Just finished Reclaimer, and it's the best goddamn mission in the game by a country mile.
The whole concept and setup is very unique to a Halo game. It was so refreshing.
But it's not just the concept that makes the level great – the quality of the encounters takes a significant leap. And there's a reason for that – their design is very much like Halo 3's. And this isn't more apparent than afterThey lend themselves to a huge portion of the Halo sandbox and give the player so many options. I can't wait to go back and tackle those encounters in different ways.the player meets the Librarian and steps outside to the sprawling battle with the two tanks, the Warthog, and the mongoose with rockets. It was harkening back to the battle outside the Cartographer on The Ark. They even had Pete Stacker yelling, "Form up on the Chief! Second line clear, move forward!" Halo 4 was screaming "Halo 3!" at you by that point. Despite their similarity, the execution was different, so it still felt new.
It's the only level in the game that didn't make me feel tired and is if the game were on auto pilot and just going through the motions. Despite the poor feedback system in the game, it was the first time in Halo 4 where I was feeling that moment-to-moment progression of past Halo games. I was feeling that "thirty seconds of fun" again. That flow was there again. And, again, that's probably because it was emulating Halo 3.
The level ramps up in unexpected and satisfying ways,like taking down that new Covenant drop ship, and it had a fantastic atmospheric moment inside that Forerunner structure.
Some nitpicks:
1. Jumping out of the Covenant dropship would've been cooler if you didn't have any fall damage. Come on, 343. Get rid of it.
2. Inside the Forerunner structure, Cortana says something to the effect of, "Sentinels seem to be leading us somewhere." I don't think that line was necessary because it was pretty obvious to me, through the subtle use of the HUD and your reticule turning "green" when you placed it over the sentinel, that something different was up.
3. I am so confused by what was revealed between the Librarian and the Chief, but I was having so much fun with the level, I don't care at this point. I'll sort it out later.
4. Halo 4 has problems with distributing enough ammo to the player. It was bothering me when fighting upwards inside the Forerunner structure.
5. What would've made the "The Ark"-like portion even better was if there was some appropriate music to get your blood pumping. I was fooled for a second there in thinking that the Halo theme would come in. Of course that didn't happen, but there was no satisfying music in its place.
My perception of the quality of this level could be a bit skewed given that the past four levels haven't been...good, but if anything, this level has given me the push to see the game through to its completion. The setup for mission six looks damn interesting as well.
There's hope.
I hated this level - primarily because vehicles have so little health in this game, rendering vehicle combat in anything above normal basically impossible. I ended up hiding on the mammoth taking down ghosts and wraiths with the AR - the opposite of fun.
The lich just felt like a reskinned scarab that they didn't have to program pathfinding for, struck me as a bit lazy and I'd have preferred to fight a scarab.
For me, the third mission is the best. Gorgeous art, three-way battles like the good old days, new exciting sandbox elements that are introduced gradually, open-ended objectives and the brilliant ghost escape setpiece - not to mention the battle around the
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