When the opening sequence in the latest title of a much loved sci-fi franchise features a naked AI character assisting a freshly awoken Chief in escaping a spaceship that’s not only being attacked but ripped apart by explosions, any doubt regarding 343 Industries first steps into the Halo universe are quickly sucked away into deep space.

That’s why hundreds of excited fans queued for hours in the cold this week as part of the launch of Halo 4 during which, London greeted a giant illuminated Promethean glyph symbol that glided over the River Thames. Measuring 50 feet in diameter, weighing 3.2 tonnes and lit by 113,096 LED lights, the glyph was one of the largest objects ever to be flown by helicopter as a lighting art performance. This followed Hollywood director David Fincher’s live-action trailer for the game as well as the live-action digital series Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn starring Anna Popplewell ahead of the game’s release.

So has it been worth the wait and is the hype true?

Set nearly five years after the events in Halo 3, gigantic Master Chief finds himself facing an ancient evil that threatens to annihilate all mankind. Whilst under attack from the grunting old Covenant forces with their familiar weapons and movements, Chief easily blasts his way through and just manages to escape as the metal hull under his feet shreads and is torn into dangerous metal chunks. Zipping through space past ragged debris, there is an exciting yet comforting familiarity guiding Master Chief again.

This doesn’t last long though thanks to a new enemy; the Prometheans. Our initial impression is that they are fiercer, slicker, unpredictable and more intelligent than any alien foe Master Chief has encountered before. They make the Covenant look like concrete statues armed with limp sticks of celery. The result is that Halo 4 perhaps feels strategically harder and more challenging to play. Using defence as an offence, the Prometheans are organised. Crawlers with Boltshot Pistols scurry in droves, aggressively hunting down and flanking Master Chief whilst Knights supress his movements with Light Rifles. Flying Watchers buzz around shielding their team mates and helping them respawn. Running in willy-nilly and blindly blasting away or using old techniques from his days of fighting the Covenant are going to get him nowhere. Played out against a full bodied original score by Neil Davidge of Massive Attack fame, It’s Halo but not as we’ve known it.

With his AI companion Cortana is once again by his side, even within the first few minutes of the tutorial level, we can see something is not quite the same with in the relationship between her and Master Chief as she starts glitching out. Cloned from a human brain and plugged into Chief’s cybernetic armour, Cortana is past her sell by date and in an emotional role reversal, Halo 4 will see Chief be affected by and become responsible for the AI who was always responsible for him.

The multiplayer is addictive and inventive, offering a story-driven, episodic, co-operative adventure called Spartan Ops which aims to blend (8ahem* in our best announcers voice) immersive storytelling, stunning cinematics and action-packed gameplay, delivering an unprecedented serialised experience! Through a weekly series of cinematic episodes, Spartan Ops continues the story beyond the main campaign by introducing new characters, storylines and gameplay missions over a 10-week season, akin to a high-quality, interactive TV show. It’s encouraging players who would normally only stick to the single player campaign to try out a cooperative online experience whilst giving players who only delve into multiplayer, short chunks of episodic story, packed with cliff hangers and plot twists. It’s an interesting idea and should appeal to fans and newcomers to the series alike as working through the episodes with four friends becomes an adventure. The relief we had when we finally felled the final enemy after a tense stand-off in an arid, rocky valley as part of a mission on a massive map was hugely satisfying with liberating freedom to approach it in many different ways. Elsewhere, there is also a War Games multiplayer mode that features classic set-ups like capture the flag, team and deathmatch where we had the most fun by far with the mega mech that is THE MANTIS; a walking metal machine so awesome in fire power and stature that it should always be written in capital letters. BOOM!

Having sold over 46 million copies and clocking up over 5 billion hours of gameplay, Halo 4 is keeping the franchise very much alive, seeming bigger, bolder and better than ever before!

Halo 4 is out now on Xbox360.