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The return of Master Chief

Written by Mike Holmes on the 18th of October 2012 at 14:40

November 6 is drawing ever closer, and I can't bloody wait to get my hands on Halo 4. I have some questions you see, and the answers are now just around the corner.

I've always loved Halo. Since back in the old days when four of us were huddled over a crappy 12 inch screen, blasting the shit out of each other in Boarding Action and Hang ‘Em High. I played a fair bit of Halo 2, but it was the multiplayer in Halo 3 that really took my addiction to the next level.

I played the single player campaign a lot. With friends and without. But it was multiplayer maps like Narrows, Guardian, Construct and Valhalla that sealed my affection for Master Chief and co. I joined the online community late, and faced a stiff learning curve, playing as I was against others who had been at it for considerably longer than me.

I'm not one to shirk challenge, and so started the process of involving myself in the game and learning its finer points. I learned that sticky grenades are by far my favourite way of insta-killing someone (even better if you can land it on their helmet), and I learnt that preempting an attack and rolling a grenade before one-shotting your enemy as they round a corner can be unbelievably effective.

I got good at reading enemy movements, and mastered the art of firing my rockets into my opponents path. I learned how to drive the Warthog like a bat out of hell. Basically I developed a load of skills that I would go on to use in every subsequent shooter I would ever play. Halo 3 made me a better gamer.

Halo: Reach was the perfect setting for me. I started at the very beginning, playing against casual players and newcomers, and with my hard-earned skill set it turned out that I was actually pretty decent. As Halo 4 nears, I find myself reflecting on my Reach-based achievements: a healthy k/d spread, gazillions of medals, a respectable social rank and a gold arena ranking.

Given how comfortable I am with Reach, I thought I'd be more excited about the multiplayer modes coming in 4. But more than excitement, it's fear that I'm feeling. Many of the updates coming on November 6 are much needed, and should hopefully inject some much needed life into a franchise that could well have seen its brighter days pass by. But there is a danger that 343 makes too many changes based on the design decisions made by other popular shooters.

I play Halo because it feels like Halo. If I want to quickly kill someone and move on to the next exchange, I play COD. If I want to work in a closely knit team I play Future Soldier, or to a lesser extent, Battlefield 3. If I want to dance with my opponents, darting in and out of combat, relying on the additional health and shielding provided for me by Spartan armour, I play halo. My worry is that by rewarding us for kill-streaks, and by giving us killcams, and all the other trimmings associated with other popular FPSs, there's a chance that what makes Halo unique might become diluted.

At the end of the day, we'll have to wait and see just what 343 serves up for us next month. The signs are promising, that much is clear, but there's also an element of doubt that still persists. Let's hope that the new curators of Halo can hunt that doubt down and plant a sticky grenade in its face.

HQ