LOL WTF. Is that for real!?

I wouldn't exactly say they were weak, because no way is Xenoblade Chronicles weak, and neither really is Mass Effect 3. I didn't see the ending in ME3, for example, as this huge controversy that a lot of folks did. I actually loved Bioware for having the balls to do that, telling their story however they see fit. We can't always have the happy ending with a bow on top. Mass Effect is, quite frankly, the strongest videogame trilogy I have ever seen. It's videogame's Lord of the Rings before the Hobbit.

And don't you mean Crixxus instead of Brutus? Or did the show take creative license with his true name? One important factor in that fight against the Shadow of Death is that Crixxus got greedy and attempted to take all the glory for himself, believing he didn't need any help from Spartacus. He didn't really sacrifice out of choice or honor, he was forced to do so largely out of shame after biting off more than he could chew. Sure, he gave a nice little assist, using his helmet to blind Theokoles momentarily towards the end, further tipping things in Spartacus' favor, but that's also an opportunity that wouldn't have been presented to him in the first place had Spartacus not kept Theokoles from landing the killing blow on Crixxus moments earlier. And through that battle Spartacus became a legend and the bringer of rain, meanwhile Crixxus was dragged out of the arena like a piece of road kill. ;)

So, it is in a way appropriate in the sense that Crixxus, in all his envy and lust for glory, made a foolish attempt to reach for the top, but he just didn't realize that he was reaching for something that was already destined for more deserving hands. Crixxus, like some of the vanquished games on this list, certainly had all the qualities of a champion, but it takes a more special quality to be on top. :p

It just surprises me out of all the halos that halo 4 would win GOTY here. Its the lowest metacritic halo game (if you dont count ODST, which i dont). Weird. It was definitely a down year for truly great games, might have been a factor.

Wow, you only just finished with the first season? Boy, are you in for a treat.

Spartacus Blood and Sand
Spartacus Gods of the Arena (this is the important in between before season 2 -- do not accidentally go to season 2 without seeing these episodes.)
Spartacus Vengeance is the true season 2.
Spartacus War of the Damned is the last season.

I don't think the metacritic score really means all that much, to be honest. It's always been a pretty bad way to judge games.

its not a science as we know, but it does have some relevance

Errrr maybe because everyone that voted for it in there top 3, really enjoyed it????? :O

ok? that literally has nothing to do with what I'm saying. I'm not questioning why people voted for it, im wondering why this halo is the halo to win GOTY here given how it wasnt as unanimously praised as its predecessors. More of a commentary on how "down" last year was in terms of high quality releases.

If i understand what BlackHawk is saying, it's that maybe people enjoyed this one more than the other Halo's they have played?, some dislike it some love it, for me personally i enjoyed playing Halo 4 more than any of the others.

I only buy Halo for the campaign experience, so perhaps most of Halo 4's shortcomings simply aren't things I'm experiencing, but I feel pretty confident saying that I have never played a better Halo campaign experience than what I've played in Halo 4. There was nothing revolutionary or drastically new done in terms of gameplay in Halo 4. Most of what it did was largely evolutionary expansions and refinements of a proven and very successful formula, but I have never seen it all come together quite so impressively before as it did in Halo 4. Maybe nostalgia or other reasons related to the MP, or problems with Spartan Ops will keep people from ever seeing the campaign this way, but Halo 4's campaign experience, to me, is easily the best the series has ever seen, and I don't really see it as being close or a toss-up between Halo 4 and any other game in the franchise. I genuinely believe the campaign in this last game to be the best in the franchise. There isn't a single Halo game that plays quite as good as Halo 4 does. The gameplay just feels a lot better than previous games.

