Halo 4 hands-on preview - Telegraph As someone yet to be persuaded of the virtues of flying, scuttling or (particularly) teleporting enemies in any FPS, I found watching the Knights blink in and out of existence and the Watchers buzz coyly to cover at each sprinkling of gunfire a pretty fiddly exercise. But one man's fiddly is another man's tactical, and 343 have determinedly constructed the levels on show to take full advantage of the fast-paced, multi-level, sporadic combat opportunities that such mechanics provide. Since in Halo lore the Forerunners you're fighting are the race that subjugated the galaxy back in deep time and kicked a space-age humanity back to the Stone Age, we must assume that it was all this teleporting, scuttling and hover-dodging that brought a universe to its knees. The combat is accordingly tougher, posing a stout challenge on normal difficulty even if you've played the previous games. The new weapons, all Forerunner technology, exhibit a few new traits and interesting secondary modes. One long rifle fires three shots from the hip and one more accurate blast in sniper mode; another is a surprisingly effective pistol with a lethal charging shot. A third is a shotgun with bullets that ricochet off walls, and there's a new variety of grenade that sets up a gently-expanding sphere of doom to disintegrate slow enemies caught within its reach. All this is a long way from the blast-happy murder-anarchy of something like Borderlands 2, but the new weapons adapt surprisingly well to that old Halo flow, as you slide and leap across the battlefield, swapping between weapons for short- and long-range targets, scavenging grenades and vehicles and generally feeling like the nine-foot-tall green-enamelled bionic ubermensch you're supposed to be. Slight elaborations on the formula betray the influence of the other billion-selling franchises that have sprung up like mushrooms since the Chief took his big sleep -- one quicktime event sees you claw your way up a yawning access shaft dodging debris, a scene with more than a sniff of Call of Duty or Uncharted about it -- but very little detracts from the impression that, in a largely positive way, this is more of the same. 343 are staying tight-lipped about the fourth instalment's story, and guests at the previews were sternly counselled against revealing even the (silly) name of the main antagonist ahead of release. There are some fairly broad hints, though, that in addition to the usual madman-and-superweapon plot motor, it's the relationship between the Chief and Cortana that provides the big focus this time round. Too little of the campaign was on show to make any grounded judgment, but, bar some residual unease at the thought of yet another vulnerable-seminude-chick-in-peril story after the sinister crop at this year's E3, this idea has distinct promise. The essential rapport between Halo's two main characters has always been distinctly more fascinating than the roster of comedy aliens, tentacular beasties and swollen-headed zombies ranged against them, and it would be good to see some serious character writing thrown at last in the direction of the link between the silent, ironclad exterminator and the flickering hyperintelligent blue angel who sometimes climbs inside his head. 343 promise that co-operative play will be amply catered for in Halo 4 via a new mode called Spartan Ops, which releases in weekly instalments, each accompanied by a CG webisode that lays out the backstory. The framing narrative for this concerns the Infinity, a giant Earth battleship lured to the planet Requiem in pursuit of the Chief's final transmissions. As fate would have it, Infinity is also a vast battlestar stuffed to the gills with Spartan-class supersoldiers, one of which you are encouraged to adopt for your own and customise with a variety of unlocks, ornaments and death-dealing technology. 343 weren't showing the episodes yet (apparently all the character models were still awaiting the addition of hair) but they promise a range of so-called 'watercooler moment' talking-points as the weekly missions roll out. The two missions unveiled at the preview, however, were reasonably standard military-blastathon stuff -- proceed to objective, destroy objective, evacuate -- but ran with the kind of suspicious smoothness, even with each screen jammed with vehicles, explosions and fleeing aliens, that had me checking under the monitor to make sure it was really running on the seven-year-old Xbox. It was. The multiplayer modes are where it's at for a vocal chunk of Halo addicts, many of whom will forgive any amount of campaign-level guff as long as the traditional bouquet of versus and team-based modes remains. As well as old favourites such as Slayer and a viciously kinetic incarnation of Capture the Flag, Halo 4's big reveal is a new mode called Dominion, which sees two teams rushing to capture and hold three bases across a split-level map. The longer a team holds a base, the better its defences become -- it sprouts turrets, shields and eventually spawns vehicles -- and the stakes are raised even higher by a ticking-clock endgame that sees one team trying to hunt down and exterminate the stragglers on the other before the balance tips back again. Dominion is hectic, tactical and a glorious addition to play, and the game mechanics remain endearingly open to improvisation and experiment: the highlight of my afternoon's multiplayer was flying a stolen Banshee over the top of an enemy base, leaping from the cockpit and plummeting through flak and an open skylight to seize victorious control. Graphically, as well, this new instalment can hold its head high. It looks better than any Halo game to date, running at speeds and resolutions that are more reminiscent of a PC showcase than of this increasingly limited-looking console generation. The franchise and its multiplayer have always been good at tactility and immersion, and bar slightly floatier vehicle control than I remember, the developers succeed admirably in giving the weapons and interactions here the requisite sonic and visual heft. Of course, these are early and partial impressions, and we'll have to wait until November 6 to see whether 343 truly manage to mix the best of the franchise's past with sufficient innovation to carry it through another trilogy -- or even, as studio head Bonnie Ross adventurously suggests, through the next two decades. On this solid evidence, though, fans of the series have little to worry about, and even newcomers may want to tune in as videogames" most famous supersoldier girds his robo-loins once more for battle.