Halo Reach

Reach doesn’t follow Master Chief or a band of ODSTs separated in a small city, but does fall somewhere between. Reach takes place on humanities second biggest planet of importance and leads up to the events of Halo 1. You step into the shoes of a spartan-III who is coming in as a replacement on a squad consisting of mainly other spartan-III. Most people who have read the books know of the battle of Reach or may have wondered what it would be like to fight along side a team full of Master Chief’s, so just how does it stack up to those expectations?

Lets start with the team you will fight alongside, well as sad as it is to say they are almost all useless. An example of this I experienced of this was as I watched Kat approached by two covenant she armor locks before taking damage, then as she exits armor lock she EMPs the warthog next to her which she then proceeds to enter…on the passenger side with no one else near the hog except the covenant. Sadly it feels your team is there for little more then decoration or to give the illusion you actually have a team. Though I will say they due to their invincibility they are a good distraction at times.The biggest disappointment about Noble team though is they are actually quite interesting, but it feels like you hardly get a chance to know any of them before the game ends. This brings us to the story, if your a fan of the games only or just new to the series you will probably enjoy the story a great deal. But if you read the books the storyline from the Fall of Reach has been changed a great deal, some of it is just minor details some makes no sense at all. This doesn’t ruin the action or game play and if you don’t mind the changes it makes for some very cool moments in the game.

This brings us to the character you play as, that is Noble 6. The changes you make to your armor for multiplayer will reflect in campaign which is a great addition and helps to make you feels as if your filling six’s shoes. However this doesn’t make up for his complete lack of personality, I enjoy being able to fill a characters shoes but I would much rather have a character with even an ounce of personality to them as Noble 6 is a bit of a boring character.

Like past Halo games Reach will feature a four player co-op multiplayer mode which can be played over Xbox live. Each player will see themselves in cut scenes during this co-op mode and enemies will become stronger to help combat your larger group. In addition to the standard co-op there will also be a matchmaking system in case you can’t quite find the team you need, majority vote will pick the mission you guys play though. As it stands now though Bungie is holding off implementing it.

Skulls make a return as well, though this time you will not need to search for them. Instead you will be able to access and activate them as soon as you enter into the campaign menu. The four difficulty system will also be making a return as will the ability to start part way through a mission at specific points after you have completed it for the first time.

The level design for Reach early on is similar to Silent Cartographer from Halo, your able to move pretty freely around the area and do several points in whichever order you like. Disappointingly they become linear as you progress through the campaign, this obviously allows for better scripted events. But takes away many of the different ways a certain battle could be approached.

Arguably the center of the Halo experience at least for most people is the multiplayer. While seeing a huge overhaul to many changes to the weapons, vehicles, ranking, and just about every other facet of it, it still feels a lot like Halo. In fact there is so many changes its difficult to decide where to start almost. Weapons have changed a lot over every Halo game from the heavy hitting gear of Halo 1 to the silenced tools of the ODST. So it comes as no surprise that no weapon was left untouched when Reach came out. The most notable changes probably being a bloom effect that makes some weapons more inaccurate the more rapidly they are fired. Followed closely by hit scan which means that when you fire a round a lot of the human weapons will instantly hit where you were aiming when you fired.

Dual wielding has been removed, along with many weapons, others have been replaced by similar weapons. As is the case with equipment, which has been replaced by armor abilities. Some of these act similar to the equipment in Halo 3 and some is a great deal different. Generally speaking you will choose an armor ability and weapon loadout at the start of a match, what these are depends on the game type though. They can also be set so you can pick them off the ground through the forge editor, just as you would see the abilities in the campaign.
The most notable change to vehicles has to be the independent health, while this allows for for vehicles to be less dominant without the need for super weapons, its a great annoyance since only the warthog has a noticeable visual warning that it is damaged.

