HALO 4 Official GSA Review

**KENT HAMMER** Mon Nov 05, 2012 7:57 pm

Developer: 343 Industries

Publisher: Microsoft Studios

This Review is brought to you by Kent Hammer Productions

HALO 4 is not as it turns out about a Master Chef and his love of his old Ford Cortina, but is in fact a futuristic sci-fi romance between one man army Master Chief and his beloved Cortana an AI sidekick.

This game is both EPIC and Orchestral in size and scope, even if you just leave it sitting on the start screen you feel uplifted and inspired by the sounds that flow over you.

Without question this is the fps game of the year, it makes the storyline in Gears 3 seem small and lacking in scope and vision.

Here you will experience extreme struggle with your fellow Spartans or feel the odds are insurmountable as your one man army ploughs a lone furrow against the evil alien horde.

This time around Master Chief returns to conquer new enemies and mind blowing new technology after finding himself shipwrecked on a mysterious world. With only his extremely hot and sexy blue AI Cortana and her buns of steel to guide and inspire him on his quest.

The campaign can be played with upto 4 players or as I did with my review copy, solo against the universe! I elected to play on normal difficulty and even this was a great challenge at times with multiple deaths and start again from the save point shenanigans.

I don't want to ruin any of the awesome story or plot twists but lets just say you will smegging love it!

Your journey will take you through foggy jungles where the only way to see the enemy is by using a special ability mapped to your LB button. All very predator movie this stuff!

My favourite ability is the floating sentry as that little flying machine gun helped me out of many a scrape along the way and is almost indispensable in solo play.

Also your choice of weapons this time is huge as you are constantly using the alien technology that is dropped on the battlefield. Personally I like to use the heavy machine gun combined with a sniper rifle. But part of the genius of Halo is using the right weapon combo on the right enemy. There are some serious double hard bastards to take down here. They even have the ability to regen health and even completely be reborn and rebuilt by these crafty little flying buggers that follow them into battle!

The set pieces are all consuming and its a great challenge working out the best strategy to take them all down and clear the area.

This brings me onto the other awesome part of the Halo universe- The Multi-player online side of things.

You access this from the menu by clicking INFINITY, this is your mothership hub where every Spartans journey starts from.

First up is War games and like the old song used to say “War has never been so much fun!”

You can pit yourself against everyone else in a free for all killing spree or maybe you would rather play a team based match of capture the flag. My personal favourite and the mode I was best at was “FLOOD” and not because that's the technique I also use for pulling birds on a Saturday night out on the town (pm me for tips and my patented flooding technique)
No this is about a couple of Spartans against an every growing number of zombies trying to survive and keep your humanity as one bite and your turned!

Suffice to say, solo play, 4 player, 6 player and 8 vs 8 player matches are all well catered for and it will take you ages even just to try them all once.
Halo truly will become your new way of life this winter Spartan!

You can also create all your own maps to battle on and customise all the rules and regs for your chosen game time. Really you are only limited by your own lack of imagination and drive, abit like life really in that sense. Whoa, heavy man! *-)

Finally and one of the online modes I played the most is Spartan Ops. Now if you are not billy smegging no mates like me you will no doubt be able to put together a crack team to plough through on Leg End Dairy. But I had to play with the great unwashed and it was still a really fun experience.
It will auto match you up and if there are 2 of you it will auto set the difficulty to Normal and 3 of you Heroic and so on.

Spartan ops is bigger and better than most stand alone games on its own. This time there is full chapters with 5 episodes in each and a running storyline all of its own with different and varied mission types. Nobody is left out as there are constant re-spawns but you will face the embarrassment at the end of each battle if you have 25 kills and 45 deaths. I died about that many times myself in one chapter last night when I got the achievement for completing a Spartan Ops match solo on legendary. But I still engaged smug mode on completion 8-)

Right nuff said, stop reading this now and go outside and do something less......oh hang on, I mean get your ass off the sofa Spartan and down to your local 24 hour supermarket and battle through the adidas tracky wearing hordes and come home with the only game you need this winter- HALO 4

score??? you still need a score after all that???? Do you really need to ask??

10/10

TreeMunky Mon Nov 05, 2012 10:10 pm

Top review Kent as always. Never been a big Halo fan but you might have swung it for me, so close to Hitman though...

Sh00t3rmcgavin2 Mon Nov 05, 2012 11:05 pm

Brilliant read Kent!!, I have never played a Halo game, and I know Im missing out as I've seen my boys play it, but I just don't think it's my thing.

