Halo 4 vs Black Ops II

[Prussian Imperial Guard]

Not even a contest. In terms of objective quality, Halo is lightyears ahead of the entire CoD franchise (not saying much, though, since most games are, even if they're only of mediocre quality).

Consider that, from an objective standpoint, CoD has always had poor writing, average acting, practically no originality, and unrewarding gameplay. The main reason that CoD is so popular today is the use of a principle known as Operant Conditioning. It isn't the only game that uses this idea, but it is the most famous of said games. In effect, once one is broken of the influence that OC has, they are able to spot all of the flaw in the game, such as the blatant ripping off of several ideas from movies and games, nonsensical (a polite replacement of the word I generally use) plot holes (such as the need to jump from one character to the next to avoid explaining how or why the character you just played as got from the place you left them at to the place they're in when you pick up as them again (for example, in World at War, when the Germans flood the subway, and there are no exits nearby, and the player very clearly sees the tidal wave of water that comes crashing through, which there is no way to escape from alive, you skip to playing as the American character and when you come back the Russian one is being dragged out of the flooded subway as though there were any excuse for him to be alive after all that), lazy animations and doll mechanics, poor modeling, worse graphics (though I will relent that graphics are a minor detail in my book, even if I do tend to frown upon them being bad in a game that had an astronomical budget for other things that were also poorly done) almost no attention to detail, poor research and often heavy handed, if not outright terrible, voice acting.

Halo, on the other hand, is almost the polar opposite of the CoD series. While there are flaws, as no game is perfect, most, if not all, are minor and easily overlooked (depending on the entry). The biggest flaw in Halo series is that a good chunk of its depth is contained in the novels, though this is a non-issue for avid readers. Some flaws persist here and there, such as my belief that the Assault Rifle should be shot-for-shot more powerful that the Magnum (which isn't, since it's a .45), as it fires rifle rounds, not pistol rounds (I also believe that the guns should all have proper names (several, such as the Assault Rifle, do, but they are only called by name in the books), or that Jun's fate really needs to be revealed, or the huge divergence from the Fall of Reach that some details of Halo: Reach made. I refrain from calling any game great, as that gets thrown around so often that it has little meaning anymore, but it is a solid series that was established on good quality which survived the heavy scrutiny I put every game through. While the graphics are almost never worthy of being called the best, they are always above average, and even those of Halo 3 are at least satisfactory today (though, again, this is a minor factor).

The strengths of the Halo series and the weaknesses of the CoD series are the same, that being detail. Halo was a solid story to explore in depth through novels, but trying the same with CoD would fail miserably. Why? Halo has a plausibility about it that stems from its strong basis in actual science, which is reinforced by the fact that several of the game's iconic weapons and vehicles actually work when replicated in real life, and which serves to give it an air of possibility which doesn't strain your suspension of disbelief. On the other hand, CoD's developers can't even be bothered to do basic research to make sure they even call things what they are (i.e. Calling the German army the Wehrmacht, or almost never correctly naming guns) let alone put in the detail to make sure that just about anything you inspect very closely has fine working parts that making it look like more than a poorly rendered object with a preset function slapped onto it a la GMod.