YMMV / Halo 4

• Abridged Arena Array: For Big Team Battles in multiplayer, the average playthrough will leave you believing that only Ragnarok and Exile are the only maps in the playlist. For standard Infinity Slayer, the same is true for Complex and Abandon.
• Awesome Music: It's generally agreed that Davidge doesn't quite live up to O'Donnell, but there's still some excellent music in the game.
  • Original to 4 are Awakening, To Galaxy, Revival, Arrival, and its dubstep remix. Haven is a truly marvelous experience.
  • There's also Davidge's version of Never Forget, which is as majestic and touching as O'Donnell's version, if not more - it helps that it plays in the credits following Cortana's death.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: This may pull a few heartstrings but Cortana's rampancy is very similar to an actual human condition. Cortana's processors are eating themselves up until there's nothing left, while her closest friend seeks a solution that may or may not work. Essentially, Cortana has cancer for A.I. or digital Alzheimer's. In fact, one of the writers wrote the game while his mother was suffering from dementia.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • The Didact ends up being a Cutscene Boss, taken down in a quick-time event with a single grenade.
  • Parg Vol, a Covenant leader and main villain of Spartan Ops Episode 3, is nothing more than an Elite Warrior armed with a Fuel Rod Gun when you meet him.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Sarah Palmer. Her fans love her for being a tough-as-nails leader and being voiced by Jennifer Hale. Her haters dislike her for constantly being rude to Halsey (or seemingly everybody) and say she's a Faux Action Girl, since until Episode 7 she wasn't seen in a fight. Then when she was seen in a fight, complaints arose about her being overpowered due to her headshotting Promethean Knights with a single pistol shot each.
  • Fireteam Majestic is also gradually getting less and less liked, except for Gabriel Thorne. Arguably, this is the point.
  • In the story department, the complete swerve in regards to Catherine Halsey threw off many fans. A few cinematics show ONI interrogating Halsey and trying to blame her for the Spartans being anti-social or sociopathic, despite the Spartans being classified Top Secret operatives for most of the war. Considering that Spartans were children ripped from their families to be raised in the military and then experimented on to become super soldiers followed by decades of non-stop war, lobbing the accusation that Spartans are "anti-social" at Halsey comes off as very petty and forced to some fans.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Midnight opens on epic, with the player piloting a Broadsword through the Didact's ship while he battles the fleet around Earth. This level is where you feel like a hero.
  • Episode 3, Chapter 4 of Spartan Ops. Holding off flight after flight of Banshees and Phantoms in Ragnarok with 4 respawning Mantis's with friends in an endless stream of bullets and explosions, culminating in the destruction of a Covenant Cruiser high above you? Yes please.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The intro cinematic with Halsey helps re-establish the origin of Master Chief and the SPARTAN-II candidates for players that never read the books, and it also sets up that ONI have a bone to pick with Halsey herself, but in terms of its relevance to the main campaign, not a single thing presented here is ever brought up and Halsey herself never appears in person despite it being Chief and Cortana's objective to find her. It takes until the post-story arc of Spartan Ops to actually pick this plot point up again.
  • It's obviously meant to be an Easter Egg, but the Didact's ship in the final mission contains a Gravity Hammer despite the fact that the player never encounters a single Brute throughout the campaign. This might be why they were initially absent in Halo 5: Guardians.
• Broken Base: Go to Halo Waypoint and you'll see threads decrying armor abilities (jetpack and Promethean Vision most often), bloom, and how the game is "ripping off Call of Duty". It seems as if just as many people will defend the criticisms as will attack them (at least on Waypoint). One of the main arguments is how the "competitive players" will hate it, with the players analyzing every minute pro and con (but mostly con) of every new feature shown.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Good luck finding anyone using anything other than the DMR or Battle Rifle in multiplayer. Even then, the Battle Rifle appears to be losing popularity, with the DMR appearing in people's hands much more often.
• Creator's Pet: Sarah Palmer. Despite the fan reaction to her being mostly negative, she's gone on to receive her own game (Halo: Spartan Assault) and comic series (Halo: Initiation).
• Demonic Spiders:
  • In addition to old "favorites" such as Stealth Elites and Jackal Snipers (though nowhere near as accurate as their Halo 2 varient, nor are they a One-Hit Kill on Legendary), this installment brings the Promethean Knights. They possess an astounding array of abilities including mini-turret deployment, (with help) a damage proof shield, teleportation, (including a Desperation Attack where the Lancers Teleport Spam to your location and skewer you) and have access to all of the best Forerunner weapons, including the Binary Rifle, Scattershot and Incinerator. On Heroic and Legendary, they always come in groups of 2-3 or more, often with a diverse combination of weapons that ensures you can be killed in one shot at any range. The strong shields and fatal melee (endemic to those difficulties) are just another slap in the face.
