Halo Reach

Introduction

Ready your pitchforks and torches, for I am no “Halo fanboy.” Truth be told, when the original “Halo: Combat Evolved” hit the X-Box what feels like ages ago, I played it and barely managed to reach the end. It felt derivative and clunky and to someone who had put in many hours with “Perfect Dark” and “Half-Life.” When “Halo 2” came out, I gave it a shot and was again, unimpressed, although “Half-Life 2” coming out within weeks might have had something to do with that. My disinterest in Halo became hatred over what I felt was empty hype. Then “Halo 3” arrived and I began to view things in perspective. For console-only gamers, “Halo” and “Halo 2” were revelations, offering a quality of game play usually reserved for PC players. “Halo 3” entertained me, but I still couldn’t buy into the story of Master Chief, but eventually the series would win me out with a bit of stunt casting, employing most of the cast of “Firefly” to voice “Halo 3: ODST.” It was the first game in the series I bought new and through it I developed a greater love for “Halo 3’s” multiplayer. Now comes “Halo: Reach” the last Halo release under Bungie, the creator’s of the franchise and the first to really push the 360 to its limits. Does it live up to the hype?

The Game Itself: Our Reviewer's Take

Coming from someone who still isn’t a “fanboy,” yes, “Reach” delivers the goods and then some. Gone are the one-man super heroics and Master Chief. Instead “Reach” takes you backwards in history, before the fall of the famed titular outpost of Reach, before Master Chief, but no less epic. You are Noble Six, the sixth (naturally) member of Noble Team, an elite squad of UNSC Spartan’s sent on a routine mission, resulting in non-routine consequences. Yes, ladies and gentleman, “Reach” has managed to capture the imposing presence of Master Chief, multiply it by six and mix it with the camaraderie that made “ODST” memorable (although some will disagree on that point). “Reach” takes no steps to neither reinvent the wheel nor bring a new achievement in genre storytelling. Your squad is made up of five broad stereotypes that still manage to be diverse enough for you to remember their names and care when things go down. You, Noble Six however, are a mute Mary Sue, existing solely out of necessity for a player character. Every game needs one and if “Reach” has one flaw, it’s that Noble Six is almost comically mysterious and devoid of personality.

The main campaign of “Reach” will take you across a planet, through multiple industrial complexes, known and otherwise, and even into the reaches of space. After four successful at-bats, Bungie hits it out of the park with “Reach” keeping things running smoothly, further cementing the series as a hallmark in FPS game play. “Reach” comes with a new game engine though and in addition to a slicker, presentation that uses the next-gen hardware more efficiently, some tweaks to game play have been thrown in. In single and multiplayer, players can take advantage of various character abilities including sprint, active camo, a jetpack, and armor lock, the latter being a powerful tool when used in conjunction with human allies in campaign or general deathmatch. These four simple but powerful additions offer subtle new ways to approach game play, most pronounced in multiplayer.

On the “A for effort” side of things, vehicle based sections, a series trademark are back, and when they’re ground based, they work. When things go into the air, the controls still feel sloppy and the entire experience is too gimmicky, breaking the immersive element of the game, often through sheer frustration. The game’s space based combat is 100% tacky, although the brief zero-g player based segment that follows is technically impressive and quite fun.

The elephant lingering in the room is multiplayer and that’s the reason Halo has endured. As a former Call of Duty devotee, coming back to the Halo world fulltime resulted in getting my butt handed to me on a steady basis. Bungie’s stripped down approach to multiplayer game play truly places an emphasis on skill over luck and devotion to unlocking weapons. “Reach” is all about giving players equal set-ups and forcing them to get better to succeed, making relying on a cool gun and exploiting a combo of perks a moot point in “Reach” because they don’t exist in the first place. Everyone has access to the same abilities and while some exploit things like jetpack in maps to reach points on the map that the average player wouldn’t think to, “Reach” is thankfully devoid of cheap action based exploits that sap the game of its fun. What ever your multiplayer tastes may be, “Reach” has them covered from free-for-all to team based matches, to whimsical diversions like Warthog racing and Grifball.

Just as solid is the great design of the initial maps. Each game environment has a unique flavor and different strategies to employ. Personal preference will inevitably result in some maps held in higher regard than others, but in reality, there’s not really a true stinker in the lot. If standard multiplayer isn’t always your bag, “Reach” offers online co-op campaign as well as the return of Firefight, an up to four player team mode where you fight of various waves of Covenant NPCs. Add to all that, full customization options down to weapon drops via player matches, daily and weekly challenges (giving players in-game credits to visually customize their appearance), ever evolving multiplayer play lists and Forge and the ready for wild custom maps and new game types, and short of hating FPS in general, it’s tough to not find something to like about “Reach’s” multiplayer.

“Halo: Reach” probably won’t go down in history as the best story in the series, despite the change in pace story wise. The roughly 10 hour campaign slowly builds up steam for a final act that stops short of Michael Bay levels of excess, employing a few cheap story ploys to have you hooked until the credits roll. “Reach” is very accessible to new players and that is a huge plus, as the first three games in the series assumed players had been through the previous entry. Those coming in cold will likely find the game more gripping than seasoned veterans, who are enticed with a few carrots in the form of “future” references and action set pieces. As a package though, “Reach’s” multiplayer is a masterpiece and almost worth full price on it’s own, so viewing the story as a bonus, an A-level bonus, makes the must own status of Bungie’s final Halo entry the least shocking recommendation in franchise history.