To me, a game need not break new ground or do all sorts of new or revolutionary things to qualify as an incredible gaming experience. That's one of the things I despise most about game reviews and sites like metacritic. I think they largely miss the point more than they get it. It isn't always so much about the quality of the game experience these days anymore, it's about "What's new, what's revolutionary, how is this game totally different from anything else we've ever seen before?" That's precisely the kind of false criteria that leads to developers trying all kinds of crazy new shit that fucks up games and franchises that people have loved for such a long time. They spend so much time trying to be different and innovative that they don't end up actually making a great game that's entertaining and fun to play. What's wrong with making a few minor adjustments to a proven formula and then just delivering a new, exciting and very strong experience in a game universe people already love? That's what I think Halo 4's campaign did to near perfection. A game sequel doesn't have to reinvent the wheel or do anything new or revolutionary to be an amazing experience, as far as I'm concerned, but a lot of reviewers seem to always demand that as a prerequisite, which I think is stupid.

You're right on about that, Phaethon. I admit to being happy to some extent about the fact that 343 aren't being heavily praised everywhere for their effort on Halo 4, because they are hopefully even more fired up to make an even better game next time, which is definitely nothing to be upset about :D

It's good to want games to break new ground and be innovative, sure, and reviewers should definitely reward games that do new things and do them well, but I think a lot of very impressive games are unfairly punished or criticized for not somehow doing anything new or innovative. They are punished essentially 'just' for being incredible gaming experiences that more or less stick to a proven formula, as if that can't be enough. For example, I loved Xenoblade Chronicles for doing some of the creative and even very innovative things that it did for the jrpg genre. It's, in my view, a benchmark jrpg in history. It totally nails that new, more westernized mmo approach that some Japanese developers seem to be trying to reach for with their games, but this game finally got it right. It got right what Final Fantasy 12 and every major Final Fantasy game since has completely failed at doing. It nailed that more western approach while at the same time still maintaining that classic feeling of a proper hardcore japanese roleplaying game, in both the overall design of the game and especially in the gameplay department. However, would I personally ever punish Blue Dragon or Lost Odyssey for not seeming as new or innovative, but for simply just being incredibly well executed and more old fashion jrpgs? No way.

So if people believe the games were just weak, I disagree. There are games that stand toe to toe with Halo 4 in terms of sheer quality and fun factor. Xenoblade Chronicles is one of the greatest, most innovative and genuinely genre defining games in a very long time, if not ever (I really believe this). If it were called Final Fantasy and some kind of PS3/360 exclusive or multiplatform title, Square Enix would literally be rolling in the money and the game would be far more mainstream than it is right now. It would have received the majority of the game of the year nods from the game media if it were called Final Fantasy. So, really, it isn't so much that the games were weak, they sure as heck weren't.

It's just that on this board in particular, and with the general tastes of people on this board, Halo 4 just likely had an unfair advantage with the game releases of the last year, but that isn't to say those games were somehow weak, or that Halo 4 isn't deserving of high praise, because there were quite a bit of strong games and Halo 4 is definitely an amazing game also. Mass Effect 3 is a conclusion to one of the greatest videogame trilogies ever made. It totally delivered. The blame, if any, rests with the investment required of last year's games and people on this board maybe generally not playing a more diverse lineup of games, particularly on the Wii side of things. I talk about Xenoblade, but there was also Last Story from Sakaguchi and Mistwalker on the Wii, which I also love, but I just think Xenoblade, Mass Effect 3 and Halo 4 were on another level. Think of all the games released last year. Many of them are clearly more than deserving enough to win GOTY on here every bit as much as I think Halo 4 is, but out of all of those games that are worthy, which one happens to be the easiest pick up and play title of them all? I'd have to say that it's easily Halo 4. Mass Effect 3 is incredible, but more of an investment to get into. Witcher 2? Incredible, but more of a investment to get into. Xenoblade? Incredible, but there is more of an investment to get into that also. Halo has always been a fairly accessible game, but Halo 4's quality combined with that accessibility gave it an edge in a year not with generally weaker games, but in a year with generally more complex, harder to pick up and get into high quality releases.

