Metonymy, or Why the Violent Video Game Discussion Is Ridiculous

I used to believe that the path from thought to language traveled only in one direction. It seemed to me that spoken and written words were a poor approximation of the mind's inner workings, a crude limitation of this dreadfully physical plane of existence. Of course, now that I'm older and wiser (or at least just older), I look back on such naively dualist arguments with chagrin. Our minds and bodies, our thoughts and actions—who we are and what we do—these things are deeply intertwined. It's not only the case that how we think affects what we say, but also that what we say affects how we think.

There's a well-worn rhetorical device known as "metonymy". In general, the term refers to the use of a word or phrase as a surrogate for a related concept, like calling a businessman a "suit". Its most frequent use by far, though, is when we refer to some collective entity using a simpler, related word, like referring to the American film industry as "Hollywood" or the executive branch of the United States government as "The White House". Like any part of language, metonymy is a mechanism for conveying meaning and processing the world around us. However, when using certain figures of speech—especially very common ones—we need to be conscious of how they subtly change our minds, lest they subvert the clarity of our thought. And while I don't believe that using the term "Hollywood" places us in danger of confusing a $10 billion industry with 25 square miles of movie sets in southern California, I do believe it places us in danger of forgetting that "Hollywood" isn't actually a real thing, but rather sort of a metaphor. The film industry doesn't think as one mind, and it doesn't act as a single entity.

The link between violence and video games has been debated pretty much as long as we've had both violence and video games, though it's periodically reinvigorated by current events. The number of ludicrous arguments I've heard and read about the subject is astounding, and seems to be bounded only by the number of idiots in the world with a microphone or Internet access. Usually these arguments are a cocktail of ignorance and deliberate misinformation, like claiming that the point of Bioshock is to murder "defenseless, cowering girls" or passing off obscure, poorly-made, intentionally provocative Flash games as mainstream media. However, inane ramblings like these aren't what bother me the most about this discussion. What bothers me the most is something much more subtle, yet fundamental: the fact that folks on all sides of the debate keep talking about "violent video games" and "the video game industry" as though these are coherent, well defined concepts. It's as though these terms metonymns for some broader concept, except that the broader concept has never been made clear to anyone, least of all me.

When I read the words "violent video game" in the news, what does it mean? Is it a photo-realistic first-person shooter, like Call of Duty or Battlefield? What about less realistic games like Halo or Gears of War? Does this nebulous category only include games with violence against humans, or does it include crimes against robots, aliens, and/or mushrooms? What about something like the Binding of Isaac, a game with a charmingly adorable art style and whose disturbing level of violence is largely due to the fact that it draws its inspiration from the brutality of the Old Testament? Similarly, who are we trying to blame for selling this filth to our children? Publishers like Activision or Ubisoft? The developers of AAA games? Indie devs? What about the designer who makes a violent game as a vehicle for social commentary, or the government contractor who develops a serious violent game for the military?

As a researcher myself, I fully support pursuing a greater understanding of the psychological and sociological effects that our ever-evolving media have on our cognitive development, our relationships with one another, and our society as a whole. (Since we're handing out research funding anyway, let's also give more money to cancer research and NASA.) There's some great questions to be answered, like how does imagery of physical violence affect our brains and bodies, and how does interactivity and the agency of the user change these effects? Is there a link between simulating violent acts and aggression, and between aggression and violent acts in practice? Why is obliterating one of my friends in Halo with a rocket launcher so much fun? As we ask these questions, though, we must remember that one of the first and most important lessons of science is attention to detail... and if we don't even fully understand the words we're using to talk about these concepts, then we're a very long way from getting any answers.

Review: The Cave (XBLA)

Though it's a clever and enjoyable enough way to spend a few hours, The Cave is unlikely to impress anyone who knows how great Ron Gilbert's games can really be.

