Before it was released, I wasn't sure what to make of Halo Reach's story. The Fall of Reach is not the most optimistic story and while we know that the war against the Covenant will ultimately be won, I was curious to see how the first major defeat of humanity first hand would work as a game plot.
And though Halo ODST already paved the way for this next change, the other major change was that for the first time you're playing as a Spartan that isn't John 117. Before the Master Chief, there was Spartan B312:
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| Noble 6 to his friends. |
Gameplay
The game is pretty much classic Halo, though it's in it's 5th incarnation now and shows all the signs of having learned from the mistakes previous games. So it's no surprise that it's probably the best Halo yet as far as the gameplay goes. If you like Halo, you'll love this.
The only really new thing in here apart from a few weapons are the armour abilities, so that's pretty much all I'll comment about really - they don't alter the game all that much, and I think there were only maybe two I really used a lot, but these are a nice addition to the game. The ability to run faster (meh), cloak (always useful), temporary invulnerability (at the cost of not moving - has it's uses I guess) and my two favourites the drop shield (Halo 3's shield bubble with added healing powers) and the awesome jet-pack.
Admit it - you've always wanted a jet-pack in real life, but video games are probably the closest we'll get. And the ability to fly over your enemies heads raining death down on them is far too much fun to pass up. Though the campaign only lets you have jet-packs at a few places, I certainly enjoyed every second of it - even going so far as to bypass a whole section of a level by jet-packing up into the air to hijack a passing enemy fighter and flying that straight to my destination. :)
The other minor new additions are the commendations and challenges. Commendations are medals tracking how much you've done of something - such as headshots, killing in a vehicle, destroying vehicles and so on. Each time one of them gains a rack, you gain some credits to spend on armour and move a little closer to the next player rank.
Challenges are a bit more interesting. Every week, there's a new weekly challenge to complete for a usually large amount of credits. So far, we've only seen two - both requiring some amount of work. There are also 4 daily challenges that change every day. A minor addition to the game, but it's kind of fun having new short term goals to aim for every time you start the game up.
Other than those new additions, Halo is as Halo does. Chances are everyone considering buying Halo Reach already knew if they would like it or not with a high degree of accuracy.
Story
The broad outline of the story of Halo Reach might already be well known to Halo fans or anyone who's read The Fall of Reach, but I was still eager to find out the role Noble Team played in the last defense of Reach and, given that most Spartans died in the events preceding the original Halo, how Noble Team died and just what they did that was commemorated with the Noble Team Statue.
And the story delivers pretty well. There are plenty of heroics for the team to engage in, and the fight against overwhelming odds means that there's no shortage of exciting story developments, despite the Space Alamo ending the game is locked onto a path towards from the beginning. There are a number of points in the game where you are left feeling like you've just accomplished something big - usually followed by something equally big and equally disastrous happening to raise the stakes.
And for the Halo fanboys there's plenty of cameos from established characters - Cortana, Gunnery Sargent Buck and a kind of hidden blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo from the Chief himself. Also quite cool to this Halo fanboy was the way that Jorge - the one Spartan II on Noble team - is so much larger and physically imposing, even to the Spartan IIIs (of which Noble 6 is one) as they overshadow the normal marines. It really helps convey how big John 117 must have looked to the normal humans in the first 3 games.
Overall, despite being a somewhat depressing ending the story is well written enough so that Noble Team's heroism and Noble Team's sacrifice still actually mean something and contribute significantly to the Halo franchise's storyline. It's well worth the trip even if the story is not that original and hardly award winning material, but it's very entertaining and well told.
Mutli-player
Normally, I don't play a lot of multi-player and when I do it's usually just co-op with my friends. So I wasn't too keen on Halo Reach multi-player, even after trying out the Halo Reach Beta Test earlier this year. But I gave it a try in order to try to complete some of the Daily Challenges.
And I had a surprising amount of fun. Halo Reach - like ODST before it - borrows from Gears of Wars 2's Horde mode to create Firefight. Reach includes Firefight 2.0. This time around there are more variants like Rocketfight - Firefight played with rocket launchers with infinite ammo - to liven things up. Unlike Horde mode, matchmaking games are short - usually just 5 waves of enemies - so that you van move onto a new map or new variant of the rules quickly.
Longer matches can be set up in the dedicated Firefight section of the game. And in custom matches, players have a huge level of control over the rules, down to the enemies spawned, how they arrive, the weapons used, infinite ammo, player shields, invulnerability and even if the weapons need to be reloaded at all. It's easy to come up with odd but fun versions of the game type. I played one game where everyone was hovering around with infinite jetpacks floating over the battlefield raining down explosive death with their infinite ammo, never reloading rocket launchers. :)
Slayer games are much the same as always - first side to a certain number of kills - but also come with similar variants where everyone is armed with sniper rifles and infinite ammo. Capture the Flag is the same as always too.
Invasion is new and the next type I plan to get into. A team of Spartans tries to fight their way into a facility to steal a computer core while the Elites defend it, and if they don't win the teams swap sides and try again. I enjoyed that a bit during the beta and it seems like fun - if, and this is a big if an Halo matchmaking - you can find a team that can actually work together. I think it would work a lot better if you got some friends together in a Party and stuck together as a team during an Invasion match.
Overall, there's a lot of options for multi-player games to keep people playing and earning credits towards that distant Colonel rank for some time.
Conclusion
I'm not going to say anything about graphics because there's nothing really requiring comment. The game looks great as you'd expect from any top level title these days. Nothing that makes it stand out from all the other AAA games though.
But overall, it's a great game as long as you like FPS. It's Halo done better than Halo's ever been done. Not a bad way for Bungie and the Halo franchise to part ways. Here's hoping 343 Industries can carry the torch for the future Halo games that are inevitably coming.
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