Back about 9 years ago now, I purchased a copy of Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, a game I expected to utterly loathe. Ace Combat 6 was and still is one of my all time favorite games, and served as my introduction to the franchise. I loved the mix of exuberance and thoughtfulness AC 6 brought to the table, the way it so willingly wore its heart on its sleeve, the rhythm of balls to the wall dogfighting separated by quiet, contemplative cutscenes. Knowing that AC:AH completely abandoned the feel of the previous games, knowing that Project Aces had moved from the distinct feel of AC6 to making Call of Duty: Planes, in a game that didn't have themes more complex than "Ooh, look at the pretty explosions!" made me angry. But I decided I wanted to actually play it before giving my two cents, so I ordered a copy from Amazon and set to completing a playthrough. There were indeed a great many things in Assault Horizon to be irritated by, and I remember writing a review that largely echoed most Ace Combat fans' sentiments toward it, namely that DFM felt gimicky, the story was generic and the boss battles sucked. Then I moved away from my mom's house to live with my now fiance, and I left my Xbox behind for the better part of a year before I finally collected the remainder of my belongings. Then, I picked up Assault Horizon again, and found myself loving the action cheese, watching the enemy planes blow up in an extravagant fashion, and realized that if I met the game on its own terms, and let it be the dumb action fest it is, I could have a lot of fun. Indeed, who cares about the plot? Did you see that MiG get kaboomed, spraying oil and bits of fighter plane all over the wild blue yonder? It was freaking awesome!
So, Halo 4... When I first heard about it in the halcyon days of 2012, it was as a college freshman who was pretty deep into the Halo fandom, and my thoughts toward it were: "this game has no narrative reason to exist, and it's an exercise in greedy cynicism by Microsoft and the studio cobbled together to make it to keep milking more money out of the franchise."
This was a sentiment I retained for a very long time, and to add to it, I hated the changes to the art style, I thought the story was stupid, and I wanted nothing to do with the newly introduced Prometheans as the new big bad enemy faction. Well, eventually, over a decade later in fact, I finally purchased the Master Chief Collection, and got around to actually playing Halo 4. In my first playthrough, I was already in a foul mood generally, and I admit that was not the best frame of mind to give a fair chance to a game I had spent the last 12 years loathing. I didn't much care for it, to put it mildly. I didn't give a shit about the story, and I found the gameplay tedious. But, remembering back to Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, I told myself a few months later to give it another chance and meet the game on its own level. So, in I went to my second campaign playthrough, attempting to have an open mind...
Unfortunately, my experience didn't improve much on the second go around. I tried to enjoy myself, I really did, but I found the game to either be boring or irritating.
So, here is an exhaustive post-mortem of Halo 4.
Step 1. Attempt to say something nice:
I'm going to step forward and say I liked the relationship dynamic between Master Chief and Cortana. It was well-written, well-acted, and it got much closer to achieving a real emotional impact than anything else in the game.
I also like the punchy new sound effect for the Assault Rifle. And what else is there...Hmm.... It controls okay, I didn't get lost... Ummm... Sorry, can't think of anything else.
So, onto the stuff I don't like...