In 1987, the debut works of two great artists were released: Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction and Ron Gilbert's Maniac Mansion. Each was a landmark contribution it its respective field, a herald of great changes yet to come. While their contemporaries were concerning themselves with trivialities like stomping adorable Japanese mushrooms and pouring some sugar on things, Ron Gilbert and Guns N' Roses were visionaries alike, breaking new ground whilst addressing raw and edgy concepts like heroin addiction and sentient disembodied alien tentacles.

During the subsequent five years or so, Guns N' Roses would release legendary rock epics like "November Rain" and "Civil War", while Ron Gilbert would create The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle, which are essentially the point-n-click adventure game equivalents of legendary rock epics. After that, the members of GnR and Gilbert would do what all great artists seem to do these days: hang around for another two decades occasionally producing works that will never hold a candle to their previous masterpieces, but that I—like all the other nostalgia addicts out there—buy anyways.

Gilbert's newest work, The Cave, is a downloadable title available on PC, OS X, the PS3 Network and Xbox LIVE Marketplace. A puzzle adventure game vaguely reminiscent of his original Maniac Mansion, The Cave lets you choose three out of seven playable characters with whom to explore a surreal, hostile environment, solving puzzles with found items while unlocking the secrets of a mysterious world. (For some reason there's also a platforming component, presumably to meet some sort of genre diversity quota imposed by our liberal activist government.) The cast is a predictably diverse set of zany characters, such as a a time-traveling museum worker and a pair of possessed twin children. Each has their own special ability that alters the way you solve puzzles in "The Cave" (such as the ability to bypass locked doors or to hold one's breath), and each has a dark motivation for pursuing the wealth and power hidden in its depths.

Welcome to "The Cave".

Despite having been underwhelmed by Gilbert's recent Deathspank games, I approached The Cave with uncharacteristic amount of optimism, in part because it was a collaboration with one of my favorite studios, Tim Schafer's Double Fine Productions. Unfortunately, I've found in my life that such incidents of optimism rarely go unpunished, and this time was no exception. Even though Gilbert's Maniac Mansion pioneered the multi-character puzzle adventure, the past 25 years have seen amazing innovations on the original concept (see the classic SNES game The Lost Vikings, or last year's PC title Resonance), and The Cave feels a bit behind the times by comparison. Most of the features that set it apart from similar games feel like concessions instead of improvements, such as the fact that your characters can only carry one item at a time, or that the platforming elements are as tedious as they are unnecessary.

I'm certainly not asking Gilbert to retread old ground, but The Cave could go much further in building on the essence of what made games like Monkey Island great. For me, the magic of these games was that moment when the moving parts of a puzzle clicked into place, when your brain twisted in just the right way and you could suddenly see the perverse logic that governed these fantastical, comical worlds. There's times when The Cave dabbles in these mind-bending realms—for instance, when a guard slips because you placed a "wet floor" sign in front of him—but for the most part, the puzzles are of the fairly straightforward "lock-and-key" variety. Even the multi-character component is only delivered by half-measures, as most areas are either generic enough to be traversed nearly identically regardless of your team, or they're so particular to a single character that the other two are irrelevant.

Fun fact: advertising revenues from grog companies have funded nearly all of Ron Gilbert's games.

In the end, though, I found the biggest barrier to enjoying The Cave wasn't the mediocre gameplay, but rather the setting itself. I've always had a limited affection for places like Alice's Wonderland, fantasy settings where literally anything can happen... because if anything can happen, then essentially nothing can happen. In such lands of sheer absurdity, nothing is of consequence, nothing is surprising, and this utter lack of terra firma means there's no foundation upon which to build a compelling narrative. In other words, Gilbert's particular brand of charm shines much better in a place where the rules are ludicrous—like the Edison family mansion or Melee Island—than in a place with no rules at all.

What I've Been Playing: The Feel-Good Edition

We're well into 2013 (actually, it's about 4% over at this point), and that means somehow I made it through another holiday season.

