Halo 4

37p.

Also re: the Mantis, I am the Mantis hunter. You just need a Plasma Pistol and then sneak round from the side or back. EMP it, ride it like a rodeo and the job's a good 'un.

But, yes, it is inferior to Reach which was inferior to 3.

Which is why we should play Halo 3 again.

Am I the only one here who bought Halo 4 exclusively for the Campaign mode?

Not sure why, but I've never bothered with Xbox Live. The only Halo game that I play multi-player is the first one for the PC.

I bought it for the campaign. Which turned out meh, because the new enemies were so annoying.

Well the ending wasn't quite what I expected for Halo.

Though the final mission I can already tell is going to be a complete bitch when it comes to legendary solo. Mostly because there'll be so many knights and ick. Yeah new enemies are not fun to fight, at least with Covenant even Covenant with Engineers once they're dead, they're dead. The Watchers revive ability cheapens Halo's campaign to something akin to Call of Duty games made by Treyarch (Black Ops and you're infinitely spawning troops at Khe San, looking right at you 3 seconds to move and then kill the same 3 guys over again)

Somehow though I expect I'll sit there frustrated to smurf grinding that bastard out at some point which doesn't inspire me to be joyful at all which even by my standards is something unusual I normally soak those challenges up.

Yeah, the respawning from those freaking flying machines pisses me off the most. I've ground through halo 1 legendary, where at one point my buddy and I took turns assaulting Wraiths, elites, and ghosts with plasma pistols because we ran out of ammo. But we did it, because when elites are dead.. they remain DEAD.

You run out of ammo so fast with the new enemies, and you have to take their troutty guns. Also, worst guns ever. The assault rifle of theirs is just utter trout, no impact. The light rifle runs out of ammo in a second, and the scatter gun is useless at the range you want to be in heroic and legendary games.

To conclude, the new enemies and weapons are the poo that comes from bulls. The story is fine, it's okay, nothing wrong with it. But for the love of, I never want to see those enemies again.

Going to spoiler tag because not everyone will have done the story yet.

(SPOILER)Another point of contention for me was this: The Forerunners we have evidence of, their existence is confirmed by the huge number of things they left behind. The Halo Arrays, The Ark, The Shield Worlds. We have evidence of their war with The Flood (Halo arrays being filled with them for example) The story element that the Librarian shares with the Master Chief that "Well actually the reason The Forerunners got their asses kicked by The Flood was they were spent after a brutal and terrible war against Humanity." Didn't really have much in the way of grounding in the Halo universe. Where then are the ruins of this old Human Civilization and how did the Forerunner Librarian when she selected humanity for re-seeding the universe manage to gene code us to produce The Spartans and also looking at the video she show's the Chief, the same sort of technology?

I don't necessarily mind too much about being made to use the Supressor, in a pinch (read when you have no other option because you're out of ammo for the Saw/Assault Rifle) it does relatively well. It's still better than the Storm Rifle, which I will only use in the direst of circumstances, a spiritual successor to the Plasma Assault or even the Plasma Repeater it is not!

The DMR and Battle Rifle both chew ammo in 4 like no tomorrow as does the Carbine and the Light Rifle. It's a shame because it feels like they're trying to force you in to a run and gun style game play exactly like you'd find on CoD again, Halo taking points from Treyarch built games. In Modern Warfare like Halo 1 - Reach they have finite enemies so I can't really blame Infinity Ward for that hence the singling out of Treyarch.

The Bolt Pistol almost amuses me, despite sharing the name of one of the greatest pistols ever designed in any sci-fi ever (seriously if you don't think Warhammer 40,000 Bolt Pistols are badass, just look them up I'll even provide a link for you!) The "shotgun" charge feature of it is pretty much rendered useless by the pathetic range they grant it (I'd rather rake a Surpressor over a knight than try to take it with a Bolt Pistol) And the pistol itself is left sorely lacking in any stopping power (almost like a plasma pistol) even less useful considering 343 decided dual wielding wasn't worth including in this game (I could understand and allow the lack of dual wield on magnums)

However the rarer but insanely overpowered support weapons of the Prothean Knights are ridiculous. The Incendiary Launcher forexample will regularly destroy you. In fact in multiplayer this is so overpowered that it replaces the Spartan Laser from Halo 3 for ridiculous. At least the laser has a charge (though it could still shoot through about 13 vehicles in a row destroying them all as we once tested) The Incendiary Launcher basically has less firing - impact lag than a rocket launcher and to boot has a secondary impact after the initial impact. I cannot begin to describe how overpowered this is.

The same can be said of the Binary Rifle, I laughed at how ridiculous this is. Quicker rate of fire from trigger to impact even over extreme range than the sniper rifle of the UNSC it's only saving grace is that like the UNSC rifle it packs a lower ammo count than the Beam Rifle of the Covenant. Though a rifle what can instantly kill a fully shielded spartan with a single hit to the kneecap (I wish I was kidding on this we, that is Psy, DK and myself tested it) is a little over the top for open multiplayer combat. Another point with sniper rifles is that it's now possible to shoot the hatch off a Wraith or Scorpion to attack the driver directly. To give an idea of how many shots this takes: UNSC to remove the hatch on a Scorpion? 2, to kill the driver? 1 headshot, 2 if you don't make the first shot. Binary Rifle? 1 to remove the hatch and 1 anywhere to kill the driver. The Beam Rifle comes 3rd on this competition taking both more shots to clear the hatch and 1/2 for the driver (though packing an extra 2 shots compared to either the basic Binary Rifle or UNSC Sniper Rifle but no option to rebuild charge/collect ammo)

Unfortunately I doubt this is going to be either the last we will see of the Diatracht (spelling?) Or his Prothean Allies in this trilogy. Though how they'll have the Chief survive the next encounter (SPOILER)without Cortana to save him will be perhaps the most interesting thing. (SPOILER)Though looking at the ending FMV's it seems clear to me that Chief is set to get a new suit of Mjolnir Spartan IV armour which I don't believe for one second I'm happy about it's bad enough they emancipated his armour for the 4th game already.

Halo Forward Unto Dawn Spoiler/PlotI think it's also worth noting that Lasky despite being saved by Chief at the Corbulo Academy doesn't feel fit to mention it to the Chief he speaks about reading up on the Chief but he doesn't say "Well sir actually when I was nothing more than an idiot cadet who couldn't take my shots for cryo sleep you saved my bacon" Or even to speak up when Del Rio is bitching at Palmer to try and arrest the Chief (like she could... bitch please!)

The Didact? Just turn on subtitles, bro.

Yeah I couldn't be arsed with loading up my game and playing a mission through with subtitles.