Rank at first glance has appeared to change a great deal more then it has and can almost be a bit confusing at first. While playing ranked games you would be given a number one through fifty depending on your “trueskill” or given a rank such as private or colonel depending on your experience. The one through fifty rank is no longer visible to players but it still operates in the background to help figure out who to match you against.
The Arena is a division such as Onyx or Gold, which your placed in after you play enough matches in the Arena game type. Experience hasn’t changed to much, instead now however you earn credits which not only get you new ranks but can be used to buy new armor pieces, effects, or firefight voices. Credits can be earned a variety of ways from playing campaign to doing forge, but unless your playing matchmaking the amount you earn will be limited, though this was disappointing this was to stop “credit farming”. You can also complete commendations which give you credits for ranking them up, or you can do challenges which will change daily and weekly and will give you varying amounts of credits for a number of different tasks. These can be found in the start menu. Forge returns stronger then ever allowing you to play on a bigger map then anything that has appeared in Halo multiplayer before. The tools in it make maps that would have been difficult and time consuming in Halo 3 quick and easy. It is also far more accurate then its predecessor. If there is any complaint I could possibly have about it is that setting up game types for it can be a bit confusing at times, but thats pretty much the only draw back to it. Following up Forge would be theater mode, certain things like rewinding in campaign have been fixed, you can save a game right in the matchmaking lobby as well. However party viewing has been removed so you must now view solo.

Next up on the block is firefight, first making its appearance in ODST, it was an interesting game mode but tended to get repetitive and a bit boring pretty quick. Bungie did a great job redeeming this problem, you can edit loadouts, set player traits, skulls, even set what enemies come in what waves. Your Spartan will also appear as your firefight character just as in matchmaking and campaign. The biggest addition is firefight matchmaking which comes in two flavors. You can choose to search for
other players or play alone in score attack, both of these are greatly shortened versions of firefight and only last for one round rather then going until all players die. Firefight also has a number of different game types such as generator defense, rocket fight, gruntpacolypse, etc. This all ties into the new file browser for Reach, you no longer need to log onto Bungie.net to search for a cool map remake, or that cool game type you just finished. Now all you have to do is go into your start
menu and go to the file browser, you can look at the most downloaded stuff or search for tags of what you want.

The graphics in Reach have improved a great deal from their Halo 3 counterparts. Needless to say they look better. But a great deal of other changes have been made to them. Bungie took special care when creating faces for their characters this time around making them look far more realistic at the fans request. On the note of realism it should be noted Bungie used motion capture for the campaigns animation, all the movements from the characters we see was preformed by a real person at one point. Colors are darker then in past Halo games, a friend of mine said he felt that Reach suffered from a case of the browns. While the colors are a bit more realistic or subtle they are definitely there if you take a minute to stop and look. Colorful Auroras above the planet or the purple glow of covenant technology.

When it comes to games I am more of a guy for the environmental graphics then picking out the sounds.That being said Halo is usually one of the few games I am capable of distinguishing all the different and subtle sounds in it. As is the usual with a Halo game the composers did an amazing job with the musical score returning to something along the lines of Halo 1 or Halo 3 but still being unique. Other sound effects such as a player sprinting near by or a player firing their gun are detailed enough to effect gameplay to a trained ear you can hear an enemy trying to assault your base before you can even see them.

Reach keeps a versatile control set up like past Halo games, allowing you to set your look sensitivity, stick layout, button layout, click crouch, “clench protection” which protects for accidental stick clicks as the game says, flying controls, and inversion. Its about the next best thing to being able to map your controls. Personally I like the Recon button layout but to each their own

Reach contains a ton of Easter eggs, many of which still have yet to be discovered or their purpose figured out. Rooms like the tribute room which gives a nod to groups like Red vs. Blue or their forum webmaster. The BoB’s, golden ranger elites which are a nod to their past game marathon, and many more Easter eggs. Some of these will bring back a sense of nostalgia and others are really good for a laugh. Reach also have data pads which are like the terminals from ODST and tell a separate side story not related to the main plot. The achievements in Reach are all quite easy to get, the exception being rank related or a solo legendary play through in which case this will vary by players skill and amount of time spent playing. Bungie also had planned to give you limited control over marines at certain points in the campaign, while this remains some scrap of it remains as a nod to the developers. The names of the marines that will begin popping up are the names and tags of the developers.