That previous statement is a bit disingenuous... saying "somehow I made it through" implies that I didn't knowingly leverage my other responsibilities (such as work and home repair) to escape from the annual rituals of holiday shopping, frantic housekeeping, food preparation, and entertaining our families. Nevertheless, we all made it through Christmas, New Year's, and the Mayan apocalypse, succeeding in buying ourselves another 10 months or so until we have to deal with another joyous holiday season. The new year is afoot, and in the immortal words of Journey, "the wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'".

Anyone who knows me might expect I would scoff at the idea of "New Year's resolutions", as though celebrating an arbitrary discontinuity in the way we measure the Earth's orbital progression should have any bearing on one's choice to quit smoking or lose weight. However, I accepted long ago that traditions are an essential part of society, and our annual making and inevitable breaking of the oaths of self-betterment seem to be as important a tradition as any.

To get in the spirit of things, I've resolved to be more positive and generous in the New Year, a commitment I fully expect to last at least as long as it takes to finish this post. (I've also resolved to bring my lunch to work every day and to go to the gym twice a week, but I'm totally going to keep doing those things forever, from now on, no matter what.) Rather than my usual routine of degrading the creative accomplishments of others, I thought that instead I could run through each of the games I've been playing lately and say something nice about each of them.

Assassin's Creed III (Xbox 360)

Well... fuck. Way to ease myself into this.

If you've read my review of Assassin's Creed III, you know I was pretty disappointed with this game, and might suspect that saying nice things about it would be a challenge. Looking back on my critique, though, I was actually quite positive about certain aspects of the game, although these rare triumphs made its shortcomings sting all the more.

However, putting on my positive thinking hat, I'm forced to admit that after five games, maybe I've simply forgotten what was so utterly amazing about the Assassin's Creed series to begin with. For starters, realizing that the games take place within the Animus was one of the great reveals of this console cycle. Though admittedly trite, the whole "Matrix" angle was so well integrated with the narrative and gameplay that it made this tired old trope feel fresh and new again.

A screenshot from the first Assassin's Creed. Like its most recent sequel, AC1 had its share of issues, but still managed to do some truly amazing things.

More importantly, though—and what still makes Assassin's Creed great today—is the extent to which the franchise expanded the "acrobatic exploration" style of gameplay pioneered by the modern Prince of Persia games. Free climbing, running, and vaulting through the massive historical cities in the Assassin's Creed games really is a complete joy on both a visual and tactile level, and it's easy to forget what an incredible accomplishment this is. It is in this sense that Assassin's Creed III best carries the mantle of its predecessors, and further refinement of this art is arguably its most significant accomplishment.

Halo 4 (Xbox 360)

Speaking of games that are easy to take for granted, let's talk about Halo 4. My recent review echoed the prevailing attitude that this latest entry in the Halo franchise was essentially "more of the same", and I've wondered if the only reason I and others didn't critique Halo 4 more harshly was because everyone simply gave the new developers a bit of a pass. However, like Assassin's Creed III, Halo 4 does certain things so skillfully and effortlessly that they're easy to overlook.

Shoot the big one first.

I thought about this further as I pondered why I prefer Halo games to so many other shooters. (In fact, only Gears of War 3 beats out Halo 3 for the "space marine game" spot on my desert island list.) It's not simply that I'm much, much better at it than something like Call of Duty, though admittedly it's hard to enjoy Black Ops when you can't seem string together enough kills to buy yourself an exploding toy car, whilst everyone else is regularly calling down orbital laser strikes.

Perhaps the question, then, is why do I suck so much less at Halo? I believe one reason is that compared to many other games, I find the game design elements communicated by its artistic choices to be much more intuitive. The moment when your shields go down, the reaction of an Elite to a thrown grenade, the subtle visual cues that indicate how an armored foe can be damaged—in all these cases, Halo works very hard to inform your gameplay through intelligent choices in its artwork and animation. In many ways this is thankless work, but it ultimately leads to Halo being one of the toughest, fairest, and most enjoyable shooters around.

