Editor’s note: Ryan Smith is a longtime gamer and freelance writer who lives in Raleigh, NC. A graduate of East Carolina University with a degree in business and marketing, he has written in the past for WRAL Tech Wire and GameArgus.com. He currently plays Xbox 360 and PC as well as Nintendo DS. For story ideas, tips and feedback, he can be reached via e-mail (ryannicksmith@gmail.com)

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C  - Halo 4 hit the shelves recently in what has become a routine midnight launch that accompanies the big first person shooter franchises. I went with a friend to pick it up at midnight and we immediately stepped into the campaign, a campaign which we had heard from many publications is top notch and perhaps the best in the series.

Halo 3 was the first game I ever reviewed and the first Halo game I played. I enjoyed it so much I have now played each Halo release from then until now. So I can say at the very least that Halo 4 has not impressed me with its campaign as much as Halo 3 or Halo: Reach. Its campaign is more akin to Halo: ODST in quality.

It is fun, but compared to the scope and drama of the best titles in the franchise, the campaign just doesn’t have that ability to awe. Furthermore, as the story unfolds, it seemed to me it was more of a skeleton or outline than an actual story. There was no meat to it.

The only real quality to the story was that Cortana (the fan beloved Artificial Intelligence that assists hero Master Chief on his missions) and Master Chief have great dialogue together and they obviously care about one another.

Whenever something would start to unfold story-wise, someone would say something cliché and Master Chief would cock his assault rifle and walk off amidst an awkward silence. The dialogue between Cortana and Chief is solid, but that’s it.

The missions were more of what we have been seeing since the early days of Halo, nothing new or exciting, not even the new enemy types. Instead of just the Covenant (a race previously bent on the eradication of humankind) we now also face a race known as the Prometheans, while being mostly unexplained, they lack both mystery and the ability to intimidate. Even playing on Heroic mode, the game was extraordinarily easy despite new enemies with new tricks.

Also Halo 4 was not efficiently optimized for cooperative play during the story mode, as frequently my friend would receive a vehicle, including a massive walking death robot, while I was left with nothing but my thumbs to twiddle in obsolescence.

So although the story mode, at about 10 hours long, was fairly mediocre, the game does shine when you put in the multiplayer disc (which you then must install on your Xbox’s hard drive, hope you have the space).

New to Halo’s multiplayer is the “Spartan Ops” mode, taking a page out of the Call of Duty playbook with its “Spec Ops” multiplayer mode. It is a mode of play in which you and if you wish, other players, take on a story mode-type mission consisting of multiple checkpoints and a 15-20 minute long labyrinth of infantry and/or vehicle battles. Since this mode replaces the awesome firefight mode of ODST and Reach, is it worthy of being its replacement? I’d say yes, it’s nice to have objectives instead of waves of enemies for a co-operative multiplayer mode, it is definitely worth playing.

However does Spartan Ops deliver on the promise of it being “story centric, based around your own individual Spartan?” So far, no it does not. Each episode (they are released weekly as free downloadable content) seems to have an intro cinematic while the rest is fairly mundane objective based gameplay such as “move to rally point, kill enemy, extract.” While not having much in the way of storyline, it’s still a refreshing change from firefight, which had no story at all. Also, it’s free.

Competitive multiplayer, which has long been Halo’s lure, is just as solid in Halo 4 as it ever has been. While its mostly rehashed versions of previous gameplay types such as Team Slayer, Big Team Slayer, S.W.A.T., or “Flood” (previously known as “Infection”), the new weapons that have been introduced in the story make it interesting enough to return to Halo’s online battlefields.

In addition to the new weapons, there are also a lot more rewards for leveling up in the online modes. Each rank up to SR-50, you obtain “Spartan Points” which allow you to purchase upgrades and weapons to customize your different load outs. Once the maximum rank of SR-50 is reached you can then specialize into one of eight specializations, which presents even more customization options.

So ultimately, with a mediocre campaign and fun yet mostly more-of-the-same multiplayer, Halo 4 is a rent-worthy game, unless you really enjoy Halo type multiplayer in which you will find just enough new content to keep you coming back, at least for a while.

My favorite moment so far from the game is in a 4vs4 Slayer match, where I had an armor power of “Promethean vision” which allows you to see through walls. I then hid around corners using the Halo 3 classic “Gravity Hammer” to punish my opponents all match long, crushing them easily.

RATING: 7/10. Decent, not great.