Stee01 Tue Nov 06, 2012 7:20 am

Great review there. Surprise you did a review on this. Normally you're not keen fps. As always, a nice little read to kill the time in work Razz

should get my copy this morning.

Colne Crusader Tue Nov 06, 2012 7:46 am

Wicked! Damn you! Even I want this now! Too many games!!!! Help!!!

Stellar review!

chrism1066 Tue Nov 06, 2012 10:55 am

AARRGGHH looks like this might have to be purchased! great review mate!

GrahamOfTheDead Tue Nov 06, 2012 11:57 am

Classic Kent review. Looking forward to giving this a go. Probably not until after new year though now. Like I mentioned on twitter the other day I've got the last 3 games to finish first.

Guest Tue Nov 06, 2012 12:06 pm

well reviewed matey

stubbymite Tue Nov 06, 2012 12:54 pm

great review there mate. This looks like a truly epic game I AM gonna purchase but with such a backlog its defo a new year purchase for me Smile

Guest Tue Nov 06, 2012 7:47 pm

Top review mate. Even with all the games I have on the go I have gone on bought this. Call me weak, who cares. If I have learned one thing from this year is life is short. Play as much as you can when you can.

**KENT HAMMER** Wed Nov 07, 2012 10:35 am

Thanks for the lovely comments guys, I always try and give you what you want Wink

**minkey_monkey** Wed Nov 07, 2012 11:11 am

Well reviewed chap

RabidHellBunny Wed Nov 07, 2012 1:16 pm

Nice review - yes I did actually read it!!! I might pick this up at some point but am holding off buying any games until I know I will actually have any time to play them, work has consumed my whole life right now!

TheTCD Wed Nov 07, 2012 2:07 pm

Ah, the unique Kent review style. Plenty of laughs, and a good review.

So far I am loving the story, but I just won't play it. To me it is and always will be a co-op game, and I just can't get into them solo. But with that said, I do love the brave new direction 343i have taken the series. It's a lot more mature, and largely loses the thinly-veiled patriotic shtick, and being an alternative US military recruitment tool. US teens LOVE the chief but I always found a mostly soulless character, devoid of any personality.

Slayer1189 Wed Nov 07, 2012 2:37 pm

Nice review, Started this yesterday but so far but have only done a few modes of War games and 1 story mission. Looking forward to Spartan Ops which was one of the main attractions of this game for me - Glad to hear you think good things about it! Not starting them myself until I finish campaign though.

kinmad4it Wed Nov 07, 2012 5:44 pm

Nice review mate.

The one thing letting the game down for is the omission of Firefight. I loved that game mode and can't believe it's been replaced.
Spartan Ops to me seems like nothing more than episodic campaign levels. Certainly adding longevity to the games lifespan, but I want my Firefight back!!

This new game seems harder than the others, I'm only playing through on Normal as I always do first run through, so I can soak up all the atmosphere and I've died shedloads. Not even halfway through the campaign yet and I've already earmarked a fair few bits that're gonna be absolute bitches when it comes to my Leg end hairy playtrough.

One thing that really stands out for me, trivial to some but not me, is the button configuration is spot on. X should always be reload and this time it is, none of this shoulder button bollocks. The Assault Rifle also seems lot beefier too, it can actually kill enemies in this game without exhausting a full clip on just a Grunt, the gun now sounds awesome too.

habitualschizo Fri Nov 09, 2012 12:22 am

I'm hoping when I get the time to really get in to it,I'll lovw it. But so far for me it's just ok

Ba5sett Fri Nov 09, 2012 8:36 am

Absolutely amazing game, great review buddy

Leigh36295 Thu Jan 10, 2013 9:46 am

Does anyone still play the multiplayer on this? Was thinking of renting it and setting up a game night on here

Guest Thu Jan 10, 2013 10:06 am

I would be up for some multiplayer. Nobody on my friend list seems to play this when I am online. I don't have dlc because of this but would be happy to get it in the future.

Ba5sett Thu Jan 10, 2013 10:37 am

I play multiplayer on this quite a lot, currently my favourite online shooter

RabidHellBunny Thu Jan 10, 2013 1:08 pm

I still play the multiplayer on this, I'm pretty rubbish but still enjoying it.

**KENT HAMMER** Thu Jan 10, 2013 1:22 pm

Yes I am well up for this

TreeMunky Thu Jan 10, 2013 2:08 pm

Always up for a game night. Won't be online for a whiles but a regular shooter night would be great Smile

Tenlo Thu Jan 10, 2013 6:09 pm

I now have a copy of this but have barely touched it due to other game priorities so would be up for some Halo fun!

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