  • Elite Zealots have always been this, but they have much stronger shields in this game, and always wield heavy weapons.
  • Enemies in campaign can now create needler supercombines (something they couldn't do since Halo: Combat Evolved). Be very careful when fighting Grunts or Jackals wielding the weapon - as soon as you get shot with seven needles, you will explode violently, and it's a One-Hit Kill on Normal or higher.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Thomas J. Lasky is quite well-liked by the fandom for being a good soldier, a stalwart ally to Chief, and one of the nicest, most respectful guys in the entire franchise. The scene of him trying to comfort Chief after the loss of Cortana certainly did nothing to hurt his popularity with the fanbase either.
• Franchise Original Sin: This game made a decision to reinvent some of the established mechanics of the Halo franchise and bring it more in line with modern games like a sprint function, larger number of weapon choices due to the Promethean weapons and weapon drops in multiplayer. In addition they brought in a new enemy faction and reinvented the general design scheme of the characters, factions and levels. Many of these changes were accepted overall, as while it didn't have the polish of previous games it still played similar enough and some of the new features were directly based on previous changes between games like Bungie would do. But this set the stage for Halo 5: Guardians to do a lot more reinvention where character movement took priority over versatile level design, the weapon selections became redundant (rather than a battle rifle and a carbine for precision mid-range weapons you had a battle rifle, carbine, DMR and lightrifle diluting the performance differences, not including the modified REQ versions) and the more homogenized design schemes of the Prometheans made it difficult to know exactly what kind of armaments your enemy has.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Despite the Flood not making an actual appearance in game, astute fans should know that the Forerunners spent a long time fighting them. Every one of the Forerunner weapons would be excellent against the Flood.^note The rapid fire and wide spread of the Suppressor would be excellent against Infection Forms, the large magazine and secondary shotgun fire of the boltshot would work well against Combat and Infection forms, and the disintegration effect of the Incineration Cannon, Scattershot, and Binary Rifle would prevent bodies from being re-purposed by the Flood - even the nightmarish Carrier Forms (and just about anything, really) would be perfectly countered by the delayed secondary explosions of the Incinerator Cannon. Even the inorganic Prometheans are a perfect counter to every known Flood form - a small squad of them could have walked through The Library like it was nothing.
  • Episode 5 showed that the Requiem artifact was apparently on Earth, something that was an in-universe Headscratcher for Thorne. Episode 10 reveals that the artifact isn't one-of-a-kind, so the artifact shown in Episode 5 is most likely a different one.
• Fridge Horror:
  • In saving Earth from Unwilling Roboticisation, the player destroys the digitized remnant of the inhabitants of a research station and a major city. You could rationalize it as a Mercy Kill since the only other fate for them would be to serve as robotic slaves to the Didact, forced to capture or kill even more humans, but then Spartan Ops reveals that the memories of composed individuals from New Phoenix are on Requiem.
  • Aboard the Didact's ship, Cortana comments that her solution to de-powering the energy shield is one she knows John won't like: splitting herself into fragments that will destabilize the shield. Later, she is unable to leave with John because she left too much of herself inside that ship, which had been destroyed. She knew John wouldn't like the decision because she predicted it would kill her.
• Game-Breaker:
  • You wouldn't really think that the Faster Reload tactical pack would be this, but it is. We can expect a nerf at some point in the near future.
  • The Incinerator Cannon. It's a Forerunner Rocket Launcher, but with a much bigger splash radius thanks to the fireballs that spread from it.
  • The Boltshot. Another Forerunner weapon, this time a rapid-fire pistol that would be relatively harmless, if it didn't have a charge attack that can kill an enemy in one shot from an impressive distance. Though it has been nerfed in a patch (with its effective range being halved), it's still very powerful.
• Goddamned Bats: Watchers, flying Mooks which can pull up shields for their teammates and revive them (including those Promethean Knights you just killed) at an alarming rate. To make things worse, when you shoot them, they tend to fly away and fold their wings to reduce their hitboxes, which can make killing them much more difficult if you're using a slow-firing weapon, or firing at them from far away while probably also getting shot at by other baddies.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Occasionally, in Spartan Ops, Covenant will become tiny save for their weapons.
  • On the level Shutdown, it turns out one can simply bypass the first two towers and just fly straight to the third one. It makes the level a breeze even on Legendary.
• Growing the Beard: The Spartan Ops were created to bridge the gap between the story of campaign and the action of multiplayer. Unfortunately, critics were quick to point out that it was too sparse and slow for the story-focused players, while too story heavy for the gameplay-focused players, pleasing neither. However, as the season progresses the production value and story pacing have gradually gotten more interesting and enjoyable, partly because 343 Industries had more resources to devote to them after the game was released and partly out of them learning what worked and what did not and playing to their strengths.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Cortana sobs they'll pair him up with another AI, maybe even one based on Halsey. Chief snarls, "That's not going to happen." Cue Halo Infinite and The Weapon.