Tales of the Abyss (Nintendo 3DS)

For me, Japanese-style role-playing games (J-RPGs) have always been a bit of a comfort food. Whenever I find I've run through a few particularly challenging titles in a row, it's nice to revert to a genre possessing the kind of story and gameplay pacing that allows you to save the world with one hand while absentmindedly soothing a screaming baby with the other.

To extending the J-RPG / comfort food analogy: if the Final Fantasy series is a favorite sugary cereal from your youth that now tastes like being orally sodomized by a high-fructose dildo, then by contrast the Tales series is a favorite ice cream, reliably waiting in your fridge to console you after your wife divorces you because you gained all that weight from eating sugary cereal. From Tales of Symphonia on the GameCube to Tales of Legendia on the PS2 to Tales of Vesperia on the Xbox 360, Namco Bandai has made a habit over the years of releasing high-quality RPGs that improve with each iteration while remaining comfortably familiar. Since I missed playing Tales of the Abyss when it first came out on the PS2, the 3DS re-release seemed like a perfect opportunity to pick up a title for my mobile gaming pleasure I could be certain I'd enjoy. So far I haven't been disappointed.

Batman: Arkham City (Xbox 360)

I'm pretty compulsive about finishing the games I start, so it's significant when I tell you that a few days after picking up a copy of Batman: Arkham City, I found myself back at the store, receipt in hand, considering whether I wanted to return it. As we're still being positive though, let's ignore the many glaring design flaws that nearly caused me to give up on this supposedly critically acclaimed game, and instead focus on its incredible combat system.

Don't fret, gentlemen... there's plenty of beat-downs to go around.

Having never played Rocksteady's first Batman game (Arkham Asylum), I found the learning curve for Arkham City's combat system to be pretty steep, but was doubly impressed once I started to get the hang of it. I've rarely played a game that deals with crowd control quite so elegantly. In most hack-n-slash games (such as Diablo or God of War), the mechanics for dealing with swarms of enemies follow a simple, standard formula that balances light, heavy, and area-of-effect (AoE) attacks. Often the AoE attacks serve as a sort of "panic button", allowing graceless players like myself to substitute cheap shots and giant explosions for actual combat finesse.

A remarkable thing about Arkham City is that the splashy AoE attacks are largely absent, forcing you to take each of your foes out behind the wood shed for an individual old-fashioned whuppin'. In almost every melee battle, you'll hit a point where you start to fantasize about casting Ultima and vaporizing everyone, but with a bit of discipline and practice, eventually you'll have the Dark Knight leaping around the room breaking arms and smashing heads so handily, it will feel less like a game and more like an expertly choreographed fight scene in a badass martial arts movie.

So that about wraps up my holiday gaming, and other than my use of the term "high-fructose dildo", I'd say I stayed pretty positive. Maybe this whole resolution thing isn't such a joke after all... which I suppose could be a good thing, as I've also resolved to write blog posts more often.

Review: Assassin's Creed III

Incoherent gameplay, bizarre design choices, and frequent bugs squander much of the potential of this visually and thematically stunning game. Disappointment, thy name is Assassin's Creed III.

Disappointment is a peculiar emotion. I can be angry without first having felt calm, and I can feel happy without first having felt sad, but to be disappointed, I really need to have experienced something else first, usually "optimism". It is this characteristic that makes disappointment the most insidious form of emotional malaise: we are exposed to it entirely of our own volition, by first allowing ourselves to hope.

My friends, readers of my blog, and even strangers with whom I've made accidental eye contact know how uncontrollably optimistic I've been about Assassin's Creed III, beginning with the moment I first saw the leaked box art. It was then that I learned the fifth major installment in Ubisoft's epic action-adventure franchise would take place during the American Revolution, that it would feature a bad-ass tomahawk-wielding Native American, and that it would likely allow me the unique opportunity to scamper around the rooftops of a colonial-era replica of my hometown city of Boston, using British Redcoats as foul-mouthed, tea-swilling archery targets.

