Yeah so this was something. The Bungie run of Halo games is pretty amazing, starting from the Super Mario 64 of first person shooters and ending with Reach, the best game in the franchise. 343 had a tall task before them following that up, and unfortunately that resulted in them making some pretty safe choices.

There is some cool stuff, I like how much Master Chief and Cortana talk to each other in this one, I like that the stakes feel more personal, and I like that Master Chief begins to question what's happened to him all this time and how its affected how he looks at himself as something different than a human being.

But man, the levels are pretty boring. It's some real "touch these three things and fight guys while you get there" stuff for most of the game. The forerunner enemies also just do not hold a candle to how well-designed the covenant are. All the new character design just looks like some 2000s graphics card box art. And I'm not crazy about any of the new guns... Okay, I actually kinda like that forerunner battle rifle quite a bit but other than that its a bunch of duds.

Wish I liked this more, but also it seems like I still like it more than a lot of folks so at least that's something. Guess I'll play Halo 5 soon