good when you play it for the first time but the more you think about it the game just comes across as any other "wahhhhhhh im so sad that i killed middle easterners" dreck the united states loves to push out but with a thin veil of "this is COMMENTARY on the military industrial complex." only noteworthy because it's one of the only bro shooters that dares to ask "what if us army man bad"

edit: played metal gear solid recently and it just dawned on me that it did everything this game was trying to do 12 years before and better

pretty good. i found myself wishing the duels were a bit better designed but that's nothing major since they're like what, 5-6 minutes of gameplay across a 5 hour game? gunplay was nice and tight, towards the end of the game it's pretty cool how you can just stack concentration combos easily and get huge amounts of points. very arcadey and probably pretty replayable, though i cant see myself coming back to it any time soon. the voice performance for the protagonist is really good, kept me hooked on the story. it got a bit silly with the amount of big historical figures this guy ran into but it pays off in a pretty okay way by the end.

this review is specifically about the campaign content.

combat loop is great, no problems there. guns are awesome and the game does a great job making you feel like a badass. my problems more lie in the open world design. it's fine but the strongest parts of the game to me are definitely the more guided objective based levels akin to the earlier games in the series and it just left me wishing the game was shorter linear campaign. you can only save so many marines or capture so many bases or kill so many targets before you realize the game is kind of boring. oh well, maybe halo 7 will be better (it wont be)

Raiden gets a happy ending. 10/10

Edit: After some thought its not actually a 10/10 but it's still pretty damn good video games

2024 edit: ok its kinda shit actually but its admirable