![]() Witty, world weary banter between soldiers? Check. ![]() Brief feelings of military omnipotence behind the wheel of a near unstoppable Scorpion tank? Check. Lonely meandering through vast, ancient, alien corridors? Check. Hijack a Ghost and veer around a big open area taking pot shots at Elites? Check. Then they re-skinned those moments in the shiny new graphics engine with a new plot and let players live through them again. 343 Industries went back, put every Halo game under a Star Trek tricorder, and analyzed with almost mathematical efficiency what moments and mechanics from past games players responded to positively. “Safe” is an adjective that can be applied to just about every aspect of Halo 4. It is, like so many other things about Halo 4, safe. It sounds like an extremely polished science fiction film and it fits the new feel and direction 343 Industries is taking Halo in. Players pining for nostalgic moments of Gregorian chanting are in for disappointment, but there’s a weight and brassiness to the score that evokes everything from Star Wars at times to Avatar. Newcomer Neil Davidge-of Massive Attack fame-steps in, and while his compositions aren’t familiar, they feel fitting. The big concern here is probably the music, since the regular series composer Marty O’Donnell is now as absent as Bungie itself. The iconic “shield empty” beep still trills frantically in the background and the gun fire does a decent job of taking advantage of surround speakers. But there’s still room for the lush, natural environments that players have come to expect as well, and of course, the Covenant look pretty much the way you remember them, with slight tweaks to their armor. The more angular, hard lines of the Forerunner enemies and environments give certain sequences of the game almost the feel of a futuristic Japanese game such as Zone of the Enders. Halo has always been good at bypassing the monotone, brown/grey mess that plagues almost every other FPS out there, and 343 Industries keep the reputation alive and well. The art direction has also gotten a nice injection of new form and color thanks to the new enemy. Master Chief probably also has some Oscar worthy arches of the motion captured brow, and pursing of lips during these tender moments, but we’ll never know. Microsoft has invested some serious money in facial capture technology so even Cortana gets in some startlingly nuanced expressions during the vaguely disturbing scenes of emotional endearment between herself and Master Chief. The frame rate is steady as a rock, there’s little in the way of glitches or collision detection issues, and there’s a noticeable jump in polygon counts and animation from even Halo: Reach. Moving on to the presentation, there’s good news for graphics whores this is quite possibly the greatest looking Xbox 360 game ever made, a fairly safe statement to make considering next year will be the console’s last. ![]() For everyone else, it means moments ofentirely too convenient plot device/developments that have little traction. For the dedicated Halo fan, this is a joyous wink of appreciation. If you’re not one of those people there will be occasional moments of bafflement as these transmedia plot elements are invoked. The only real criticism with the progression of the plot is that, like Assassin’s Creed, 343 Studios sometimes errs on the side of presumption, assuming that people playing the game have kept up with dense lore of Halo that’s cropped up in comics, anime and novels. All’s right with the world, as far as Halo fans are concerned. So with that double whammy of urgent priorities Master Chief is back on the case, piloting combat craft, wandering exotic alien locales and shooting anything without a USNC IFF signal. On top of this, the continuing vaguely disturbing undercurrent of Master Chief’s romantic longings for his artificial intelligence Cortana gets more air time as she comes down with an AI condition known as “Rampancy.” This is a deterioration of AI cognitive processes after about seven years of service that results in the AI “thinking itself to death.” Cortana, after this latest bout of babysitting a cryogenically suspended Master Chief for a few years, has put in eight. A new villain arises to threaten humanity and this time it’s the oft mentioned Forerunners to whom the construction of the Halo galaxy killing array system is attributed to. After the almost Arthurian ending of Halo 3 where Master Chief was put into stasis with a request to wake him if there was ever need… there’s a need.
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