Thursday, November 22, 2012

I’ve Got Halo 4 Problems, but a Bitch Ain’t One

I’ve only just finished the Halo 4 campaign. I only ever really encountered one glitch, where my Pelican wouldn’t take off at the beginning of a mission, but it was relatively easy to resolve by restarting the level. I wanted to call it, “The Pelican Brief,” glitch. I don’t see why I can’t.

Halo 4 differs from all other Halo games by having a clear and definitive antagonist. Master Chief’s always been butting heads against random soldiers in the field, but there’s never been a big baddie. There was that weird Space Pope guy and the, “Flood,” plus the evil floating orb robot, but they’re not really a foil. Diadact is more like Master Chief himself, but with tusks, and unexplained Darth Vader force powers. Diadact can magically ensnare Master Chief using pychokinesis and render him completely helpless. He does this two times. Plus, he knows everything Mater Chief is doing at all times. He still somehow loses. The epic final battle between the two involved pressing the grenade button when told to. It wasn’t even a mini-event you could fail, say, by not pushing the button in time, or in sequence. It’s like pressing the button to move on to the next piece of dialogue.

There were a lot of too-easy levels, like the Ghost race from the exploding planet, which made no sense and seemed like a level stolen from the Toy Story 3 game, which was actually harder. Playing on Normal and playing on Legendary on that one seems like it would be the same difficulty as well, which is odd.

There’s an entire level dedicated to ripping off Star Fox, only much, much easier, and with nobody telling you to do a barrel roll.

For some reason, every mission objective has you doing things in twos. You don’t just have to deactivate a barrier, or whatnot, you have to deactivate two, in the exact same fashion, on identical platforms, with the same group of bad guys guarding each goal. This happens at least five times or more. Sometimes, it mixes it up by asking you to blow up three identical power sources… to blow up the two others.

The graphics and three, count them THREE new enemies are the only thing really separating the game from the others. Some of the weapons are ridiculously overpowered as well. Others, like the standard battle rifle and the Dominion version of the same, have an irritating effect on one of the new enemies. The new Knights teleport, and will do so unless you successfully empty an entire full rifle clip into. If you miss one bullet, you have to reload and wait for them to reappear. They often come in threes as well, and look identical, so you’ll have either guess which one you just shot, or pay way more attention than the situation requires.

Mater Chief doesn’t get a whole lot of respect in the game. Despite everyone in the universe acknowledging he’s the greatest human being to ever live, and has saved all of humanity in the past, he’s still treated like a scrub. Bear in mind, his name isn’t Mater Chief. That’s his title. That’s like being Emperor God. You’d think there wouldn’t be a person left in a position of authority over him, but no, he gets chewed out by a ship’s captain. Whom he helps rescue.

The other problem with Master Chief is that he’s supposed to be a master strategist, on par with Napoleon or any other leader in history. Every single one of his plans involves him going into a dangerous situation with little to no weapons, ammo, back-up, or escape route. Alone. That’s… dumb. Really, really dumb. His only ace-in-the-hole is Cortana, who is frequently captured, disabled, or compromised. The whole game’s romantic sub-plot is that Cortana is breaking down, and he’s still relying on her faulty programming to do literally everything for him. Without her, he can’t so much as open a door. Any door. Imagine losing a war because you couldn’t open a door, because your computer program has a virus. There’s no door handles in the future.

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