## Halo 4
### Story
I haven't mentioned the story so far,
because all it is appropriate.
Intriguing enough to hold your interest,
has a satisfying arch,
not the focus
and does not take itself too seriously.
Very quick recap:
Humanity and the alliance of alien races called the Covenant are at war.
Master Chief, the legendary cyborg super soldier created by the Spartan-II project
and his AGI ~GF~ companion Cortana serve on board of a battleship which is shot down.
They evacuate to the surface of what is an ancient alien installation called a Halo
and is a holy site to the covenant.
They discover it is a weapon that wipes all life across the galaxy
except for what is safeguarded within,
was built by prehistoric humans,
and have previously been used to exterminate the Flood,
which is now free again.
The Halo is destroyed, the Flood set back, Chief & Cortana escape
and the Elite leader present is court-marshaled for his failure.
The Covenant is lead by the race called the Prophets,
who dictate religion and are lightly used for redditor fedora-tipping.
The Prophets sentence the Elite leader to become an Arbiter,
which used to be a holy warrior-emperor position in Elite culture,
but is now a deliberate humiliation-ritual to send out
those would could endanger the status-quo into suicide missions.
The Covenant accidentally discover the location of Earth,
the Flood spreads,
Chief and Cortana must separate,
a second Halo is about to be activated
to bring about The Great Journey which is the Second Coming event of space-jews,
and the Elites are betrayed and genocided by the Prophets in favour of Brutes.
Finally, the Prophets and the Flood are defeated,
Chief and Cortana reunite,
Humanity and the Elites arrive at piece
and the Arbiter position regains its respect.
Fucking hell, that's quite verbose for a "quick recap".
Now that you know who Cortana is,
I can mention that she is depicted as a blue, naked, hologram woman (with a bob-cut).
Regarding her being naked, it was a nothing burger so far.
With her being rarely on screen and it being a background fact,
she felt more like a roman statue then some sort of coomer bait.
In 4 however,
her model was scaled up and the player has to repeatedly plug her into consoles,
all of which project her ass directly into their face.
I would describe this as transparent and annoying.
Further more,
she is experiencing Rampancy,
which is the humbug old age of AGI,
making her glitch out constantly
and is about to die unless we get back to Earth soon.
But oh no,
an evil Forerunner is awakened by the remnant faction of the Covenant
and is now planning on exterminating the human race out of revenge,
using some bullshit weapon and his robot army.
Regarding the specifics,
I have no fucking clue what is going on.
Everything is beyond confusing and convoluted.
Somehow tho,
Cortana sacrifices herself to kill the Forerunner guy.
This is narratively very dumb.
Think of it from a meta perspective:
* Halo 1: Cortana is our helper
* Halo 2: We part with Cortana with the implication that she might die
* Halo 3: We save Cortana
* Halo 4: She is sick and dies frfr
The amount of time we spent trying to save her
significantly out-weights
the amount of time she was a useful side-kick.
The one thing they handled well about it is Chief's attitude.
He talks little, his spirit never breaks,
but he clearly cares deeply about Cortana.
Its a good depiction of Stoicism,
which is quite rare.
The only satisfying part about the ending is this piece of dialog:
> It was my job to take care of you.
> We were supposed to take care of each other. And we did.
### Gameplay
Forget the Brutes,
we reverted back to Elites.
The Flood is gone and the new faction,
the Forerunners are well designed.
Fighting the Forerunners require target selection,
resource management and epic skillz.
The power-ups are still present,
and they fixed them.
They are no longer one use,
but on a cool down
and more importantly they were given practical effects.
What some maps get wrong is how they play with space.
If you place an army of deadly enemies at a distance,
the player will attempt to take them down from the backline,
because running into them is not worth the risk
-especially with the still janky checkpoint-system.
Again, *this trend* they started in the previous game.
You can also feel the quality decline towards the end.
I assume it had to do with dead lines,
but the map design, difficulty and enemy placement are all over the place,
which is further dragged down by the fact
that the same three types of Forerunner enemies are getting old.
They added a new kind of grenade.
It is orange and inflicts area of effect damage before exploding.
It is also insanely useless,
because all enemies will dodge away before the explosion.
There is exactly 1 (one) instance when its used,
and if you play the game for yourself you will know exactly which part I'm referring to.
### Verdict
Its great.
Its fun.
Most of it feels on pair with Halo 1 and the better parts of Halo 2.