I rarely agree with Jeff but I have to say that he is pretty spot on with his comments that this is just more Halo. Most sites were raving about this game so I rented it and played the campaign. It was pretty boring. Halo always succeeded because of its great combat scenarios. Those scenarios only worked because the AI was so damn impressive. My problem with Halo 4 was that the overall AI seemed worse with enemies walking into walls, shooting at the sky, and standing in place while I was shooting them. Even when the AI was working, though, it didn't seem very intelligent, especially the new Promethean enemies. The dog things were just cannon fodder. They never were a threat unless they were in massive packs. The Knights were just kind of okay. They rarely ran for cover when injured and didn't move about as much as the Elites from previous games. Elites themselves were in pretty short supply so it was hard to judge how they were behaving. Overall, though, the enemy AI just wasn't very interesting to fight. And note I'm not saying it was easy. I'm saying the new enemies didn't require many new strategies to defeat.

In addition to the poor AI, I felt like the new weapons provided nothing new. They were just weaker versions of the human weapons. And there were no new vehicles to drive. Also the story was pretty confusing. I am told a lot of backstory is filled in with the terminals in the game, on Halo Waypoint, and in Halo CE AE. That's fine but I shouldn't need to read terminals to understand the story. Nowhere did it explain what a Promethean was. Am I just supposed to know that? And why was the Didact trying to kill humans? He keeps saying they are a threat but never explains why. The only good part of the story was the interplay between Cortana and the Master Chief. I really like the idea of getting under the suit of Master Chief and turning him into something more than an avatar. And Cortana's story was actually pretty powerful. All the stuff around that I could have done without though.

Finally the presentation. On the audio side I thought the weapon sounds were again among the best in the business. The music was mostly forgettable. I can't see myself listening to the soundtrack in my free time. And then there are the graphics. The lighting was really nice and all but I'm just not impressed by low resolution textures and aliased edges anymore. All the people saying this was one of the best looking games of last year definitely haven't played any modern PC games. Yea, this was a good looking 360 game, but it doesn't hold a candle to most any decent PC port. And personally I think the PS3 has just pulled too far ahead graphically. Uncharted 3 looked better than any game released this year on consoles. And I wouldn't doubt that The Last Of Us will look better than that. And maybe I'm just crazy but I'm pretty sure the God of War Ascension beta is running at 60 fps which simply puts any game on current generation consoles to shame. Yea this is the best looking Halo game, and outside of Gears of War 3 probably the best looking 360 game. But in 2013 that doesn't mean all that much.

What did you guys think of the game? Note that I am broke so I don't have Gold right now so I couldn't try the MP side of things. They wouldn't even let me play Spartan Ops locally without a Gold subscription. So I played what I could and I thought it was just decent.

My biggest bummer is with the story and then the whole you're fighting more Covenant thing. There's a specific moment in the game that squanders all of the potential built up from the beginning. At least it's a really well made Halo game that is still fun to play. I just won't be around for another go if they continue to play it safe.

Everyone is giving halo 4 a break. a completely knew studio took over an remade the game ground up. Everyone raves that its more halo....since well you take a vase and go remake a new one. How much is your vase going to be like that one. Not very close probably.

So to get close to making a halo game feel like a halo game thats a feat. However Halo 5 no free pass and we want Halo to feel like Halo yet be something better.

Campaign was kind of meh. Since we got what 6 new wepons with 3 new enemys that while they may have 3 variations rach... doesn't stand out. They are boreing and certain parts of the campaign was too.

Multi is fine and good.

We expect more next time.

I still had fun.

I think I just fatigue of the triple A sequel in general. I loved the first couple Halos, but much like COD or Uncharted I don't want to play another one. Lately I am drawn to games like Syndicate, Dragons Dogma or Binary Domain. Games that attempt to be a little different... Warts and all

I was more impressed by the look of the actual world than the graphical fidelity of the game. Also I bought the soundtrack before the game came out, and I must say that the music is great, but it's just not well represented in the game.

I can't really give an intelligent response, because I still had a ton of fun.

I had a lot of fun with it as well, but I hardly think that it's as good as the first three. It could have set up a whole new, unrelated story with completely new enemies and mostly new guns but instead it amounted to "just another Halo game" and the story wasn't really amazing. There was this bad guy and he wanted to kill all the humans and you wanted to stop him and Cortana's kinda fucked up. That's literally all I remember - as opposed to the first three, where I can recall a decent number of events. Remember Guilty Spark and the first introduction of the Flood? Yeah, I was hoping that maybe 4 would manage to do something like that. It didn't.