However, the clever reader will have inferred from my earlier ramblings concerning "disappointment" that this optimism was... misplaced. So what went wrong? How did Assassin's Creed III make the transition from my Most Anticipated Game of 2012 to Biggest Letdown?

Assassin's Creed III is beautiful, but unfortunately looks aren't everything.

Let's start with the basics. Assassin's Creed III draws its foundation from the other games in the series, relying heavily on their well-established portfolio of game mechanics. As you step back into the Animus to re-live the adventures of yet another historical Assassin (this time it's Ratonhnhaké:ton, a.k.a. "Connor", Desmond's Revolutionary-War-era ancestor), you'll quickly find yourself climbing, sneaking, and murdering again like old times. In fact, you'll feel almost as though you were playing any other Assassin's Creed game... but unfortunately, the key word here is "almost". In its attempts to build upon the franchise's winning formula, Assassin's Creed III somehow manages to struggle with narrative and design elements that its predecessors handled with aplomb.

Here's an example: in past games, you could boost each mission's completion rating (and take on a bit of extra challenge) through certain "optional objectives", such as finishing the mission without being detected, or without taking more than a certain amount of damage. Although this feature reappears in Assassin's Creed III, this time it feels like an afterthought. One mission asked me to perform a certain number of "corner assassinations", though I'm quite certain I was never told what those were. Another mission told me I should tackle a man I was chasing from above, but even after about 20 tries, I couldn't convince Connor to heed my commands to do so. Instead, each time he stubbornly leaped onto one of the other guards nearby, to the extent that I really began to believe he was being deliberately and spitefully obtuse.

Get used to killing Redcoats, because it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to sneak around without alerting them.

This example may seem like garden-variety nitpicking, but Assassin's Creed III is packed with similarly frustrating cases of mechanics that are poorly implemented, totally lacking any sort of narrative context, and occasionally even downright broken. Whereas in past games your primary revenue stream was a sort of real estate side quest that integrated nicely with natural city exploration, now it's a crafting and trading system that takes place through an interface so tedious and clunky that I literally decided to just endure the entire game with a severe cash flow problem rather than suffer through it. Likewise, the revamped Assassin training missions are designed and motivated so badly it almost seems like they're actively trying to discourage you from playing them. And don't even get me started on the lockpicking mini-game, which couldn't have been more awkward if it had involved using a real pair of tweezers to take apart your Xbox Kinect.

While all these minor flaws conspire to kill Assassin's Creed III slowly via death by a thousand cuts, there are also some major flaws trying to shiv it directly in the kidneys. One notable failing is the stealth system, which one suspects would be a core game mechanic in a series based entirely around secretly killing people. In past games stealth has been handled pretty competently, but in Assassin's Creed III your adversaries seem to be hyper-aware, and hiding from them has become more difficult than ever. On several occasions I walked slowly and carefully by guards only to have them spring into "alert" status without warning, forcing me to run away like a little bitch with half the British army at my heels. (I typically led my pursuers halfway across the city while humming "Yakety Sax" to myself, before inevitably giving up on my attempts at evasive maneuvering and simply murdering everyone.) These issues made any part of the game with stealth components extremely frustrating, and any missions where stealth was mandatory downright infuriating.

Apparently, Connor's primary role as a player character is to convince us that Desmond's vapid personality is a hereditary trait.

At this point, I should probably comment on the plot. Rather than heap more criticisms upon a game that already has endured so many, let's first discuss some narrative aspects of Assassin's Creed III that I don't have a problem with. For instance, I don't have a problem with the bizarre sci-fi turn the series has taken, with its "ancient precursor civilization" (à la Mass Effect and Halo), a concept that will certainly go down as the Biggest Game Cliché of 2012. I don't have a problem with Desmond being such a central character, despite the fact that he's about as relatable as a wax statue of Keanu Reeves, and I don't care that Connor is even worse. I don't even have that much a problem with the ending, even though it totally blows.

