Stream of consciousness blog! This will hardly be organized in any meaningful fashion so enjoy this odd look into my madness.
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Doing a solo play of Halo 4 on heroic for the first time in ages. I never played the game too much so I'm taking my TIME on how quickly I go through each level, so far about 45 minutes to an hour per level as I take my time exploring everything it has to offer. And I'm actually playing it again because I've never played Halo 5 all the way through, and want to do so before Halo Infinite gets released.
I know that between Halo 4 and Halo 5, 4 is generally regarded as better, but I just can't enjoy it. There's so many little things that just rub me the wrong way with it in general and really messes up the whole experience for me. The weapons suck. The soundtrack is just "off". The game leans too much on the soundtrack. The game tries too hard to present itself as a movie. The story is all over the fucking place and way too god damn fast.
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The weapons suck.
I'll try to make these quick. But yeah, the weapons suck. They're all different, the game doesn't introduce you to any of them and really just throws them all at you all at once. Halo 1, first level. Pistol, AR, plasma rifle, plasma pistol, frag grenade. Level 2, all of those plus needler, plasma grenade, sniper, rocket launcher. Halo 4 has so many weapons, gets rid of so many of the staples, and all of the new ones are almost all introduced at the same time. Choice overload and I hardly know what weapon to pick for what scenario.
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The soundtrack is just "off". The game leans too much on the soundtrack.
It's not an O'Donnell and Salvatori score, for one, so that's already a mark against it. The music is too much. It's too upbeat and powerful in all the wrong places. Virtually ever track sounds like a fight scene track from a John Wick film or something out of Interstellar (but not as good because that soundtrack SLAPS). I'm having a hard time finding it but I seem to remember O'Donnell saying something about the older Halo games how they had to strike a balance between music and atmosphere, where the soundtrack helps the game present its story better but tries to be unobtrusive in and of itself. It's supposed to be an enhancement, not a focal point, or at least that's something that I get out of the older games but miss here. The soundtrack is just so damn in your face all the time. And the worst part of it is none of it is memorable to me. I FREQUENTLY listen to the Halo Reach, Halo CE, and Halo 2 OSTs. Halo 3 and ODST, every once in a while. Send me a few seconds of one of the songs from any of those games except for ODST and I can probably tell you what level and what game it's from. Maybe even for ODST and I've played that about as many times as I have Halo 4.
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The game tries too hard to present itself as a movie.
See above for the music and apply the same for the cutscenes. Everything seems overly coreographed, canned, and actioney. I think it's the last level of the game, has much almost the entire time and just makes it feel like you're playing out a John Wick scene. I hate it. Combined with the fact that...
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The story is all over the fucking place and way too god damn fast.
Seriously I have no idea what the fuck is going on. I'm very far behind on the Halo extended lore and there's so much that the game does nothing to explain. Who the fuck is the Didact? What the fuck even are Promethians? What is the composer doing? Who the fuck is the Librarian? What in the name of the holy fuck is up with that ending cutscene? Lasky says how he never thought he'd see Chief again. WHERE HAS HE SEEN HIM BEFORE?
I know or have at one point read the answers to basically all of these questions, but UGH, why is it like that? Halo Reach has 3 minor things that it doesn't answer: What happened to Kat's arm, what happened to the old Noble 6, and what happened to Jun? Halo 1 leaves you wondering how you got to the situation of the opening cutscene. Halo 2 makes you wonder how Johnson survived but could just be assumed to be plot armor. Halo 3 and ODST I don't think really leave much to be thought of? In any case though anything that's not explained in those games isn't all too important to the plot and can generally be brushed away by those not interested in the extended lore. But not with 4, in my eyes.
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What did they do that's good? Visuals are good. Movement tech is fine. Gunplay is... fine. Oh, vehicles suck, so that's another thing.
Halo 4 just sucks, IMO. From the bit of Halo 5 that I've played I greatly prefer its gameplay. That said, don't take me as one of those "number company bad" Bungie purists. I have nothing at all against 343 and what they've produced, I think the fact that they're putting massive work into MCC 7 years after release AND fixing things in Halo 1 that were problems before it was even in their hands, adding content and all, absolutely incredible stuff, and I am SUPER excited for Halo Infinite. I just don't like Halo 4.
