Alright, I'm just gonna get straight into it. No dicking around the subject. Halo 4 is simply an awful game. The core foundations on which Bungie built this franchise on over 4 games has now been tarnished, in one fell swoop.

Halo is no longer about map control, it no longer has any flow, it's no longer about the holy trinity "Shoot, Melee, Grenades". What we have is another game that doesn't differentiates itself from the rest of the "fish stick shooter genre". More problems come from the fact that 343 are totally inept, and simply cannot communicate to the franchise the way that Bungie did. The maddening part is none of Halo 4's problems are mistakes. Every flaw this game has stems form a failed attempt to hop on the CoD bandwagon. So let me just take look at just a few of Halo 4's problems.

Map control is not a major factor in Halo 4. When your multiplayer philosophy was maximizing map control, and it isn't a factor, then you've failed, spectacularly. The reason for why map control isn't important any more are pretty simple. Once you reward players with power weapons by simply playing the game(no matter how awful), players no longer have any incentive to control areas of the map that would've rewarded them with power weapons in previous games. If you can just stay stationary with your DMR and Boltshot for a minute in an advantageous area, and be rewarded with ammo boosted Snipers, Beam Rifles, Beam Rifles, why should you ever move? You wouldn't.

The lack of necessary map control is compounded by the fact that with global ordinance, there is no flow to a map. With unpredictable weapon spawns, players run around the map like a chicken with its head cut off, killing whatever with is in its way. In previous games with static , timed weapon spawns, there was a flow to a map. A beginning, middle, and an end. The initial rush, followed by skirmishes, followed the secondary rush, followed by more skirmishes, with a final rush. There is none of that in Halo 4. Maps no longer guide players, so they just f*ck around, largely ignoring global ordinance, because why would they when they're getting power weapons up the wazoo? Might as well just call Infinity Slayer Fiesta Slayer.

The second large problem this game has, is it's no longer a 4v4 game. Halo 1-3 are 4v4 games. The map design is at its best when you're playing tight knit,symmetrical maps, with a quick flow. Lockout, Midship, Guardian are Halo at it's best. Sure it had pretty good vehicle combat, but that was secondary to what Halo was. With Halo Reach, the game moved on to 5v5 range. Once you add sprint to a game, it can no longer have small maps. You have spread and stretch everything out to accommodate it, since players would get to certain areas to fast. With Halo 4 it's even worse, since sprint is now a built in mechanic, you now have a game that's built around 6v6 combat. Small maps simply don't exist anymore.

It doesn't.

The core gameplay is similar, but nothing beyond that is. It's just another fish stick shooter. This lead me to my biggest problem. 343 is out of touch with the Halo fanbase. And if they don't understand us, Halo will never be fixed.We told them exactly what we wanted so we could fix the problems that Reach brought. Instead their solution was to keep the problems Reach had, while aping CoD's mechanics.

People have been asking for fixes since day 1, but instead were getting this

Really 343? Spending 40% of the bulletin talking about camping, instead of addressing legit problems.

We've been asking for fixes like competent playlist management, a working fileshare, removal of the boltshot, no more starting a game with just 4 players because you've foolishly built their game around JiP, but don't have the population to justify that, add forge maps to gametypes, don't lock people out of content, because they didn't buy the game at a certain point. And it's not like if you fixed these the game would become great. It would still be a random mess.

Honestly, I think I'm done with Halo. It was my favorite franchise prior to 4, but I don't see it coming back to what it once was.