What does bother me though, is that all of these elements were combined in such disarray, resulting in a plot so completely full of holes, that eventually it compelled me not to care why anyone did anything. Why does Connor become an Assassin? Why should I hunt and kill the Templars, and why should I help the American patriots? What is Connor hoping to achieve? The answers to these questions were usually poorly explained, lacking completely, or they happened well after I'd spent hours completing relevant missions with virtually no context. At one point, Connor became angry at another character for executing a captured enemy... as though I hadn't just spent 25 hours murdering every person in a red coat and a funny hat I ran into just for the hell of it. When your protagonist manages to convince you that he's so oblivious that you shouldn't care what happens to him anymore, that's not a good sign.

The worst part is, killing Redcoats with a tomahawk really is a ton of fun.

If it seems like I'm being too hard on Assassin's Creed III, it's only because it had so much promise, and because at times it even manages to actualize its potential. Visually, the game is absolutely stunning, and the environments have a wonderfully immersive feel, from the lively mercantile docks of colonial Boston, to the burnt-out buildings of New York after the Great Fire, to the tranquil beauty of the New England forests. Moving through these rich historical worlds is especially enjoyable because of the incredible quality of the character animations, as Connor free-climbs cliffs and leaps through treetops with such fluidity and grace it makes the ninjas from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon look like a pair of drunken lemurs. Similarly impressive are the naval battle side quests, which are fun to play and do justice to the epic scale of the Revolutionary War setting. Even the fractured plot has its moments; for example, one of my favorite scenes in the game was a death monologue so well-written that it incorporated the word "tittie", while still managing to be one of the most profound bits of video-game writing I've encountered.

In closing, I've probably been more critical of Assassin's Creed III than it deserves, though in my defense, the game misses a bar that it largely set for itself. With the high quality of previous titles in the series and the immense potential offered by its epic setting, Assassin's Creed III had some big shoes to fill, and it certainly wasn't up to the task. If you've never played an Assassin's Creed game before, then you might not be as disappointed as I was... but if that's truly the case, do yourself a favor and play Assassin's Creed II or Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood instead.

Review: Halo 4

Although Halo 4 introduces great new enemies, weapons, and environments, 343 Industries ultimately plays it safe with this new chapter by skillfully iterating on the canonical Halo experience. 

One of the most disorienting experiences a critic can have is liking something, but not knowing why. In the context of video games it's an epistemological hazard I usually can avoid, but one series that persistently confounds my critical judgement is Halo.

For example, I've never found myself particularly inspired by Halo's militaristic, technology-driven, human-centric brand of science fiction; I instead prefer games like Mass Effect where you get to explore diverse cultural and sociopolitical relationships between advanced civilizations on a galactic scale, and also have sex with aliens. When it comes to competitive multiplayer, I usually opt for something like the deliberate, hyper-violent, highly strategic combat of Gears of War, which makes Halo and its floaty ragdoll physics look like NBA 2K13 by comparison. And in terms of protagonists, I pretty much prefer anybody to the Master Chief, a character so lacking in charisma he makes Gordon Freeman seem like George Clooney.

However, despite all my arguments to the contrary, I really do like Halo. Perhaps it's all those weapons, scattered around the battlefield with the abundance of dandelions in a glen. Perhaps it's the resulting frenzy of fast-paced combat, which resembles a firefight breaking out at the 2557 NRA national gun show. Perhaps its the panoply of bizarre vehicles, and the unfettered glee that accompanies soaring above the fray in a Banshee. Perhaps I just really like punching diminutive alien zealots in the face.

Given how poorly I comprehend my affection for the Halo series, it was with some concern that I approached this newest installment. Marking a return to the original storyline after a five year intermission, and serving as the first major development effort by the new stewards of the franchise, Halo 4 could have been the key to unlocking what I find so appealing about these ridiculous games, or it could have been enough of a misstep to finally break their spell over me.

