Remember the armor customizing in HALO: Reach and in HALO 3? These two armor customizing systems have basically been combined with a few extra bits. 343 kept some aspects of the Reach armor system, but threw away the idea of having to buy certain armor types in order to wear them. Now, you now receive different armor, visors, and emblem types through leveling up your avatar and also through completing certain commendations (These are explained in the next paragraph) like you did in HALO 3. For the people that are new to HALO, commendations are basically different challenges that players can complete to earn extra level up points. Commendations were added in HALO: Reach to help players level up faster. They were also added to allow players to show off how dedicated they are to playing the game. Other players were able to view how much commendations you had by viewing your Spartan service record. 343 kept this viewing feature, and they also added much more commendations in HALO 4. This gives players even more chances to get extra level up points, and makes it to where players are going to have to spend a larger amount of time playing the game to actually complete all the commendations.
Forge:
The forge gamemode is a gamemode that allows players to build their own maps. They can use a variety of building blocks and parts to build massive fortresses, mazes, or anything a person could think of. People do this by spawning the pieces in and placing them next to each other to form larger structures. Although this gamemode was introduced all the way back in HALO: 3, it has greatly been improved since then. Reach introduced a map called Forge World, which was a massive map where players had enough space to build almost anything. Unfortunately, this map has been taken out of HALO: 4. The 18 good thing is that 343 has introduced 3
Picture By: Austin S. new massive maps in which to build in. There is a budget system in forge that limits you to putting down a certain amount of items. There is also an item limit. Luckily, both of these factors have been increased, along with the amount of different item there are. This is good because players can now build even bigger and better structures than before. HALO veterans, remember how hard it was to build structures with no flaws because it was extremely difficult to perfectly line up pieces? Well, thankfully, there is a new feature called magnet. This magnet lines up pieces exactly, so now players don’t have to spend forever trying to line every single piece of a massive structure. Many new building pieces have been added to forge, and old pieces have been retextured to look even better. The new pieces include things like the new weapons, vehicles, and even pieces for building a space station. Also, a game variable called a trait zone. Trait zones are absolutely amazing because they allow players to change the gravity of an entire area without having to change the player’s gravity in custom gamemode settings. As mentioned earlier, there is an option in HALO: 4 that allows you to edit your own gamemode. This setup is exactly the same as the previous HALOs, and as far as I know, there are not any changes or improvements to this setup. For the new people that don’t know what any of this, play the game to find out ! by: Austin S.
Massive space station built using the forge option. Also, this build took minimal effort to build and make perfect thanks to the magnet tool and the new building pieces called impact pieces.
HALO: 4 is completely worth its price of $60. It has received much praise from many critics from all over the place. 343 has done an excellent job on their attempt take on the HALO series. I hope that 343 decides to continue HALO to an even further point than it is at now.