I’ve played through the Campaign mode three times now, once with Jane on Normal (she doesn’t like dying!), once on Heroic with Lewis, and once by myself, on Legendary, which was a slog! Those Promethean Knights sure have strong shields. This is what I thought of the Halo 4 bestiarum vocabulum.
Caution: There will be spoilers!
When Halo 4 was first announced, I was hoping it would be all-new enemies, a proper, full-on return of the Forerunners, but as more trailers and info were released, I came around to the idea of the Covenant returning. That they are not the proper Covenant, who are no doubt in complete and total disarray since the events of Halo 3, but some splinter group, makes sense. The military backbone of the Covenant, the Elites, are present, toned down a little from Halo: Reach, but still very deadly. I felt they were less aggressive in Halo 4, less agile, and less likely to dodge a Plasma Pistol burst. They look kinda casual in Halo 4 – with no armour on their forearms. Grunts are in too, of course, it wouldn’t be Halo without them. A little easier to head-shot this time around maybe? And their leaders don’t wear helmets in Halo 4 either, so you don’t have to shoot their hats off to score the easy, dome-splitting kill.
Jackals are back, but only their infantry and ranger varieties. It’s still a joy to shoot their hands, then move the reticule up and right slightly to score the headshot, or spot the dull red glow on the helmet of the ranger and pop them before they see you. Sadly absent are the Skirmishers – but I’ll save my thoughts on the missing Covenant enemies for later and cover them all at once. Hunters seem to have shrunk again, and have kind of lost that fear-factor they once had. Their scariness seems to have lessened, even though they have become tougher to kill over time. Ironically, I feared them most when they could be killed with one pistol shot to the back.
In terms of Forerunners – they are not what I expected, which is good to be honest, as I’m sure the ideas of talented videogame creators are better than my predictable guesses. The Promethean troops are deadly, and fun to fight – mostly. Crawlers are numerous and very speedy. They can also cling to surfaces, so thusly shoot you whilst hanging upside down off the ceiling. They are easy enough to down with a headshot – but only when they are looking vaguely in your direction. They tend to be shooting at you when they are pointed right at you though, so that does balance them somewhat, especially given the numbers they tend to attack in. Watchers add a new dimension to Halo. Other than Engineers (who never really gave a shit about the battle they were in the middle of), there’s never been an enemy that was built mainly for support. Throwing up shields for friendlies, grabbing your grenades with laser lasso’s and chucking them back at you, even reviving fallen comrades, Watchers make things interesting. If you don’t take them out first (which can be tricky, as they do tend to fly off as soon as you start firing at them), then the skirmish you are about to have will be five times harder.
The Promethean Knights themselves are a visual triumph. It was always going to be hard for 343 Industries to come up with a Forerunner design that was convincing as everyone pretty much had their own ideas of what Forerunners looked like. I love the Promethean designs, all angular, lit-up with neon and a little top-heavy – they really echo the architecture we have seen in previous Halo games. The different classes of Knight are varied enough, based around the weapons they wield more than anything. Knights with Suppressors will close gaps with speed, while Light Rifle troops will stay back, keep their distance. Knights who prefer Scattershots and Incineration Cannons are quite a challenge, but the Knights wielding Binary Rifles are the ones to really watch out for. A lovely design cue of them about to kill you in one hit is a glowing red circle around their face. Seeing one appear out of the corner of your eye is terrifying, you know you have roughly 1 second to get behind cover, or you’re getting cremated.
I did not enjoy how strong the Knights shields were, or how cowardly they were. My Legendary run only really hit stumbling blocks when I had to fight a Knight or two. Stay too far back and wear them down with a ranged weapon and you risk them teleporting away or getting behind cover to recharge their shields, with you running out of ammo. Get too close and risk them jumping at you, or teleporting towards you, both resulting in a one-hit-kill melee attack. These can be avoided with practise, but it was annoying to empty a clip into them, suddenly be rushed, dodge the attack, but them then teleport off into the distance, again recharging those shields. Even once their shields were down, one shot to the face wasn’t enough. I’m just glad that ammo was plentiful for the most potent Knight-killing weapons later on in the game.
So, which Covenant enemies are absent from Halo 4? As I mentioned earlier, Skirmishers are missing. All the enemies in Halo 4 seem to have learned how to jump, but they just seem to hop around randomly – none of them can jump as high as Skirmishers could, or are as fast or intelligent, so none of the enemies jump onto ledges above and flank you. Brutes are missing. I think this is for story reasons more than anything else – they just wouldn’t fit into a more religious Covenant faction. Still, I do think the power-armoured varieties from Halo 3 and ODST are different enough from Elites to warrant an inclusion in the next game. On my hunt for cool images to pepper these pieces with, I did find some Brute Halo 4 concept art – they were the size of Hunters and quite mean-looking. Drones are missing. Is this due to them being a little similar to Watchers? Or that people found them too annoying? Personally, I liked Drones – when they attacked in numbers, fluttering all over the place, gnawing away at your shields with Plasma Pistol shots, well, it was a challenge, wasn’t it? Maybe they were too similar to the wall-clinging Crawlers. Engineers are out too. I think this is obviously because they are similar to Watchers, but nowhere near as potent. And of course, the Flood were missing entirely. Well… Almost. They do turn up as player skins in the revamped zombie mode, hinting at how 343 Industries see the threat evolving.
I’m sad there was only one level of three way battles. Coming into a new area to see the Prometheans and Covenant going at it added an interesting dimension to battles. Do you pick off the Grunts and Crawlers from afar then wait to see if the Elites or Knights triumph? Or do you flank around, assassinate the Knights then fight the Covenant head-on? I was also a little dismayed that the mix of troops weren’t especially varied. How about a group of Crawlers rushing you while Jackal snipers fired from a distance? A bunch of Grunts or Jackals commanded by a Knight? Kill one of the two Hunters and a swarm of Crawlers appear? I would’ve liked to have seen the Watchers aid some Covenant too, but maybe they are programmed to only protect Prometheans.
All in all though, being one of the three main aspects of the Campaign mode, I felt 343 Industries got the enemies right. Fun to fight, and memorable (if for the wrong reasons at times), but remember, this is the first game of three – you don’t throw all your eggs at your enemies at once – save some for later.
