This will be a single player review since i have not dabled in MP yet. There will be some spoilers mostly the beginning.
The Chief is back and more bad ass then ever, the game opens with where you left him on the "dawn". But everything is not honkey dory, the Covenant is on the ship and they are not your friends anymore so be prepared to figth! The fight leeds you outside where you are faced with a Forerunner planet which eventually drags you and the covenant in with a "Gravity Well". From there Halo 4 takes you on a journey deeper and deeper into the world and out in the universe trying to stop an ancient evil you unleash. An evil that wishes to destroy humanity entirely, and during this whole adventure your dearest friend is dying.
I really liked the story, it had some twists and turns nothing really jawdropping but it was epic and it had some heart. It is a Halo game through and through, 343 really preserved the Halo feel.
The shooting mechanics are halo and i think that is a good thing, every weapon has it strong suits and its weaknesses. There are alot af new weapons, both forerunner and human and all the classics are there as well. The different guns are valid all the way though the game its not like you finally get forerunner weapons and now you regular assultrifle is useless. I played the game on heroic and sometimes the weapons felt a little underpowered but that was probably because i failed at hitting the right spots on the enemyes, because when you do some enemyes kan be one shot'ed. But at least the heroic difficulty was hard but never so hard i felt i had no chance of success. I only broke 1 controller! just kidding i broke 2...
There are also several vehicle scenes including warthog, scorpion and even a broadsword! I really liked the scene where you fly the broadsword, its a little remenicent of the star wars x-wing trench scene where you are infiltrating the enemy base. It was really well made and fun to play!
The graphics where beautifull i dont think i ever saw a low res texture. There was a lot of forerunner architecture and it was very pretty. The new alien designs were also good but i would have liked some more of them because you end up fighting the same 3 kinds alot, in addition to the same covenant you have fought in the past 6 halo games. The game ran very smooth with no hang-ups or crashes, i did run into a sitiuation were the game checkpointed right before i died and the game looped like this 5 times maybe before it loaded the save previous to it and all was well.
Sound was good, nice gun sound, nice vehicular sound and nice music. The music was not something i really fell for but it did the job and in some cases it was both epic and beautifull.
All in all i liked the game and i am looking forward to playing the spartan ops mission. So in conclusion if you like Halo buy this game.