The highly anticipated Halo 4 was released about a month ago, on November 6th (developed by 343 Industries), and has received favorable reviews and a large amount of praise from critics and gamers alike. While you can be sure that millions of players have been populating the highly successful multiplayer portion of the game, and will continue to do so for quite some time, there is still one major issue with Halo 4 that has been fatal to a great amount of gamers’ experience with the title.

This may come as a surprise to many of you, but there are actually a large number of paying customers who have been completely unable to play Halo 4’s primary campaign mode. No, you didn’t hear me wrong, for many of us, the main focal point of Halo 4 simply does not work.

Calling this a disappointment is an understatement, but before I go on to explain why this is completely unacceptable, allow me to explain in detail, exactly what the issue is.

So, you arrive home with your brand new copy of this highly anticipated title, the newest installment to one of gaming's most successful franchises. You are more than ready to pop it into your Xbox 360, and are prepared for what is sure to be a breathtaking experience.

The game loads up just as it should and the title screen follows, just as you would expect it to. Now it's ime to jump into the campaign and get things moving.

You are treated to a beautifully rendered opening cutscene; so far so good. The moment this cutscene reaches its end, is where things begin to fall apart.

At this point, you would expect the game to drop you into its starting level -- instead, it directs you back to the title screen. A little odd, but nothing that the usual gamer can’t manage.

So you head on back to the campaign menu, and decide to manually select the first level, entitled Dawn. After confirming: rally point alpha, the level begins its usual loading process. All of the sudden, to much suprise, the loading process stops short and the game gives us this fateful error message: “Players failed to load content. Party members may be missing the appropriate DLC”. 

The error message might make perfect sense at a first glance, but in reality, it makes little to no sense at all considering the situation.

How is that? Well, because most -- if not all players experiencing this error are playing the single player campaign...alone. This requires no downloadable content, being the central game mode, and it is not required (though it is an option) that players play this mode within a party.

So with that theory being promptly debunked, what exactly is it that has been causing Halo 4 to lock out so many players from experiencing its main story mode? There are multiple theories.

Internet and server issues:

One common theory as to why so many of us have been unable to access the campaign of Halo 4 is that our internet may be experiencing errors with its wireless router. Players have documented that resetting their wireless router and/or resetting their console’s receiver has successfully solved this issue for them.

Others claim that it is an error on 343 Industries’ part, being that their servers for the game may be experiencing technical difficulties.

While these methods have proved to be efficient for some, the problem still persists for others.

For many of Halo 4's players, resetting their internet hardware has done nothing to mend the issue, and even those without internet access to their Xbox 360’s have claimed to experience this as well.

As for the 343 server theory, it’s possible, but the company has yet to follow up with a statement. Some would argue that this is irrelevant, that a game should not have to connect to the internet for its single player mode. Despite these opinions, even single player games connect to the internet in this generation of gaming, therefore internal server errors are able to effect players on all sides of the spectrum.

Corrupted data:

Another theory toward what is keeping gamers from accessing Halo 4's campaign involves hard drive and data errors, as well as possible issues with the title's recent content patch.

When discussing the error amongst each other, players have suggested that maybe their save game data has been corrupted. A solution to this problem would involve erasing the data via the system memory menu of their Xbox 360 and saving a fresh batch of data upon their next time loading the game. Others have recommended going as far as to unplug the hard drive form the console and then placing it back.

However, these solutions have proven to be unsatisfactory for many, as the game still refuses to let them access the campaign mode.

Some have suggested that the title’s recent content patch may be the culprit -- that the patch itself may be corrupt and causing these errors within the game’s data. We cannot be too sure, unfortunately, as 343 Industries has yet to address the issue.

Disc installation:

As you may already know, Halo 4 is packaged with a second disc of content that is required to be installed onto your Xbox 360.

This disc contains the multiplayer portion of the game, and some had initially believed that installing it would be a possible solution to the campaign error. To many players' dismay, this theory was quickly proven false. 

Once this second disc had finished its installation proccess, players were directed to insert the main disc into their consoles. Upon doing so, the errors persisted just as they had before.

Some have claimed that installing both discs of Halo 4 to their hard drive would solve the campaign error, but others go on to say that the method had done nothing for them.

Aside from the method not working, Halo 4 requires a whopping 8 gigabytes of memory and hard drive space in order to install, much more than many gamers have to spare at this point.

Specific Xbox 360 model compatibility:

It’s unclear exactly how this theory would have originated, but many players believe that Halo 4 is only compatible with newer models of the Xbox 360.

It may come from the fact that some of these players recount being able to play the game on a friend's console, with that particular console being a newer model. However, the results have been inconsistent, as others claim to experience the error on their Xbox 360, with theirs also being of a newer model.

As much as this particular theory has been spread, it would be a bit difficult to believe that a title would be developed exclusively under the compatibility of newer models of a console.

A faulty disc:

The fact that none of the theories mentioned above have lead to any conclusive results has lead many players to conclude that Halo 4 may have been released with a batch of faultily discs, and that a paying customer may be unable to play the title’s campaign mode strictly due to chance or bad luck.

This may seem a little far out to some, but players have claimed that upon exchanging their disc for a new one at various retail stores, the replacement disc had prevailed, finally allowing them to access Halo 4’s campaign mode. But alas, in turn, other players have debunked this theory, stating that multiple replacement discs have generated no such success.

It would be difficult to put into words exactly how ludicruos it would be for developers to release a game with only a certain percentage of the discs being able to work properly, and this accusation is admittedly an unfair one, as no confirmation of any sort has been issued.

Halo 4 is undoubtedly a fun and satisfying game, but the fact that so many players are unable to play it is simply unacceptable. This may come off as harsh, but consider this:

Isn’t it true that 99% of games released every year are in fact able to run their central game mode, if not the entire game from their first day out?

While Halo 4 has indeed pulled through for what appears to be a little over half of its customers -- who had gladly paid their $60 up front -- there has been no solution so far for those of us who are missing out; completely unable to play this game from aside from the main menu.

It goes without saying, this is a gruelingly frustrating debacle, and 343 Industries has yet to respond with a statement of their own. In this generation of video games -- in this day and age -- many would agree that the fact a video game does not work to its full extent upon release is completely unacceptable. In fact, this has been a rising issue in the video games indusrty as of recent years: games being released in a glitch-riddled, partially unfinished state.

Sure, as gamers, we have to expect occasional errors of all shapes and sizes, but the majority of games, under the majority of developers have almost never had to face an issue as game-breaking as the one keeping players from playing the campaign of Halo 4 -- a highly anticipated major release.