Halo 4 is the start of a thrilling action packed new trilogy for the Halo universe by 343 Industries.

Halo 4 starts four years after the end of the third. Master Chief Petty Officer John, or Spartan 117, is in on a broken down ship called Forward Unto Dawn. Master Chief has been presumed M.I.A and after his Artificial Intelligence, Cortana, detects a disturbance on board and wakes him up, it starts the entrancing campaign that the Halo series is known for.

I played through the whole campaign and the storyline was great.  The game play, at times, was a little repetitive and sometimes overwhelming, but the storyline kept me going just to see what was going to happen.  One of the missions lets the average Halo player do something they have always dreamed of doing:  flying a Pelican! Other missions include things like fighting alongside other newly trained Spartans, engaging in a space ship battle, or using giant mech suits new to the game. The beloved O.D.S.T`s, or Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, don’t make an appearance;  instead you find other Spartans that used to be O.D.S.T`s but were trained to be  humanity’s new super soldiers since Master Chief had been presumed M.I.A.  The campaign is a must play for any Halo fan just for the twists and turns you go through to try and figure out the major question:  are you good enough to survive?

Firefight has been left behind in the dust and a new game mode has taken its place: Spartan Ops. Spartan Ops is a great improvement to  Firefight; instead of killing non-stop waves of enemies with survival as the only goal, Spartan Ops is an objective-based misson where the player has multiple objectives to complete while killing hordes of enemies. They only have five ops at the moment but they plan to add another five missions every week for at least the next ten weeks to make a total of 55. There are also little secrets from different Halo related games or shows hidden in these missions for the player to find for an added challenge.  Spartan Ops is a major upgrade to the old boring firefight and well worth playing.

War Games, as it is are called in this version, is the multiplayer option. Every other Halo ran on systems where everyone spawned with the basic assault rifle or battle rifle and all the other special weapons spawned in certain preset locations for people to grab and use. Halo 4 does not follow that at all;  every player creates loadouts to start each game and the player picks a primary weapon which are the assault rifles and battle rifles from the U.N.S.C, the Covenant, or the Forerunners. After that the player picks a pistol, a grenade, then finally three perk type abilities to help them. Instead of weapons spawning in certain locations, special weapons are dropped onto the field as ordinance and each player can earn ordinance drops by getting points.  Once they have enough points, they can call in one of three random items.  This drastically changes the way multiplayer is played and makes it so even the worst players can get special weapons instead of two or three people hoarding them.

Overall Halo 4 far exceeded my standards for what I thought 343 Industries would do with it.  I thought without Bungie Studios, Halo would flop, but this game really showed that 343 Industries is just as good, or maybe even better, than Bungie Studios. I recommend this game really to anyone who likes first person shooters but especially to any Halo fan because of course it’s the continuation of the series! This game is well worth what you pay, and for all the features it has, you`ll never get bored!