First lets start with campaign. The story is pretty engaging from start to finish. The cut scenes are a treat to look forward to in between missions. Much like its predecessors the storytelling and voice acting continues to be a strong point for the game. Great job on the production values. Music and sound is your common explosion fodder. Bullets whizzing by as well as trash talking soldiers will fill your ears. Surround sound should be a must for any serious gamer. Control is spot on and overall is solid gameplay throughout.
Notice anything from above that is EXTRAORDINARY? Exactly, which is what keeps this installment from achieving a perfect score. Nothing sticks out. Yeah everything is solid, but that is expected. Besides some new weapons and dual system (nice touch by the way) everything kind of stays the same. Nothing had the wow factor. It feels more like Halo 2.75 instead of 3. One of the things the game borrowed from its predecessors that it should not have is the repetitiveness. We still get the same old backtracking formula here. Throw in the fact that surroundings rarely change in the levels you play (ex. once you go through a corridor in a building that is pretty much what the rest of the level will consist of) and you have what seems to be a dull package.
Let me clarify that this is a great game. By no means should this deter anyone from buying, but instead expose some of the elements which hamper the game from getting a perfect score.
As for online? Solid as usual. Yes the melee attack and shotguns can be inconsistent, (ex. If I weaken you and melee you first at which point you should die then you should not be able to disregard my melee and then proceed to do the same except actually kill me. Trust me it will happen if you play online at all.) but then again it has always been.
An will bungie somehow fix spawns?!!!!! Getting roasted from behind by 2 or 3 respawned enemies ain't too fun. I will give credit though, they have pretty much fixed deleveling. This is a Godsend, and while you can't do anything about a shitty teammate, it is nice to know that it is near impossible to throw a game if the other 3 are any good. A BIG THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So overall we have a solid game with solid gameplay. A solid experience overall. A few tweaks here and there as well as some variety would have catapulted this game into perfection. Instead it stands a classic that anyone with any interest in the genre should buy and enjoy.
