It's certainly worth mentioning at this point that besides the first game Halo: Combat Evolved, I have avidly despised everything Halo. Halo: Combat Evolved introduced an amazing FPS experience, an interesting (if a bit recycled) story, and was essentially the beginning of the multiplayer FPS craze. But then came Halo 2 and 3. I cannot comment on ODST as I have never played it, but I have played 2 and 3 in their entirety. And it was almost as disappointing playing them as it was when you asked for Legos but your parents gave you mega blocks instead, a real soul crushing kind of disappointment. Where Halo 2 didn't do that much wrong, it also didn't do a whole lot right. It just fell into instant mediocrity, yet because it was the follow up the much loved Halo: Combat Evolved everyone went absolutely bat-shit for it anyways. So with the rabid fanboys clinging to hopes of greatness, very much like a dog clinging to the bumper of a car which he now wishes he had never caught in the first place (these two are of similar intelligence as well) no one wanted to admit that 2 was nothing special. But that's all it was, far from greatness, but just barely managing to keep itself from falling into the black void where they keep all those old E.T. games.
And then came 3. 3 wasn't just a case of "meh this is nothing special but it's annoying that it's so hyped", 3 was one of the worst games I have ever played. I cannot even fathom how people sat down and played this game and then said such things as "greatest game ever made" or "this game is better than the sex I'll never have with the girlfriend that shares the same qualities as the sex!". This game is a truly broken piece of garbage. Playing it is not altogether dissimilar to shoving a toothpick underneath your toenail and kicking a concrete wall, hard.
Its graphics were garbage, both technically and artistically, they would barely have been passable on a last generation game. The gunplay was disjointed and inconsistent. Sometimes it would take just a couple bullets to the face from a pistol to kill an enemy, and then later, on the exact same enemy type, it could take 5 clips just to slow it down. None of the guns even felt powerful. If I fired an assault rifle I got the impression that I wasn't shooting bullets but pure concentrated love and caring at my enemies, and if I fired a rocket launcher, the enemy would have to be at least 50% slower than the common brown sloth, and also dead, in order to not get out of the way in time.
And this all brings us to the final nail in the coffin of Halo 3, which I can only hope has spikes on the inside, the story, or lack thereof as it were. I played through the entire game, and only once or twice did I really get why I was doing what I was doing, this isn't because I wasn't paying attention or because I didn't understand the assuredly Shakespearean writing, it's because no one ever actually says whats going on. There was something about Africa and a Covenant teleporter and the flood coming back and I honestly don't know any more detail than that, likely because there WAS no more detail than that. Don't get me wrong, games without a coherent story can be pretty fun, I loved Gears of War and I don't think it's going to be winning any awards for it's plot any time soon.
But the problem is that if you don't have a solid story, you need some damn good game-play, and Halo 3 just didn't even come close to delivering in that regard. Now I'm sure that as soon as the fan boys see this part they aren't even going to read the rest of the review and will instead pelt the comments section with such intelligent insults as "y dnt u try and taek meh i culd reck u wit mah battle riful" and "hurr halo nevar dun mi roung nd u are stoopid 4 nt lieking it", and possibly the occasional "screw you man I'm gonna go have tearful angry sex with my right hand". But for those of you who hated it, or even those of you who liked it but choose not to be idiots about it, please read on.
So, now that it's just us, I'm going to say right off the bat that Halo Reach is a great game. Not perfect, but truly great. For me it redeemed a series that had been far from glory ever since its second release. Reach is like Bungie's swan song. (WARNING HERE THAR BE SPOILERS) As most of you know Halo Reach follows a team of 6 Spartans called Noble Squad, who are playing their part in a defense effort, as the covenant invade the earth-like planet of Reach. This all takes place earlier on the time-line than the other halo games and to those who have played, and paid attention to, the Halo series thus far you already know that Reach is fucked beyond all belief. But this knowledge comes with the added benefit of giving Reach a sense of urgency and a truly impressive atmosphere. You really feel that you are fighting a hopeless battle that has already been lost. And to make matters worse (EXTREME F*****G SPOILER ALERT) your squad dies off one by one throughout the course of the game, and the kicker here is that sometimes these deaths come with little to no fanfare. It's a bit of a shocker when everything seems to be going alright and you've got a few seconds to catch your breath, and then a sniper round comes out of nowhere and punches a hole clean through a squad mates head. Ultimately the game culminates in an epic race against time in which you must deliver an AI (Cortana) to the Pillar of Autumn (the ship on which Master Chief is catching some Z's). I won't give away the specifics of what happens, most of you already know by playing it yourself, or simply assume because you know that things didn't go so well for Reach in general.
The Breakdown
Graphics: While Halo: Reach isn't overly impressive from a technical standpoint (it's still damn good just nothing mind blowing), it is absolutely stunning from an artistic perspective. One scene in particular in which you fall from space just before the ship you were on explodes is stunning, especially when you wake up planet-side and see the aftermath of the explosion.
There is also some truly impressive animation work here. A grunt with a plasma grenade on his face will flail his arms wildly in a panic and run in circles until detonation. There's lot's of stuff like that but possibly my favorite feature is the executions. Approaching an enemy from behind and holding down the melee attack button will cause your Noble to perform an awesome "assassination" (the camera zooms out to a 3rd person view so you can see the full glory).
The last graphics related thing I'd like to mention here is the extent to which you can customize your Spartan. Normally you would think "who cares, this is an FPS I'm never going to see my characters body anyways" but in this case you actually do, not only can you look down and actually see your body, as opposed to just being a floating pair of arms with a gun, you also see your character as you have customized him in the cut-scenes. These features are well implemented and a lot of fun to just toy around with, but there is one problem which I will mention later.
Gameplay/controls: Everything is solid here, the controls are easy to master and everything works the way you would think it should. The problem with hit detection present in Halo 3 (read: having to shoot one grunt 3 times to kill it and then the next grunt takes 40 for no reason) is no longer present here. Armor add-ons such as armor lock and jump packs all function perfectly, I really don't have any complaints to make about the way Reach handles.
Multiplayer Features: I cannot actually give too comprehensive of an opinion here because I tend to stay away from the multiplayer sections of these types of games as they are typically jammed to the brim with the aforementioned fan boys. And it's especially noticeable here because, it is quite sad to say, the general population of the Halo online community is composed of fanboys who have roughly the cognitive abilities of a rather small potato. I'm all for healthy competition, but if you're looking for some good-natured fun, just play this one with your friends. Another problem here is in the coop sections of the game. In talks leading up to the release of the game executives at Bungie had stated that because they were putting such a focus on customization, they were going to be making the coop work such that both players characters (or 4 players as that is the maximum for coop I believe) could see their customized spartan in cut-scenes. But this was most certainly not the case, and at some times this was just downright ridiculous. For one example, there is a scene in which Noble 6 finds himself alone in some sort of troop transport. If you play coop the other player does not exist in this scene, it's weird and leaves the other player feeling disconnected from the story. I don't know what happened to this idea, it's likely somewhere on the cutting room floor crying to itself and feeling generally left out, much like my coop partner did when he realized that his character would not be featured at any point in the game.
Overall: All in all, like I said before, Halo Reach is the swan song of Bungie's Halo franchise, even if you didn't like the previous games there is a very real chance that you will fall in love with this one as I did. It's great to play with friends, its story is constantly engaging and exciting, and it has more than enough content to make it worth your while.
My Rating: 8.7
All credit for Halo Reach goes to Bungie
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