Much weaker games than Halo 4 have gotten superior metacritic scores or heavy praise on this forum in years past, so that's why I tend to think the lack of high quality releases argument won't do. The highest quality releases of the last year, besides Halo 4, were in less popular genres of games and also required more of an investment to get into and complete than is the case for Halo 4.

Pretty much... Although the first halo will always be very special, just seeing the world and characters for the first time was awesome!! :)

None of the Gears of War games are better than Halo 4. I own them all and have beat them all, except Judgment, I won't be getting that one. They are not in the same league as Halo 4's campaign. You might think otherwise, but obviously we have different opinions on this. Killzone 2 is yet another game nowhere quite as good as Halo 4. I didn't actually buy that one, I borrowed it from a friend, but, again, not even close.

So all metacritic says is what a consensus of various reviewers might be saying, but it's hardly always accurate. I don't think there's heavy Killzone praise on this forum, but there's sure as hell heavy Gears of War praise in recent years. My favorite gears title was the first, and then after that they became more and more generic, not seeming to have much interesting to offer. That said, I don't think it would be unfair to say Halo 4 benefitted largely from more mainstream appeal than other games, but there were a good deal of incredible games worthy of GOTY in 2012, every bit as worthy as I think Halo 4 is. Mass Effect 3, Xenoblade and a number of other games would have received zero complaints from me.

Agree.

Oh, I know they can't judge it solely based on the campaign alone, but then how exactly do games such as Gears and Killzone with notably inferior campaigns and even worse multiplayer somehow still skate by with glowing reviews? The whole metacritic process of passing judgment on a game is flawed as a mechanism to try and tell which games are good to great, to which games are average to terrible. The pretty cutscenes and, in my view, very well handled story aspects were simply a bonus to what was already a pretty damn impressive game in its own right. Pretty cutscenes? The game as you're playing it is amazing enough as it is.

The greatest flaw of the Halo franchise since it hit the 360 was that there were times when places were overly large for no good reason at all. Just large for the sake of being large, which I admit to enjoying when I think it's done correctly, but far too many times than I thought made sense those large levels were to the detriment of the game experience and generally seemed like an easy out from having to do a better job with actual mission design, or doing a better job of handling how the waves of enemies fall into place to make up the battlefield, something I think Halo 4 does quite a bit better, even if that meant going with a more focus driven mission/level design at points in the game. Some of the best missions in the history of Halo are done the way that some of the missions in Halo 4 are largely done. And the corridor shooter complaint is one of the biggest mischaracterizations about Halo 4 out there. Look at that horrible, horrible jungle mission at the start of Halo 3. You can't get more corridor shooter than that, and to make matters worse, you could hardly see a damn thing in that jungle. It was badly designed through and through, that level. What about the mission where you retrieve Cortana in Halo 3 inside that flood infested Covenent capital city? How people can call Halo 4 a corridor shooter with travesties such as that mission in Halo's past I'll never know. How about the mission in Halo 3 where once you complete it, the Arbiter impales the Prophet? Did you see the way how the last parts of that mission was setup, particularly where you had to fight and finish off that golden armored brute backed up by two other brutes? That wasn't exactly the largest of rooms by any stretch of the imagination.

How about the mission in Halo 3, fresh after you ran into Miranda again and then she gave that "to war" order of hers. Do you remember the corridors that you had to fight through in order to force out the Covenant? Or let's look at Halo Reach, remember that mission when you were talking to those two, I think, injured survivors that Jorge was speaking to in their native language? Remember when that Elite came out of nowhere, knocking noble six down? You remember how the rest of that entire mission played out in a series of corridors and enclosed spaces? When you finally got to the last part of that mission, and there was an elite charging at you with an energy sword, do you recall how difficult it was to escape or maneuver in those enclosed spaces if you didn't manage to stop him and force him back in time? Halo is a combination of corridors and open spaces, always has been. Halo 4 has plenty of wide, open space battles that are quite large and to say otherwise isn't accurate. You say corridor shooter, I say great mission planning and even better level design and art direction. There's a reason the pacing in Halo 4 feels so damn good, because you aren't largely wasting your time in places that are just big for no reason where the fighting can get less exciting and bogged down, giving it more of a grindy feel.

