Halo 4

The gameplay was still decent, at least for the single player aspect, but the story was a confusing mess with large chunks of it missing, and the cheesy Chief/Cortana melodrama was an emotional flop. The weakest Halo at the time of its release.

The changes made to mulitplayer were solid, but the single player campaign and was so montonous, boring, uninteresting and disappointing it left me zero interest to continue investing in the franchise.

While the combat is still solid and the Chief-Cortana relationship form the best emotional storytelling of the series, there is much about this game which is lacking. The plot is a boring mish-mash of bad sci-fi concepts, the multiplayer tries to tap into the Call of Duty crowd but doesn't do those mechanics nearly as well, and the new weapons are at best unnecessary. Halo deserves better than this.

I really liked it. Loved the new direction in the campaign.

Change is bad.

I have to say, the bar for 343 was impossible, and with that context it's impressive what they were able to put out. That said, the campaign is emotionless, void of any flair or color or fun characters, and the multiplayer was so far removed from what Halo used to be. That doesn't have to be a bad thing, but it does have to either be as good as the original games or better. It wasn't.