Halo 4 is bad Campaign, bad Firefight (Spartan Ops) and bad Multiplayer. It's a bad Halo game, yet a decent Shooter and product on its own merits. It's not a good Halo game in any stretch of the imagination though. I had no fucking clue who was doing what, why, where and how, for pretty much the entire game. Didn't seek out terminals, and didn't read books or waypoint fiction to figure it out. Just played the game and it was a bunch of nonsense.
Halo CE made sense, and was mysterious in the right kind of way. Halo 2 made sense mostly in reference to Halo CE, and on its own merits. Halo 3 started to become a bit insufferable to me with Cortana whining the entire game, because of whatever Gravemind was doing. Also, it was fighting against Brutes the whole time because of the Covenant Civil war that happened, and so I could give a shit about the Covenants problems, because I am fighting Brutes. Much rather fight Elites. Reach made plenty of sense, even though it took some liberty with the Fall of Reach book, it still made sense and wrapped up nicely into Halo CE's storyline.
Halo 4, what the fuck I don't know, let's wake up Master Chief and watch Cortana (Dylan Ryder) go crazy, while we fight yet another enemy type that is not as interesting as Elites.