Alright, let’s get the one good thing out of the way before I rip this game a new asshole: the expansion on Chief and Cortana. I know some people find it a bit jarring that Chief is now more of a proper character as opposed to mostly being a blank slate for the audience to project onto, and while I do think the transition between the two (as in the two different characterisations of Chief) could’ve been handled a bit better, I overall much prefer having him as fully developed character. The greater emphasis on the relationship between Chief and Cortana also leads to a much stronger emotional core than any of the previous games had, not that they weren’t without any emotional moments, but they weren’t as pronounced as they were here I feel.
It’s also good that I can more strongly connect to the two leads this time since the rest of the plot and cast is kinda eh. The crew of the Infinity aren’t all that memorable besides Del Rio, and that’s only for the hysterical line delivery of “I am ordering you………to GIVE ME THAT AI!”, (Who in their right mind thought that was a good take?) and the Didact is easily the worst villain this series has to offer thus far. Never put most of your villains backstory and motivation into a long ass cutscene that’s just an overload exposition people. Also doesn’t help that even the stuff I liked with Chief and Cortana is probably rendered null and void by Halo 5, so that’s great.
What about the visuals then? I’m kinda split if I’m being honest. The new designs for the Covenant were a bit off-putting at first, but I did adjust eventually. What I didn’t adjust to for the most part was Cortana’s revamp. It’s really jarring after the first three games designed to mostly just have the basic outline of a human woman to now where she has more noticeable features like individual hair strands and more pronounced lips. I do understand to an extent why this is the case since theoretically if she’s more detailed it’ll allow for the emotions to shine through more, but I still have to question why they didn’t just carry over her appearance from the first 3 games. Halo 2: Anniversary did that and she was still really expressive so I don’t see what the issue would’ve been. Like am just being crazy, IDK.
Ok so the story is mostly meh and the new art direction was a a similarly mixed bag, but at least the gameplays good? No, not really. The vehicle sections are still really fun, but the regular gameplay is rendered a lot less fun thanks to the general level design being aggressively linear in a way most of the previous games never were, not to mention the new Forerunner enemies are just a chore to fight. The regular ones are bullet sponges, the flying ones always fold their wings which for some reason just makes it impossible to inflict damage on them, and the dog ones despite being way less hard to kill are often in groups so they’ll usually dogpile your ass. This made a lot of the late game really frustrating because often if I didn’t go out of my way to kill literally EVERY enemy I’d end up getting capped and having to redo a lot of my progress, which unsurprisingly got really annoying after a while.
But yeah that’s pretty much all I gotta say about this. I didn’t have particularly high hopes going in so I can’t say I’m disappointed to a massive extent, but a lot of my friends told me it wasn’t as bad as a lot of people make it out to be, so I am a tiny bit bummed out that I only really liked one element of the campaign. Even then that’s undercut by it probably being pissed away by the next game, which I ain’t playing for the record. Therefore I guess this marks the end of Halo for me until Infinite drops later this year. Overall I’m quite happy to have finally given this series the time of day, and I greatly thank my friends for encouraging me to give it a shot. 5/10
It’s also good that I can more strongly connect to the two leads this time since the rest of the plot and cast is kinda eh. The crew of the Infinity aren’t all that memorable besides Del Rio, and that’s only for the hysterical line delivery of “I am ordering you………to GIVE ME THAT AI!”, (Who in their right mind thought that was a good take?) and the Didact is easily the worst villain this series has to offer thus far. Never put most of your villains backstory and motivation into a long ass cutscene that’s just an overload exposition people. Also doesn’t help that even the stuff I liked with Chief and Cortana is probably rendered null and void by Halo 5, so that’s great.
What about the visuals then? I’m kinda split if I’m being honest. The new designs for the Covenant were a bit off-putting at first, but I did adjust eventually. What I didn’t adjust to for the most part was Cortana’s revamp. It’s really jarring after the first three games designed to mostly just have the basic outline of a human woman to now where she has more noticeable features like individual hair strands and more pronounced lips. I do understand to an extent why this is the case since theoretically if she’s more detailed it’ll allow for the emotions to shine through more, but I still have to question why they didn’t just carry over her appearance from the first 3 games. Halo 2: Anniversary did that and she was still really expressive so I don’t see what the issue would’ve been. Like am just being crazy, IDK.
Ok so the story is mostly meh and the new art direction was a a similarly mixed bag, but at least the gameplays good? No, not really. The vehicle sections are still really fun, but the regular gameplay is rendered a lot less fun thanks to the general level design being aggressively linear in a way most of the previous games never were, not to mention the new Forerunner enemies are just a chore to fight. The regular ones are bullet sponges, the flying ones always fold their wings which for some reason just makes it impossible to inflict damage on them, and the dog ones despite being way less hard to kill are often in groups so they’ll usually dogpile your ass. This made a lot of the late game really frustrating because often if I didn’t go out of my way to kill literally EVERY enemy I’d end up getting capped and having to redo a lot of my progress, which unsurprisingly got really annoying after a while.
But yeah that’s pretty much all I gotta say about this. I didn’t have particularly high hopes going in so I can’t say I’m disappointed to a massive extent, but a lot of my friends told me it wasn’t as bad as a lot of people make it out to be, so I am a tiny bit bummed out that I only really liked one element of the campaign. Even then that’s undercut by it probably being pissed away by the next game, which I ain’t playing for the record. Therefore I guess this marks the end of Halo for me until Infinite drops later this year. Overall I’m quite happy to have finally given this series the time of day, and I greatly thank my friends for encouraging me to give it a shot. 5/10
Azumarrill
2 years ago