Don't worry... even though the Chief has never seen this ancient alien weapon before, he won't let that fact keep him from killing stuff with it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Halo 4 achieved neither of these extremes. Instead, 343 Industries channeled their obvious devotion to the Xbox flagship franchise and delivered an incredibly faithful reproduction of the classic Halo experience. As far as a casual gamer like myself can tell, the fundamentals of the combat are essentially unchanged; other than a dedicated button for short sprinting and fact that the armor ability system of Halo: Reach has been retained, most of the time I felt like I could have been playing any game in the Halo library. (Incidentally, I was a big fan of the Reach ability system, and was psyched to see that the "hologram decoy" makes a triumphant return.) Halo 4 even takes pains to make sure the 10+ hours of single-player campaign include all the requisite gameplay hooks, from the frantic close-combat battles in nondescript futuristic space corridors to the epic clashes of heavy weapons platforms that are really difficult to steer properly.

Unfortunately, Halo 4's commitment to consistency means that a lot of opportunities for innovation are lost. For instance, even though an entire new civilization is introduced—and with it, a wealth of new enemies and technologies—the resulting gameplay changes remarkably little. The new Forerunner weapons reprise the same well-balanced collection of roles already filled by the existing UNSC and Covenant ordnance (e.g. assault rifle, battle rifle, sniper rifle, shotgun), and despite the few novel twists and tricks they throw at you, any new foes you encounter can usually be dispatched with the same old tactics.

Cortana is pretty much naked at all times, whereas John never even takes his helmet off. And that's the least odd thing about this couple.

I'm not really going to offer a critique of the plot of Halo 4, because frankly the entire mythology of the Halo universe confuses the hell out of me. Over the past 10 years I've managed to grasp that the Master Chief (a.k.a. SPARTAN-II commando John-117) is a biologically-engineered super-soldier whose girlfriend is an artificially intelligent computer program that was modeled after his mother and lives in his head. Also, they've saved the universe a few times. Beyond that I'm fairly lost, so if you're the sort of person who plays these games for the story and you've read this far, I've nothing more to offer than my apologies.

Although the campaign is certainly worth playing, as with past Halo games (and pretty much every other first-person shooter), folks are likely to spend most of their Halo 4 quality time in competitive multiplayer. After haranguing all my regular gaming buddies into dropping a bit of their precious pre-holiday cash on this particular title (as opposed to, say, Black Ops 2), I suppose I was relieved to find the multiplayer was as conservatively designed and incrementally innovated as the campaign. Of course, this means that while Halo 4 does well what Halo games typically do well (e.g. robust matchmaking and well-balanced competitive combat), it also does poorly what Halo games typically do poorly (right down to the clunky menus and the litany of arcane, ill-explained game modes). Then again, one of the multiplayer maps is a visually stunning remake of the Halo 3 favorite "Valhalla", so how much can one really complain?

Home of the gods.

Beyond competitive multiplayer, there's also been a general trend this console cycle towards more cooperative multiplayer game modes in shooters. In terms of quality, they typically range from paragons of game design like Gears of War's "Horde mode" to hokey half-assed pandering like Call of Duty's "zombie mode". Unfortunately, Halo 4's "Spartan Ops" cooperative game mode, which consists of episodic collections of co-op side missions, tends more towards the latter. Most missions are essentially glorified shooting galleries, and since you're free to respawn as much as you like, the primary challenge is how long you're willing to mop up the seemingly endless waves of enemies before you grow too bored to continue. If you're really looking to spend some quality time with your friends murdering aliens instead of one another, then playing the campaign in co-op mode is a much better bet.

In closing, I hate saying that Halo 4 is "basically another Halo game", but no matter how I run the numbers, that's the answer I keep coming up with. In other words, if the whole space marine thing has never really been your cup of tea, then Halo 4 is unlikely to be the game that changes your palate. However, if you're an old-school Halo fan looking to get back in the game or a current Reach regular looking to re-up your multiplayer, then Halo 4 is everything you need it to be, and maybe even a little bit more.