  • The very first cutscene for Spartan Ops ends on a shot of the massive Infinity barreling through a much smaller Covenant cruiser, which is cathartic to watch given the major technological and fleet advantage the Covenant once had over humans. But Infinite has the same thing happening to the UNSC vessel, with the opening cutscene showing multiple smaller Banished ships ramming chunks out of it.
• He's Just Hiding: The fandom feels this way about the Didact and Cortana.
  • Escalation reveals that they were right about the Didact.
  • Halo 5: Guardians reveals the same about Cortana, although in a far different state.
• High-Tier Scrappy: The Boltshot (see Game-Breaker above), to the point that there was a popular petition to get it nerfed (which 343 somewhat did).
• Iron Woobie: The Master Chief goes through emotional hell throughout the game, and by the end of it he's forced to sacrifice himself to save humanity. He survives, but detonated the Havok with no knowledge that he would, and the loss of Cortana clearly hurts him. Despite this, he remains unwavering in his dedication to stopping the Didact.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: It is possible to complete the solo campaign in just 4 to 5 hours, depending on player skill and chosen difficulty. How much this sucks will depend on whether you thought that you were buying a solo game with bonus multiplayer, or a multiplayer game with a bonus solo campaign.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "AN ANCIENT EVIL AWAKENS" ^note One of the main taglines from the game's first trailer became a joke for a while, owing to how stock of a line it is. This was particularly prevalent on /v/, where the line had become a meme some years before it showed up in Halo, in threads referencing common video gaming cliches.
  • "Palmer has the Halo CE pistol." / "Palmer was playing on Easy." From Episode 7 comments joking about how Sarah was defeating the Prometheans with one pistol shot each.
  • Pre-release, many jokes were made about Master Chief's apparent lack of codpiece. (It was added later.)
  • Similar comments were made about the Master Chief's... "lower back" armor^note smiley face! and fingers◊.^note fully erect hand penises!
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • If the Didact didn't cross it in the terminals, he sure as hell crossed it when he fired The Composer on Ivanoff Station. Then he destroys a city on Earth with it.
  • The Office of Naval Intelligence never really had any morality to speak of, but it could at least say its morally ambiguous actions were done in the name of humanity's survival. However, ONI crosses the Moral Event Horizon from Well Intentioned Extremists to Evil Is Petty when you learn that ONI deliberately withheld information of John-117's survival from Catherine Halsey. When you see her reaction in Spartan Ops, there is no denying that they crossed a line.
    Halsey: John's alive! He was here, on this ship. Nobody told me he was alive!
• Narm:
  • The Icon for Legendary Difficulty◊ replaces the Elite Skull of the prior games (and human Skull from ODST), with a Promethean Knight's. At least in the achievement icon, it looks pretty goofy, though the actual icon in the game proper looks more menacing.
  • Near the end of the game, the Didact destroys the terminal Cortana was on. Master Chief screams, "Cortana!" but his voice dies out near the end.
  • Also, near the end of the game, the Didact gets swarmed by a whole bunch of mini-Cortanas. It's just as silly as it sounds.
  • Additionally, as Didact punches Chief off and re-chokes him, a strange "pop!" just like Facebook's old "new message" sound occurs.
  • Thorne and Gek fight each other in a brutal fistfight but during it get in an... awkward position. Slash art will ensue.
• Narm Charm: When Captain Del Rio is yelling at the Chief to surrender Cortana and then at the Infinity crew to arrest the Chief, he looks really silly and like a total buffoon. However, since the point of the scene was to highlight Del Rio's incompetency, it manages to work out very well.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: This is a sentiment held by a certain segment of the Halo series' Broken Base, as Bungie had no involvement with the development. Some of the complaints come from the absence of a few expected features, some technical aspects not having quite the same polish, how the story was handled, and the radically redesigned multiplayer. That said, 4 is still often appreciated for its attempt at a more emotional story and how it portrays Chief and Cortana's relationship.
• Player Punch:
  • Cortana slowly succumbing to rampancy and her death.
  • On the level "Composer" you desperately try to save the scientists and soldiers on Ivanoff Station from a Covenant attack. The first ship to try and get survivors away is destroyed. Then the Didact fires the Composer, and kills everyone on the station.
• Replacement Scrappy: Like Reach's Plasma Repeater, the Storm Rifle has been derided as a worse replacement of the iconic Plasma Rifle, with its biggest problem being its horrible range.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Although the Cortana/Chief relationship had always been subtly hinted at, some fans view 343i's efforts in this game to bring it to the surface as completely unnecessary. There are some who view their relationship's portrayal in a manner more akin to Platonic Life-Partners, but that's up to the viewer to decide.
