Like I said, I think the graphics honestly weren't all that spectacular, but I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that it's running on hardware that is seven years old. Even so, I expect some pretty high performance out of an Xbox 360 game that suddenly requires me to install an entire separate disk onto my HDD, so it needs to be judged by a different standard than Halo 3, ODST, or Reach. I think in contrast, Reach had some much lovelier particle effects that made rock walls explode with sparks and shards of granite when fired at or made fuel rod cannons glitter brilliantly. And in Halo 3 we had a nice flashlight to illuminate our environments. Halo 4 had some nice character face models and some very pretty pre-rendered cutscenes, but I was kind of underwhelmed by the graphics on this one in general. And having a hard time seeing plasma grenades was a real disappointment, especially considering how pretty and glowing they were in previous games all the way back to Halo 2.