Feelings on Halo 4: 5 months after launch

Today I got on to play the new maps and finish up my achievements and I realized that for the last 2 or so weeks before the maps I've found myself having no desire to play Halo 4 at all. This is the same feeling I got after Reach, a game I was vastly disappointed in after playing Halo 3 and enjoying it up until Reach came out. I was initially excited for Halo 4 when I heard 343 say they were going back to the franchise's roots, but then upon watching trailers and looking up information for the game I became cautious. All of the things I saw pointed to a sequel to Reach instead of 3. In response to these types of questions they would respond with something along the lines of "don't worry, we'll have something for fans of every Halo". I assumed this meant they would include some type of classic playlist, but 5 months later there is still no classic playlist and one is never coming. They did add team throwdown, but that still isn't the same as everyone spawning with the same weapon and having static weapon spawns beside the power weapons.I feel like 343i has no sense of identity when it comes to this game and is rather disconnected when it comes to the community. The peak daily population has now dropped from over 400,000 peak users during launch week, to less than 50,000 for the last couple of weeks and continues trending downwards. I believe this happened because the new gameplay and omission of features present in previous titles alienates most fans of the previous Halos.

Things that I believe had a negative effect. These are all my opinions and I don't mean to present them as facts.

  • The carrying over of armor abilities
  • The addition of sprint to default gameplay (maps now feel huge to compensate)
  • The addition of ordnance drops (leads to randomness and breaks map control)
  • Removal of weapons and vehicles present in previous titles (I really miss the Falcon)
  • Customization for loadouts (The plasma pistol and plasma grenade loadout combo effectively neutered vehicle combat in big team)
  • The Dmr (I feel like it breaks map movement on certain maps because the range and accuracy on it is ridiculous.)
  • Lack of theater for campaign
  • Omission of certain custom gametypes (link to thread detailing this Custom Games are Unacceptable)
  • Removal of Firefight
  • Forge (Forge Community Thoughts Parody)
  • Spartan Ops underwhelmed (very repetitive with recycled campaign environments and I didn't like the side story at all)
  • Matchmaking (I feel some playlists are too fragmented. Some examples: CTF is separate from Team Objective, lack of objective game modes in BTB.)
  • There were only 5 maps for 4v4 slayer on disc.
  • The File Share/Browser shipped broken (This was fixed at the end of February)
  • CSR (The lack of it being in game. 343 lied about it not being technically possible due to UI limitations, they just didn't feel it was worth the effort despite the numerous threads on waypoint. see attached conversation screencap.)
  • The Hype (This is completely my own fault.)
  • Change for the sake of change (The art style, the soundtrack direction change.)


Halo is my favorite game series and for the first time I can say I'm not looking forward to the next title in the series. I'm wondering if I just had my fill of the franchise and no amount of changes in the next one would have me excited or if other fans of the series feel the same way. Thoughts on Halo 4?

*Note* I'm not saying Halo 4 is a bad game. it is a good game, I just don't feel it lives up to previous Halos.