Halo 4

Hi! My name is Luke, or Kozzmo on XBL, and I just signed up for GiantBomb about five minutes ago; to "commemorate" this I figured I would write a review on one of my most-played games, Halo 4. I have over 5,000 matchmaking games played and more than 30 days of gametime on Halo 4, and am still ranked in the top 1,000 overall on Halotracker. And while it may seem contradictory or counter intuitive, I have rarely enjoyed this game. Here's why.

Things 343 Did Right From Release

343 Industries, the developer of Halo 4 and the game studio owned by Microsoft, made some major overhauls to the Halo experience with Halo 4. While most players have agreed that the majority of these changes took Halo in the wrong direction, there are some things that I recognize were improvements to the franchise:

1. Campaign

The first installment of this forerunner trilogy included the most enjoyable campaign experience since Halo 2, if not the best campaign story to date. Additionally, the stunning cutscenes and graphics were a major step up from Reach and H3, and this really stood out in the campaign. I mean, who wasn't excited to see the return of Master Chief??

2. Battle Rifle

The new-and-improved Battle Rifle is definitely a major asset to this game. The hit registration on the weapon is perfectly crisp, a huge step up from H3 when players often times complained about shots failing to register even on local connections. Every single Halo friend of mine prefers the H4 Battle Rifle to H3's, hands down.

3. 500K Tournament

While this wasn't announced until the next summer, 343's 500K Free-For-All Halo 4 Tournament was definitely an awesome thing to witness. Not only was it a $200,000 first place prize, the final 1v1 match went into a sudden death overtime playoff. How much more intense can it get? Without a doubt one of the highlights in Halo's history.

Things That Started Off Poorly at Release and 343 Fixed (or improved)

1. Weapon Balance

343 made a big mistake putting both the DMR and Battle Rifle in the same game; at release, the DMR was clearly the most overpowered weapon in the game and the BR was nearly unheard of because it had the range and damage of a paintball gun. Additionally, many guns were just too powerful, such as the Boltshot, Scattershot and Incineration Cannon. However, a weapon tuning update in March of 2013 helped to fix many of these problems.

2. Ranking System

Competitive Skill Ranks were introduced in an update at the same time as the weapon tuning. While these "ranks" weren't exactly what the players were hoping for, they did add a bit of playability to the game. Many players are still grinding out playlists every day trying to get their CSR 50; some of the playlists are pretty tough. It's not a good ranking system by any means, but it's better than nothing.

3. Community Support, Availability

One reason 343 got such a bad rap is that they were basically nonexistent within the Halo community until around February of 2013, four months after release. Even worse, the entire studio took the month of December '12 off for the holidays -- there wasn't a single update to the game until mid-January, and major issues went completely unnoticed until right before the March title update. However, 343 then went on to hire some big-name Halo pro's (Bravo, Ghostayame, Neighbor and Dersky) and many other employees are on all of the Halo forums. I have personally spoken with 4 different 343 employees on Twitter. Huge improvement.

The Meat: What Went Wrong (with Matchmaking/Multiplayer)

1. Mechanics of the Game

From the first hour after release, players started to notice and talk about some major issues with the gameplay. While there are dozens of minor problems with the system that have been noticed, the major issues are a lack of de-scope, sprinting, and ordinance drops. These three issues are the most talked-about items on every Halo forum and matchmaking review so I won't beat a dead horse, but the general consensus is that they definitely need to be removed.

2. Maps

The maps in Halo 4 are atrocious, plain and simple. Most of them are incredibly huge, such as Vortex, Meltdown, Ragnarok and Complex. Even the "small" maps would be considered enormous in any other Halo game. 343 also introduced a spawning system that took out "spawn trapping"; basically, if you reach your enemy's base, they will most likely spawn at your original base, thereby getting behind you and gaining the advantage for doing nothing right. Very frustrating for competitive players. Ghostayame had to redo the entire spawn system himself in order to make the game even playable on a competitive level. Again, I don't want to beat a dead horse; maybe 343 could spend more than 10 minutes designing maps for the next title?

3. No Proper Ranking System

What made Halo 2 and Halo 3 such popular games were the ranking systems for each of them; you only played against people who were around your skill level, so each match was fairly evenly matched. In Halo 4, you might play an evenly matched team once out of every 10 games, if you're lucky; Halo pros will often go in to a playlist they have a 50 in and play a team of 4 level 1's. Even with all of the problems in H4, I still believe players would be willing to overlook most of them if they had a proper ranking system to keep them hooked.

Other Problems

- Poorly made UI/Menu Screens
- No spectator mode...yet again.
- General lack of developer support or enthusiasm -- I honestly felt like they were just throwing money at a tournament in order to shut up all the haters, instead of actually fixing the problems with the game.
- Very few options for Custom Games/Private Matches
- Constantly rotating playlists, no consistency
- Still some weapon imbalances

Conclusion

It's no secret that Halo has essentially died as a competitive franchise. Major League Gaming historically dropped Halo in favor of Call of Duty starting in the 2013 season, which basically marks the end of competitive Halo. Now there's simply no events, no tournaments, no streaming, no videos or montages, no audience, no sponsors, no teams, and really no money within a year of Halo 4's release. A game that once had a million people playing every night is now down to less than 10,000 on its best day. While 343 does have the potential to make incredible Halo games in the future, it's basically going to take a miracle to get the franchise back to the glory days of Halo 2 and 3.

My score: 3 out of 5.