[Video Games]Halo Guardians

Little surprised I didn't see anything on it here when it premiered last month.

Finally got through the "single" player campaign; takes me a little longer these days with a family and all. Overall I'd say I'm a bit disappointed. The gameplay and feel is not the same as past installments, and it took me several levels to actually embrace the change. Once I did I started to enjoy it. But...

I did not like the heavy emphasis on co-op play. Previous games featured co-op in a single player campaign. This felt built from the ground up to be a co-op game featuring single player. It did make for some massive battles and more three-dimensional level design, but your squadmates, unlike Reach, didn't have much personality or depth. And the revive system and AI help made the game a bit easy.

The upgraded features for the Spartans, like climbing up onto ledges and bursting through walls and the ground pound are welcome additions, but that, in turn, made the Spartan characters feel a bit too cartoonish in the opening cutscenes. It was off-putting.

Spartan Locke is a pretty bad character, form the voice acting to his personalty (or lack therof) and depth. And you have to play most of the game as him. This is a Locke game, not a Master Chief one. I would have been fine if the character was better developed and you didn't have to play him as much. But no. And honestly, both squads of Spartans, including Master Chief, felt pretty flat. The Chief has always been one-dimensional, but you had Cortana to give him emotional depth. Not anymore.

The story was somewhat true to the ad campaign, but in many ways it's not. I thought it would be a bit more complex with some different twists, but it was pretty straightforward form the getgo. So basically there is no need to "hunt he truth."

The main villain never engaged me and I felt a bit disappointed they went that route in such a straightforward manner. It could have worked if they had developed it more. But it was a bit jarring to go from what you know in past games to this. And the second villain paled in comparison to the Didact from 4.

Gone are the terminals and in come intel items to be found, just like every other FPS game out there. The terminals were awesome to find because they provided great backstory. The intel items here are pretty pointless.

The game was really fun to play and the level design was gorgeous. But overall it felt like they gravitated more toward Call of Duty instead of being Halo.

I've felt, from a campaign perspective, every Halo was better than it's predecessor. This is the first time I don't feel that way. I guess it ends up somewhere in the middle for me. Definitely will play again but it certainly fell short.

Have yet to touch on multiplayer, which I hear is really good. But that doesn't save it for me, cause I'm a single player gamer for the most part.