...but you know what, it was still a good Halo game and it was still a pretty fun campaign.

I think you should stop playing it on Normal, crank it up to at least Heroic and then you'll understand the strength in the combat.

I feel like they just wanted to get it out the door.

But they know they could have done better

O'Connor did admit that "there are a ton of things we wish we'd done better." Among 343i's list of missteps, he counted glitches, features that the studio cut from the final game and "DLC fiascos" — the latter almost certainly a reference to the issues that War Games Map Pass owners had in downloading the Crimson Map Pack.
"So we know we have a lot to do. And we know we have a lot to learn," he said. "But we also know that we now have the capacity, the teamwork, the technology and the experience to do much better next time."
Finally, O'Connor thanked the Halo community, calling them "the most important aspect of [343i's] success, and [its] efforts now and in the future." According to O'Connor, the studio thinks of its fans as "a direct and democratic extension of the team and, indeed, of the development process."
He closed by looking ahead. "[I'm] excited about the future of Halo. A future we want you to be a part of. A future we're building for you.

@Baillie said:

I think you should stop playing it on Normal, crank it up to at least Heroic and then you'll understand the strength in the combat.

I dunno, I played all the other Halo games on Normal and thought the enemies were perfectly intelligent and fun to fight. I just didn't like the enemies themselves. I don't find shooting the head of a charging dog interesting. He could kill me in 1 hit or 100. That's besides the point. The point is that he isn't fun to fight. For example, Jackals have those shields that you have to get around. It means you can't just shoot at them and eventually kill them. You have to use strategy to defeat them. Hunters you can only hurt from behind. Common thing now, but when Halo came out no one had enemies like Hunters or Jackals. These new enemies are bullet sponges that do a good job at dodging. There is nothing special about fighting them. That won't suddenly change when I increase the difficulty. I remember the first time I fought a sword elite in the first Halo and I threw a grenade right at him and he jumped over it and lunged at me with his sword. That was incredible. No game had ever had AI like that. The Elites felt like fighting actual people. They were the most advanced enemy ever made. So I was hoping the Knights would provide a similar wow factor. I wanted to be impressed like I was when I first fought an Elite. But they weren't impressive at all. That's my issue. Difficulty has nothing to do with it.

Labeling Halo 4 with ''poor AI'' is really pushing it, considering it HAS a combat AI, unlike most shooters. Play the latest Black Ops II's Defense Strike Force missions. Now that's an horrible AI.

@Klei: Fair enough. It's poor compared to previous games and does some really stupid stuff that no AI in previous Halo games had ever done.

@Raven10: Well, to be fair 343i are new to the game and I think they just made each of the new enemies basically the same as the covenant. I expect to see a lot more from them in Halo 5.

It exeeded my expectations.  But I didnt expect "all new weapons and enemies" because since Halo 2 NO Halo games have really delivered on any of those things.  This is actually the most change we've seen in enemy types and weapon types.  I played on legendary, and found the combat challenging, while not being terribly frustrating.  I found the level design (aesthetically and otherwise) really engaging, save for the one tram mission.  It was what I wanted out of a Halo game, as a Halo fan, just with better characterization of The Chief and Cortana.  I found the cut scenes really striking and the whatever method of performance capture that was done really helped with how engaging it all was, even if some of it was a little "wait.. huh...? Oh.  I should wiki that part"
 
That all being said I am expecting something very different from Halo 5, now that 343i has shown that a good Halo game they can make.

Went back and played the HALO 1 (AE) campaign in co op after finishing HALO 4 in co op. The original is still a much better game, although it repeats a lot of the same environments it doesn't matter, the gameplay is finely tuned to Halo perfection and all other HALO sp campaigns have been failing to emulate it since.

Along with the story complaint, I do not favor the direction the art style is going in. They should have kept going with the exotic models with "hyper-real textures" instead of doing it the other way around. Different strokes and all of that.

ps. Can we also stop with annoying vehicle sections?

@Akyho: They used the Reach engine to make this game. So it wasn't from the ground up. They improved upon the engine a whole lot, but they didn't do it from scratch.