Premise
This is a first person shooter and a Halo game, so it’s pretty easy to follow: you’re a bad ass super soldier defending mankind from an alien invasion, you start at one destination, travel to other destinations in a variety of fashions, wipe out every alien in your way, rinse, repeat. It’s simple, it’s nothing ground breaking or new, but it doesn’t need to be because the Halo universe has become so beloved by its fans that it doesn’t need to try something completely different.
Story
The player is put in the boots of a Spartan III class super soldier and has been assigned to the human colony planet, Reach. You take the place of a fallen Spartan in a squad known as Noble Team. In previous Halo games, you played as the lone, solo Spartan, but here on Reach there is a whole squad of Spartans, and you better believe that spells a lot of headaches for the aliens who are determined to turn Reach into nothing but a lifeless, smouldering orb of glass.
The game takes place at the end of the Halo novel, The Fall of Reach. Humanity has lost the planet to the aliens, but are now trying to take it back, or at least save the last few humans that are scattered about before the aliens are done with the planet. Essentially the rundown goes like this: Reach was a vital human colony that made contact with the alien collective known as The Covenant, a multi-raced group of aliens who are gathered under the same religious beliefs. The Covenant believes mankind to be heretics and declare a sort of holy war against them, needless to say, mankind was not prepared for this invasion, and Reach was lost; from there on I’m sure you can put the rest together.
Graphics
First thing that needs to get out of the way: this game is gorgeous. The graphics engine for Halo has ben completely reworked and it looks amazing, I would even go as far to say that it could give the Unreal engine a run for its money.
Characters all look lifelike and real, while the scenery, whether it be lush, barren, or war-torn, are all captivating; a lot of work was put in to making this the most beautiful Halo game yet, and it shows. During night missions I was frequently clicking my night vision on and off to stop and enjoy the beauty of this immense world even in the darkness of night.
Cutscenes are mostly in game graphics, which speaks for the impressive volume of the game’s graphics if they’re worthy of being the cinematic portions as well; mind you I have only gotten three missions in to the story so there very well could be enhanced graphics cutscenes, but as of yet I’ve seen none and frankly, they’re not required because the game already looks great.
Gameplay
Anyone familiar with the previous Halo games will be familiar with how the game handles; the initial button configuration is different from previous Halo titles, but messing with your settings for about 15 seconds will fix that; even with the changes, the learning curve isn’t very steep but the game could have used a brief tutorial at the start of the game for new players.
Controls are very responsive and smooth, there are no delays on directions or button commands and it’s very easy to become immersed in the action.
Halo Reach provides one of the better challenges to date for the franchise, in my opinion. The aliens still act in the ways that you would expect them to: grunts run when they’re overwhelmed, elites will stand and fight to the bitter end and jackals will run from cover to cover and take potshots where they can. The enemy AI acts in a very squad-based mentality, this can be beneficial to the challenge as the alien invaders now deploy tactics and maneuvers instead of running headlong into gunfire; but they do also act as you would expect if you’ve played a previous Halo game, where if you take down the commanding elite soldier, the grunts will throw themselves into disarray and try to hightail it out of there. Do not assume the grunts are not a threat though, every enemy type is a threat in a different way now and can end your game if you’re not careful; several times I fell victim to a jackal blindsiding me while I battled with an elite, or a grunt sticking a grenade on my back while I’m preoccupied with a pair of hunters; death in this game now can come from more than just elites and hunters, you have been warned, tread carefully.
Sound
Martin O’Donnell is back to pen the score of Halo, and the music is what you would expect. Sweeping, epic orchestrals fully envelope the moods and settings of Reach. The triumphant, heroic anthems will leave the player feeling like a demigod, while the melancholy suites of loss and despair at times will cause your arm hairs to stand on end; the music captures every emotion brilliantly.
The voice acting is also standard fare for Halo. A cast of well knowns have signed on to provide their vocal talents to this game, and though some of the dialogue at times can be cheesie, and some of the unimportant, one line characters could do better, the voice acting is still a big improvement on past Halo games; because let’s face it, no one can honestly say Master Chief had any charisma other than being a certified bad ass, so for the main characters to have more depth through their dialogue was a welcome addition.
Online
The single player campaign is all well and good; personally I love it as it’s a healthy challenge and the missions usually take an hour to get through and that’s when you don’t go off the beaten path and explore; but everyone who knows Halo knows that online multiplayer is what will keep this game thriving.
The usual beloved game types are back, Slayer, Capture the Flag etc etc as well as the highly successful Firefight mode from Halo ODST and even Race mode from the first Halo has been brought back, throw in the fact that there are some new game modes for online play and Halo Reach can boldly boast that it will have one of the busiest and most multiplatformed online communities to date on any online console title.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and that was Bungie’s outlook on Reach’s online; they fixed some minor issues that players hated about Halo 2 and 3, but they did not tamper with the meat and potatoes of the online features that have become so beloved by gamers around the world.
As a guy who loves to create and customize things, Halo Reach caters to these kinds of people very well. The new map making editor, titled Forge, is immense, very powerful, and, most importantly, easy to use. In minutes I was snapping pieces together on a custom map and was having a blast making use of the huge palette that Bungie is allowing the community to use for making their maps.
On the topic of online customization, a neat side note is that your character you will make for online is the same character in the single player mode. I know this sounds like a trivial thing but I love it when I put time and effort into a character and it gets used; when I would take time to customize my Spartan is previous games, but then be stuck with Master Chief in the single player, it ostracized the single player from the online. It’s a small addition but a very neat one in my opinion, as it actually draws the player more into the story, as they are now becoming a part of it rather than assuming the role of a character already created.
What I’d Change
Sadly, if you create a wicked custom game type (yet another aspect the gamers can be creative with) it’s impossible to host it online unless you create a game with a party of friends; I wish Bungie would have adopted the methods of Starcraft 2 and had an online section for custom game types where players can have fun with new and innovative ways to play their favourite game.
I would also have to say the AI could use a tweeking. In the second mission I was driving a jeep, and trying so hard to get my team to hop in. I positioned myself in all different ways and in different places but my team just stood there staring at the jeep. Eventually I got annoyed and just went on without them, which led to my team leader giving me a tongue-lashing about not being a lone wolf and reminding me I was part of a team; team AI needs a bit of work, but enemy AI is very well done, so it’s a fair tradeoff.
Final Thoughts
This has been a great year for Xbox 360 titles, so it is possible this game might not get game of the year, but by no means does that make this a bad game; on the contrary, if this game came out a few months back then by year’s end I likely would hold this game in esteem for game of the year.
Get Halo Reach if you own an Xbox 360, most of you probably will, but the four of you who are on the fence will not be disappointed. If this will mark the sad departure of Bungie from the Halo franchise, then they sure as hell are going out with a bang.