The opening level of Halo 4 has the spectacle you're referring to, right before the chief launches that missile and is trying to fight off all those covenant. There's spectacle when the covenant and Prometheans first start going at it on requiem, there's spectacle on that moon base near the Halo when countless Covenant were flooding inside that hangar bay to try and overtake it, there's spectacle in the mammoth mission when that massive Covenant ship comes out of nowhere and I think destroys one of your pelicans backing you up, there's spectacle when you and those other, I think, Spartans head inside the jungle before you get to the LZ and you're fighting off those prometheans with a team of Spartans alongside you. The vehicle missions are pretty high on spectacle, particularly the mantis mission, the second mantis scene on the moon base, I can go on and on. The lack of a scarab mission is irrelevant, seeing as how Halo Reach is a notably better game than Halo 3 was, and there's no scarab mission in there either. You do actually see some scarabs in Reach though, but not like you get to actually do anything to them. You remember that mission in Reach near the end before you get to the orbital gun where the pillar of autumn will be? You see how that area was setup? That was a rather tight area battle as well. I think, be it Bungie or 343, they do Halo a disservice if they don't recognize that Halo actually needs some smaller, more tightly focused levels or else the game will suffer, and every next gen Halo that I've played has had a healthy combination of these kinds of levels in addition to larger levels, and Halo 4 is no different. I just feel they did a better job with level design in Halo 4, personally.

People can say it's all about story and cutscenes for me, but this game was well designed in pretty much every area that it needed to be. It's the most fun I've had with a Halo title. The gameplay feels better, the pacing is better, I actually liked using different weapons more often than not than was the case in previous Halos. Is it perfect? No, the push this, push that missions at times felt repetitive and I said that, but it didn't become as big a pain in the ass as it could have been.

I didn't need to read anymore of what you wrote to know its going to be bullshit. Believe it or not there are people out there who liked those games a lot. Reviewing games is not perfect by any means because people have different tastes and stuff. You just cant see it that way because you love the games so much that you simply don't notice the flaws cuz ur so engaged with the story and characters. Most people didn't get that feeling with halo 4's SP, plus Halo fatigue, and as far as i can tell... shittier than usual multiplayer support, I'm not surprised either of those games have better review averages.

I know we don't entirely agree, but I honestly couldn't agree more. That's 100% the way I feel about Halo 4's campaign, as silly as it may sound. I genuinely feel that way, that this game was made for me :) Literally everything I said I wanted out of Halo 4, or had been saying I wanted since Halo 3, is precisely what they gave me with Halo 4. They clearly took steps in this direction in Halo Reach, and I appreciated Halo reach for that, but I feel this game completed that process. There's only one thing that I asked for that I didn't get, and I fully expect it to appear in the sequels, and that's some sign that the Precursors are coming back. I also always wanted the hit detection to be improved, because I didn't feel that it was where it needed to be, and better hit detection is a big part of the fun factor, because the player has to feel like he's really getting something done, which at times in previous Halo titles was unbearable, wondering if all those damn bullets you were releasing were even doing much.

I had complained that a game like Mass Effect 2 felt more fun to have a shootout in than Halo did a lot of times, and that's largely because of simple things such as improved hit detection, and I thought Halo 4 handled that fairly well. I always wanted to see more of the master chief that I read about in the books, and I felt I got that, too. I wanted the Chief to be made to seem truly superhuman, and not like some average dude that just happened to have a really nice pair of armor. He needed to have a larger than life feel to him to fit with the legend. I thought I got that.

GOOD GOD
Halo 4, getoverit