I’m waiting to play the campaign with friends, but tonight I tried out the some of Halo 4’s multiplayer options – mostly the co-op “Spartan Ops” episodes.
The Spartan Ops missions are short and felt very poorly organized. There’s an objective in each mission, but indicators are often hard to miss or don’t show up at all, leaving players confused and disoriented. In most of the missions, the game just throws multiple waves of enemies at you and tells you to kill them. It would probably be fine if they weren’t presented as missions, since they have a lot in common with Reach’s Firefight mode – they’re just not as fun or frantic.
One thing a friend and I both noticed is that many of the weapons don’t have the right feel. The battle rifle’s new effects are great, but the Wraith’s plasma mortar has a quiet launch and a pitiful “poof” when it hits the ground. Gone are the screen-shaking explosions, booming audio, and huge blast. Most of the “big” weapons (rocket launchers, fuel rod guns, etc) are similarly disappointing.
I also played a single round of the “Dominion” mode, where players fight to capture and defend several points. It was fun, but I was vastly under-leveled and was frequently killed by players with weapons I didn’t have access to. The maps usually have weapons lying around, but they were difficult to find if you didn’t know the map. I suppose that’s normal for competitive multiplayer games, however.
Player customization is nice, but there was an anemic selection of foregrounds for player badges. I was extremely disappointed to find my usual “Valkyrie” (sword with wings) badge was gone entirely. Hopefully more badges will unlock as I level my multiplayer character. The leveling system itself is nice, but even after unlocking items by reaching a certain rank, you still have to spend “Spartan Points” on the items to use them. These points appear to be non-refundable and are only awarded by leveling up, so they’re hard to gain and cause the whole leveling system to feel oddly restrictive.
Overall, I was unimpressed by the multiplayer modes. It feels like it’s been done before and better by other games, and I think Reach had a far better array of options. I want to like the multiplayer and maybe I’ll find something I missed, but I’m not getting my hopes up. And hopefully the campaign story is fantastic enough to balance out my multiplayer disappointment.