I'm the same way. I'm not a fan of the competitive multiplayer, but the campaigns can get pretty darn epic at times. And they're tons of fun in co-op.
Also, I have always and will always love driving the vehicles in Halo games. Loved them since the very first time I got in warthog on Halo: CE and spent hours trying to ramp it off cliffs and run over my fellow marine buddies. Who doesn't love filling up a warthog with marines then driving it over a cliff and sticking it with grenades? :evil:
When I get sick of deathmatch or capture the territories modes in FPS games, which happens a lot (almost always at the back of my mind), I crave co-op. And Halo 4 has a godly co-op!
Co-op campaign worked pretty well, there were plenty of enemies, ammo, challenge, and all the cutscenes play (w/ option to skip). It's pretty much the same formula as in past Halo Campaign co-op methods, although there are a few QuickTime events that I realized I could sit back and let the lobby host do them. You still view them from first-person perspective, so it's pretty seamless.
I also played the first spartan ops mission before passing out... I'd say it's more like Mass Effect 3's multiplayer with how they give you mission objectives, but there is also cutscenes to give the missions context. I won't spoil anything, but suffice to say VERY fun!
One thing I will say about Campaign... AI driving still sucks, particularly banshee pilots, I'm kinda dismayed how many times I've seen an enemy giving me a pretty good challenge, but then I turn and there's another banshee stuck flying at a pylon. Some of the new promethian weapons are neat, but they mostly don't alter the way you play... Eg humans have the assault rifle (like an M4), Covenant have the Storm rifle (plasma version of AR, trades effectiveness against shields for less against unshielded + less accuracy), and the Promethian Suppressor... it's basically the smg from past halo games with large clip size and massive bloom. No big deal.
Audio
Audio is delicious, but DAMN some sounds are loud! Warthog effectively drowns out any other sounds. BUT the guns all sound mean, meaty, and hefty, very satisfying, and I am happy to say that directionality is quite good while on foot.
The Battle Rifle sounds and functions a lot like the BR from the Halo2 campaign trailer, IMO more satisfying than what that game eventually went with, plasma weapons burn through the air instead of "pew pew," and the DMR and Sniper sound particularly dangerous
Someone mentioned worry about the music being tied to the sound effects... well, from level 5 or 6 that I'm on, so far music has been cued by your character reaching a certain area (or view), though it does calm down if you hang out in an area after the fighting finishes. Side comment away from music though, the game does a good job of making you want to keep going. The music itself seems to have a touch of Mass Effect 2 style... Maybe 3, but I haven't played that besides the fun beta/demo yet. The music is good, at times quite good, but it doesn't have that unique, believable sci-fi feeling that the strangely fitting Gregorian Chants had in previous games, or the jazz-y solemn tunes I loved in the rainy ODST game.
As I said above, positional sounds are good, superior to MW3 even in singleplayer. The more I get used to virtual surround, the more I can sense the limitations of 5.1 surround channels, but never the less Halo 4 makes good use of surround sound. The "bolts" from Covenant weapons can nearly be traced back through the flight path as they wiz by, soundstage distance is processed by the game (occlusion is a bit less pronounced than Halo 3, but... still good), and you can easily be the sneaky one as NPC enemies chatter around the corner. I'm going to hold off on any comparative statements about how good positional cues are in competitive multiplayer until I actually play it, and play it for a while.
One thing that bugs me, and I would try to gather Head-fi'ers to petition with me if I could, is that there are no in-game volume adjustments. I like turning down the sound effects a bit in single-player so I can hear music and vocals better, but even a basic "master game volume" slider is a huge boon for people who don't have a Mixamp to balance chat and game audio... In CoD, I turn up the volume on my amp (Recon3D, FiiO amp, or receiver) so that the chat is louder, and turn down the game volume to comfortable levels. Xbox Live chat volume is annoyingly weak, IMO.
Chicolom,
Plenty of fun driving sequences
road kill is fun, though occasionally I get an urge to recreate the "Warthog Jumping" videos by Randall Glass :evil: