ultimately, if this were a sports game, we'd be calling Halo 4 a roster update with better graphics
Just for reference, what scores did you give Call of Duty WaW, MW2, MW3 and BlOps?
I'm sure it was more than a 7.
CoD is the very definition of roster update, every game since MW1 has been the same. No significant new mechanics akin to armor abilities or sprint have been introduced, no creative new weapons or vehicles either (although obviously this is harder in a "realistic" shooter than a scifi one). All they are is a clean pallet swap of bulletgun #1 to bulletgun #2 with slightly different clip sizes or firing rates. Hell, no new enemies that weren't palette swaps (except for the juggernaut) have been introduced either, and not even the graphics improved much. MW1 looked dated already, BlOps was just embarassing.
The story of every single cod game after MW1 except for maybe black ops is utter crap. Generic cliché bad guy threatening the holy land of america, the good guys (U-S-A! U-S-A!) go after him, the viewpoint alternates between a couple of main characters, one or two of which suffer a "shocking" and untimely death.
AI is braindead and monster closets are used frequently - not sure if MW3/BlOps has them, but every game up to and including MW2 does. Pretty sure I saw some in BlOps too.
Not to mention the campaign is short as fuck every single time.
I enjoy the ride in CoD the same way I enjoy an movie like "Taken" - by turning off most higher brain functions. It's a fun experience, but if I were to review the CoD series(scores are relative to their release date, MW2 is slightly better than MW1 but it came out years later), I'd give MW1 an 7.5, WaW a 6, MW2 a 7 and BlOps a 7.5.
There is no replay value in the campaign, it is short, scripted and linear, the multiplayer is the exact same thing every time, and so on.
I played a good chunk of Halo 4's campaign at a friend's yesterday who got it early, and I can tell you that there is no way the campaign is worse than any iteration of CoD, not even if the rest of the campaign after I stopped playing is just pictures of dicks flashing on the screen without any gameplay.
Edit: I could live with ADS in Halo if it was implemented the same way as in Killzone 2: the bullet spread at medium range without ADS is still not overwhelming, you just need ADS for long range.
But if it was like CoD, where the bullet spread changes drastically when you ADS, I'd bail out hard.
Either way, it would change the game for the worse and it wouldn't make any sense, fiction-wise, either. The HUD of the chief syncs up with the weapons, why would he aim down sights? The weapons don't even HAVE sights for fucks sake.