• The Scrappy: The Didact, a Generic Doomsday Villain who indulges in eloquent speech (that might remind you of Gravemind), instead of, you know, killing his enemy. The Chief and the player do not even get the satisfaction of beating him in a boss fight, instead he gets beaten in a Quick Time Event. WatchMojo even described him as the General Grievous of videogames, in the sense that his origins and motivations are only explored in secondary material but in the main event he comes off as bland and unoriginal.
• Scrappy Weapon: The suppressor and the light rifle, due to them featuring a combination of low damage, poor accuracy, and limited range. It doesn't help that there are many large sections of many campaign missions where you'll inevitably be forced to use them due to them being the only weapons dropped by enemies.
• Special Effect Failure: The exploding Lich clearly just vanishes with an blue smoke cloud and debris taking its place, rather than actually bursting apart. The same thing happens with Phantoms. The destroyed Cruiser is even worse, since it simply breaks apart into four large pieces, despite how gorgeous the ensuing maelstrom looks.
• Squick:
  • Halsey's arm appears to have been very messily amputated. It's possible the tied-up sleeve just looks this way, though; the actual point of amputation is not seen.
  • The effects of the Composer. We see them up close. Have fun watching skin and muscle melt off of bones.
• Strawman Has a Point: Yes, Del Rio is a dirty coward who only cares about saving his own ass even if it means throwing Master Chief under the bus, but he's technically correct about Cortana showing instable behaviors that can pose a great danger to entire crew in the ship, and demanding her retirement is a rightful action to take. Ironically, his fear would be immediately proved right in Halo 5: Guardians, where Cortana goes full rogue and betrays the human race.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Cortana's rampancy and death.
  • The massacre at Ivanoff Station.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • See above re: the Call of Duty-esque changes. Halo 4 has killcams, a hit indicator, grenade warnings, perks, an overhauled base-10 scoring system, and a dedicated sprint button, all of which enraged Halo purists.
  • The fact that Campaign is utilizing quicktime events (albeit very sparingly) also has some purists in a rage.
  • CTF has also been tweaked; notably, the carrier can now use a pistol in the default setting. It's been tough to get used to for some.
  • No Theater in Campaign. This one especially rankled considering it was never announced and discovered only from early leaks. Even worse, some hackers discovered it was possible to mod Theater into the Campaign, but 343 was seemingly too lazy to include it.
  • No Firefight mode. Spartan Ops replaces it but it's not customizable like Firefight was.
  • The Scorpion's shells are weaker than ever and travel much, much more slowly. They're also affected by gravity now, which will play hell with your anti-air game.
  • The Banshee. Much slower, fuel rods nerfed down, no lock on, can't take much damage from everything....
  • In the campaign, your max ammo capacity is reduced quite a bit compared to other Halo games. Get used to either being extremely conservative with shooting, or picking up enemy weapons frequently as you burn through ammo for your guns.
• Underused Game Mechanic: The first mission introduces the player to wall-climbing. Unfortunately, the only other time it comes into play throughout the campaign is the quick-time event that results in the Didact's defeat.
• Vindicated by History: While Halo 4 was well received on launch, there was some numerous complaints over the varied changes in art design, gameplay, and overall tone that was set by Bungie, along with the technical side of things being more derided like the multiplayer emulating more of the modern games (kill cams, call outs, ordinance drops) and Spartan Ops seen as a weaker version of Firefight. With more perspective on the need for video games to evolve and the player base growing up themselves, the campaign came to be praised for the bond between John and Cortana while exploring ideas of loss and failure, making for a more mature and emotionally driven narrative than the Bungie era while Spartan Ops is one of the most ambitious first attempts for a game to offer a continuing narrative that progresses week to week. The game also looks especially good as one of the last 360 titles, the visual redesign giving way to more Technology Porn.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Halo 4 was the last big exclusive title for the Xbox 360 and 343 went all out on using every inch of power that they could. The game looks absolutely gorgeous on almost every level, particularly in the pre-rendered Prologue and Epilogue cutscenes (think the precursor to blur's work), and whenever something disintegrates. It actually looks even better as part of The Master Chief Collection.
• The Woobie:
  • Both Cortana and John-117. Neither of them seem to get their deserved break (Cortana is give or take) after all that has happened.
  • Dr. Tillson also deserves a mention. She's terrified the entire time she's onscreen, sees her life's work more or less destroyed in front of her, and is killed by the composer to be re-used in making a Promethean Knight along with the rest of the humans onboard her station, all in the span of a little over an hour.

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