Halo 4 Rocks

Get it? Because it's 4 rocks? Arranged like a Halo? Like the title of the blog?.....I don't blame you if you stop reading here.

I'm pretty sure just about everyone interested in the series knows that Halo 4 came out a couple Tuesdays ago, and if you didn't know, you may want to look into it.  Hell, even if you don't care about the Halo series, I'd still highly recommend picking this one up.

Now for the like, three people out there who don't know what this whole Halo thing is, it's a first-person shooter (in space!), and it's largely the reason Microsoft has a successful hold in the American console market.  The first three games detailed the war raging between humans and the Covenant, an alliance of different alien species.  The Covenant were trying to activate a set of massive, planet-sized rings (in space!) and the games followed Master Chief, aided by his sentient AI partner Cortana, as they fought to save the Earth from the threat faced by the ancient rings.  There were also space zombies, and those levels were the worst.

Not enough shotgun shells in the world.

The combat ran at a pace that was very easy to keep up with without getting overwhelmed, and the multiplayer emphasized that.  In Halo 2 (which introduced online multiplayer to the series) and Halo 3, the multiplayer consistently received high marks from both critics and audiences, even going as far as getting better reception than the single-player campaigns.  Halo ranks up at the top with Call of Duty and Battlefield's multiplayer popularity.

And if you think the series's fanbase is made up of drunken frat bros and twelve-year-olds who enjoy swearing on Xbox live, well, you may have an argument to make.  But you'll have to take it up with an army of extremely devoted and very detail-oriented fans. Read the Halo Wiki, and you will learn more than you ever needed to about Halo, going far beyond the games and into the detailed histories of the different species and events that happened outside the main story.  The sheer amount of devotion present here rivals what you could find in the Star Wars and Star Trek fandoms.

343 Studios had a lot to live up to with this game.  Bungie's last full Halo game was Halo: Reach, which means that they were handing a best-selling franchise to a brand-new company.  And this wasn't just a spin-off story, this was Master Chief, Spartan 117.  That's like giving Samus from Metroid to a third-party studio, and we know how that went. (The joke here is that it went extremely well.)

And really, the comparison to Metroid Prime is apt.  The first few Metroid games had little to do with story, instead focusing on atmosphere and gameplay.  But in Metroid Prime, Retro Studios added an enormous amount of backstory to the world in the forms of data logs from the extinct Chozo and the invading Space Pirates.  This made Samus's adventures on Tallon IV feel like it was necessary to the entire Metroid story as a whole, and not just something they shoveled in between Metroid and Metroid II.  The same is going on here in Halo 4.  The first three games had a good amount of story, but a lot of the emotional weight was lost, as the focus remained on the fight.

There are also a few...similarities...between the HUDs.

I will keep this spoiler-free, as I don't want to ruin any of the story elements for those who are interested.  But I have never connected to Master Chief (called John more in this game than he was in the entire first trilogy) and Cortana like I have here.  The multiplayer is still amazing, too; some of the play modes could benefit from a concise explanation of what each game mode plays like (coughRegicidecough), but once you figure it out, it's golden.  They no longer have a Firefight Mode, but have instead added Spartan Ops, which lets you play a co-op mission with four others (online or local), and 343 Studios plans on releasing new episodes weekly.  Frankly, I like it even more than I did Firefight.

Look, there's not a whole lot else I can get into without starting to just rant about how good the game is.  I recommend getting in on the action especially if you have friends with the game.  Multiplayer is a (running) riot and the campaign takes two of gaming's most beloved characters and truly does them justice.  And if that doesn't do it for you, Conan O' Brien and Andy Richter have a cameo appearance late in the game as two marines.  I don't know what else could compel you to buy this game.  Ignore all the hype and advertising, and you're still left with an incredible experience.