----------------------
Doing a solo play of Halo 4 on heroic for the first time in ages. I never played the game too much so I'm taking my TIME on how quickly I go through each level, so far about 45 minutes to an hour per level as I take my time exploring everything it has to offer. And I'm actually playing it again because I've never played Halo 5 all the way through, and want to do so before Halo Infinite gets released.
I know that between Halo 4 and Halo 5, 4 is generally regarded as better, but I just can't enjoy it. There's so many little things that just rub me the wrong way with it in general and really messes up the whole experience for me. The weapons suck. The soundtrack is just "off". The game leans too much on the soundtrack. The game tries too hard to present itself as a movie. The story is all over the fucking place and way too god damn fast.
-----------------------
The weapons suck.
I'll try to make these quick. But yeah, the weapons suck. They're all different, the game doesn't introduce you to any of them and really just throws them all at you all at once. Halo 1, first level. Pistol, AR, plasma rifle, plasma pistol, frag grenade. Level 2, all of those plus needler, plasma grenade, sniper, rocket launcher. Halo 4 has so many weapons, gets rid of so many of the staples, and all of the new ones are almost all introduced at the same time. Choice overload and I hardly know what weapon to pick for what scenario.
-----------------------
The soundtrack is just "off". The game leans too much on the soundtrack.
It's not an O'Donnell and Salvatori score, for one, so that's already a mark against it. The music is too much. It's too upbeat and powerful in all the wrong places. Virtually ever track sounds like a fight scene track from a John Wick film or something out of Interstellar (but not as good because that soundtrack SLAPS). I'm having a hard time finding it but I seem to remember O'Donnell saying something about the older Halo games how they had to strike a balance between music and atmosphere, where the soundtrack helps the game present its story better but tries to be unobtrusive in and of itself. It's supposed to be an enhancement, not a focal point, or at least that's something that I get out of the older games but miss here. The soundtrack is just so damn in your face all the time. And the worst part of it is none of it is memorable to me. I FREQUENTLY listen to the Halo Reach, Halo CE, and Halo 2 OSTs. Halo 3 and ODST, every once in a while. Send me a few seconds of one of the songs from any of those games except for ODST and I can probably tell you what level and what game it's from. Maybe even for ODST and I've played that about as many times as I have Halo 4.
-----------------------
The game tries too hard to present itself as a movie.
See above for the music and apply the same for the cutscenes. Everything seems overly coreographed, canned, and actioney. I think it's the last level of the game, has much almost the entire time and just makes it feel like you're playing out a John Wick scene. I hate it. Combined with the fact that...
-----------------------
The story is all over the fucking place and way too god damn fast.
Seriously I have no idea what the fuck is going on. I'm very far behind on the Halo extended lore and there's so much that the game does nothing to explain. Who the fuck is the Didact? What the fuck even are Promethians? What is the composer doing? Who the fuck is the Librarian? What in the name of the holy fuck is up with that ending cutscene? Lasky says how he never thought he'd see Chief again. WHERE HAS HE SEEN HIM BEFORE?
I know or have at one point read the answers to basically all of these questions, but UGH, why is it like that? Halo Reach has 3 minor things that it doesn't answer: What happened to Kat's arm, what happened to the old Noble 6, and what happened to Jun? Halo 1 leaves you wondering how you got to the situation of the opening cutscene. Halo 2 makes you wonder how Johnson survived but could just be assumed to be plot armor. Halo 3 and ODST I don't think really leave much to be thought of? In any case though anything that's not explained in those games isn't all too important to the plot and can generally be brushed away by those not interested in the extended lore. But not with 4, in my eyes.
------------------------
What did they do that's good? Visuals are good. Movement tech is fine. Gunplay is... fine. Oh, vehicles suck, so that's another thing.
Halo 4 just sucks, IMO. From the bit of Halo 5 that I've played I greatly prefer its gameplay. That said, don't take me as one of those "number company bad" Bungie purists. I have nothing at all against 343 and what they've produced, I think the fact that they're putting massive work into MCC 7 years after release AND fixing things in Halo 1 that were problems before it was even in their hands, adding content and all, absolutely incredible stuff, and I am SUPER excited for Halo Infinite. I just don't like Halo 4.
