With Covenant pushing up the intergalactic daises, you'd be forgiven for thinking any action in Halo 4 comprised the human race kicking back on a hammock while sprinklers spatter the garden and children gambol about playing with hoops and and birdy water whistles.

While that does sound like cracking japes, the truth is even better: Something else is out there, and even your sternest of angry faces won't be enough to stop it.

Yup, Master Chief and his jabbering, pert, spiller of information Cortana are not quite done with saving our skinny buttocks, and although developers Bungie are no longer piloting this delicious series, their successors have picked up the ball and kicked it square into the face of gaming joy... if you don't mind a bucketload of what you got from previous Halos.

The story, script and sprawling vistas are all super-neato, thanks very much, but there's nothing here that really swerves from the Halo norm.

It is to the story's credit that the urge to finish the thing is high, but as the start of the new trilogyI expected more - Phoenecian Nazi cheese lasers in a marshmallow rowboat... something new... anything.

Ah well, it's still pretty good though.