The general consensus on this game seems to be "decent campaign, crap multiplayer". Sometimes I agree, sometimes I think it's the exact opposite. The campaign goes to some interesting places, being more of a character study than a sort of special forces war story, while ironically the multiplayer takes cues from COD, eschewing the equal starts arena multiplayer for custom loadouts and superpowers. And yet, at the same time, I find the multiplayer really fun (and it's the one I'm best at, for some reason), and find the campaign to be lacking in several respects. It was a wasted opportunity to have Chief so far from home and yet the Covenant have reformed and within a couple of missions the UNSC have already found him. Some of the campaign levels are unbearably tedious, with repeated setpieces involving defending a single area until something happens, undercooked Promethean enemies and weapons, and the actual conflict of the story which is incomprehensible if your experience of the series is the previous numbered entries - a terrible sin for any piece of media to commit.

When I played the Halo series for the first time in 2021, I was expecting Halo 4 to be a dropoff. I was told by Halo fans that this is where the series began going downhill, but... I dunno about that. I actually enjoyed this game. Does it try too much to be like other shooters? Yes. I don't mind sprinting but it didn't need it either. This is a more story-heavy game than the previous entries, focused around Cortana primarily. And I liked it! I really don't think this game is bad at all, but it's definitely not up to par with the games that came before it.

Score: 82

It was very funny how excited I was about the fact that Halo had sprinting lol. The game is a noticeable downgrade from Reach in almost every other way, trying fruitlessly to replicate what COD was doing and losing itself in the process.

Halo 4's campaign is quite forgettable IMO, as in, I've played it twice and I can't tell you a single thing that happened. I love Master Chief, but it feels like 343 has had no idea what to do with his character after 3. Bungie had basically given him his fond farewell and left it a little ambiguous, so to bring him back just cause he's the marketable face of the franchise and do nothing with him besides ruin his mystique is a bold choice to say the least lol.

I remember multiplayer being a good time (hence the above average grade), basically what Reach was doing but not as interesting.

If Halo 5 didn't exist this is probably the worst one, but I abandoned that one so this remains at the bottom of my personal ranking for now.

The epitome of mid.

"Halo 4" has all the pieces that it needs to work, and for the most part, it does. But it is just missing that "Halo" shine, the thing that really made "Halo: stand out from all the other shooters out there.

Playing it this time around, I noticed how weird level transitions were and how often the game resorted to teleporting Chief mid-level. All the previous games were great at making a singular level feel really lived in, like you were adventuring across this whole area, and it would only resort to teleportation once the level was over. Just something I noticed this time around.

"Halo 4" is my least favorite game on the MCC, but my cute girlfriend has fun playing it with me, so I can't complain at all.