. The basic movement and shooting are pretty much exactly like you remember, to the point that I immediately went into settings and adjusted my look sensitivity the way I remembered liking it. I also played that first level on Heroic to get a better sense of how faithful Halo 4 is to the \"combat puzzle\" that's so central to the series. Most of that first level is a lot of tight corridor-crawling where you're only taking on a few enemies at a time--punctuated by a couple of scripted first-person action sequences that felt out of place, if not unwelcome, in a Halo game. But the end culminates in a wide-area low-grav battle in the part of the Dawn exposed to space. Out there with enemies coming at me from all sides and a couple of jackals sniping me from up on a ledge, I died several times, and each time it felt like the battle played out noticeably differently as I tried different positioning and going for different weapons. It was a relief getting that big battle in at the end of the level, since that kind of fresh replayability is exactly what I'm looking for in the Halo combat experience.<\/p>As familiar as the game feels in that first level, though, the little things here and there that aren't the same really stick out like a sore thumb. Why does the assault rifle sound like a different gun? That one really threw me off.<\/p><\/iframe><\/div>It's in the third mission, \"Forerunner,\" where things really get interesting. Having missed the previous level, I don't know how Master Chief and Cortana got from that vortex into a dark, rocky canyon area full of Forerunner technology and architecture. But you don't have much time to think about it, because you almost immediately start fighting the new Promethean enemies 343 has devised as an entire new faction for Halo 4. These guys obviously behave completely differently than the Covenant and create some different combat dynamics as a result. The knight<\/a> seems to be the Promethean heavy, the way he strides around with a giant energy sword and can leap at you from far away to beat the crap out of you. He's hardly invincible though, as I found one point-blank shotgun blast was often enough to end a knight, assuming one of the flying watchers<\/a> wasn't hovering nearby. I made a point of going after the watchers first in every new encounter since they can generate shields around ground-based Promethean enemies, as well as grab and return your thrown grenades. The four-legged crawler<\/a> can also cause a lot of problem, since they tended to show up in packs and can swarm you pretty readily. Oh yeah, they can shoot at you from a distance too. The Covenant and Prometheans aren't fans of one another, so I found myself in more than one three-way battle with everyone shooting everyone else in that third level.<\/p>
158 Comments<\/h4>