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Halo: Reach is meant to be a prequel, the table setter for the Halo trilogy that put Bungie, and in many ways the Xbox, on the map. In it you take on the role of a faceless space marine, the newest member of the United Nations Space Command special operations unit Noble Team. As Noble 6, you're an unwelcome replacement in a unit that always seems in need of fresh blood.
As the game opens you're given a dramatic look at the world of Reach, a planet you'll spend the next eight or so hours of gaming, fighting to defend.
Continue reading this review.
Loved
Satisfying Story: I've always found that Halo's greatest weakness has been its
story. The plot, the characters, even the setting have always felt a bit too
sci-fi generic for my liking. Halo: Reach was Bungie's last chance to prove that
they can create a game that is as evocative to experience as it is to play.
While the game's story certainly doesn't sing from opening to close, it does a
fine job of building up a sense of wonder and curiosity in the gamer. More
importantly, it delivers a cast of characters you'll come to quickly care about,
and then deftly deals with each, leaving few loose ends. If Halo 3 was a bit too
much of a cliff hanger, Halo: Reach will most certainly satisfy you in the way
it ties things up so neatly, so completely.A Living Painting: There are points in Halo: Reach when the game seems to escape the confines of graphic animation, transcending the medium to become moving set pieces that look more like a pulsing Baroque painting than a video game. The blending of rich colors and dramatic presentation, cued to important moments, memorable movements in Halo: Reach is pitch perfect, used just enough to help burn the game's high points into your conscience.
Clever Enemies: The enemies of Halo: Reach are somehow even more efficient, tactical and clever than previous iterations. They use all of the new gadgets, weapons and powers this latest Halo grants them to easily parry foolish, head-on attacks and direct confrontation. Instead, players will need to use guile, speed and that wonderful ability to jet-pack through the air to run down, over and around your enemies.
Multiplayer: An entire review could be devoted to just the myriad of ways that Halo: Reach's multiplayer sings, all of the wonderful things it brings to the table. The game reworks the popular Firefight mode to allow for nearly limitless customization of the Spartans versions horde mode. Matchmaking seems to have been greatly sped up, though there weren't many people playing when I was trying the game, and there are now ways to try and find gamers who you want to play with through a set of clever filters. Online campaign matchmaking works seamlessly, allowing you to quickly find up to three other gamers to burn through the campaign with. A player Armory and the use of earned credits allows you to customize your Spartan and gives you one more reason to keep playing those online matches. And Halo: Reach's level building tool, Forge, has been retooled to be easier to use. Bungie also promises to deliver daily in-game challenges when Halo: Reach launches, which will give players another way to earn credits. Of course, there are also plenty of new modes and maps to play with, all of which are augmented by the game's new look and those wonderful class settings.
Graphics: Halo: Reach's greatest achievement is how thoroughly it reinvents the look of the storied franchise, giving everything a much grittier and more realistic aspect. The game throws out the tiring purple pallet of past Halos for an eclectic, vibrant look that doesn't use color to distract, but rather to augment the shooter's look. The developers push their use of color, taking every opportunity to make the settings vibrant and alive. From the color-leaching greys of rainstorms that roll through some levels, to the warm glow of fires and explosions, Reach is artfully depicted as a living world.
Helicopter At Dusk: There's no question that Bungie can make a solid first-person shooter. But a combat flight game? Despite slightly awkward flight controls, the game's lengthy Falcon level is a welcome change to the endless ground combat of previous Halo games.
Space Dogfights: Helicopters, sure, but space combat? I'm not sure which I enjoyed more, but I was delighted to find that the level dedicated to Sabre space combat felt incredibly different from the Falcon's helicopter combat, as it should. If anything, my only complaint about this section of the game is that there wasn't enough of it.
Turret Level: Bungie has their first-person shooter space combat down, so it's nice to see that the developer still pushes themselves to take a chance and try to deliver new experiences, not just with space combat, helicopter combat and an assortment of new weapons and enemies. One unforgettable section of the game has you running back and forth between turrets, activating them as you dodge enemy fire and defend an important position. The simple addition of turrets that need constant care, adds a new facet to the game's dynamic and helps once more to move the game along without feeling like an endless shootout.
Armor Abilities: Somehow the team of pre-Halo Spartans managed to get one considerable upgrade to their arsenal: Armor abilities. While you start off with just the ability to sprint by tapping the left bumper, as you make your way through the campaign, you'll find plenty of places where you can switch out armor abilities. Other abilities include a jet pack, a holographic decoy, active camouflage, a drop shield and armor lock. These abilities can vastly change the way you play through sections of the game, allowing gamers to tackle the challenges they face in a myriad of ways. Multiplayer too includes these abilities, plus a couple more, and when available, they have an even bigger impact on gameplay. I still spend half of my online matches trying to do mid-air take-downs of other jet pack Spartans.
Hated
The Little Things: There's nothing really to hate about Halo: Reach, but there
are a few things that bugged me. Top of my list was how despite having to face
incredibly smart, seemingly complex enemies, my cohorts were as dumb as a bag of
hammers. They'll forget to hop into vehicles, get lost, not realize you've left
to go on your next mission or, my personal favorite, get locked behind a blast
shield because they apparently didn't notice it closing. While it didn't happen
often, I was shocked to see that Halo: Reach does on very few occasions, chug.
That is, the graphics slow down quite a bit when there's too much going on in
the game. The first time I noticed this was near the end of the game when a lot
of enemies were around, and we were all shooting off our weapons and something
big exploded. But I've since seen it a few other times and in online matches as
well. I checked it on a second console and checked in with other players and
they've noticed it too. It happens so infrequently that it doesn't really mar
the game, but it's not the type of issue I would ever expect to see in a Bungie
title.
There is much to love about Halo: Reach, but looking back at my nearly two times through the game and a day spent playing it online, the single thing that sticks with me the most is its setting, its majestic take on a planet that doesn't exist. Bungie has outdone themselves with the game's look, stringing together set-piece after set-piece until there is nearly nothing left.
Halo: Reach is unquestionably the best of the Halo games, and that's not a small thing to say. But Bungie doesn't just match the best of every Halo game that came before it, they've improved it, streamlined it, perfected it. Gone are sections of tedium and vacuous game design, gone too is the almost cartoon look of the earlier games and the narrow vision of the places in which they took place. In many ways, Halo: Reach feels like a coming of age title, not for the characters or the universe Bungie created, but for the studio itself.
Halo: Reach was developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 on Sept. 14. Retails for $59.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through the campaign by myself on normal difficulty, and through much of the campaign with one or more friends on Heroic difficulty. Played multiple online matches in campaign, firefight and the plentiful versus modes. Messed around with Forge.
Republished with permission from Kotaku.
For more gaming news and reviews check out Kotaku.com.
Brian Crecente is an American journalist and columnist, the Editor-In-Chief of Kotaku, and the writer of Well Played, a weekly column internationally syndicated by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
User Comments: 12
Got something to say? Post a comment-
Does running the game in 720p instead of 1080p help the slow down?
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Doesn't matter wether you set it on 720 or 1080. Both modes were programmed into the game. It all has to do what the Grafix crd can handle and the way the code was written and optimized for the 360dev kit.
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Does the split screen coop mode in 2 player have the same catastrophic black bars at the side of the screen on a normal widescreen telly to maintain the aspect ratio?
Bungee have been unable to optimise the Halo engine on 360 to the point where they have rendered lower than 720 then upscaled (halo3) and the black bar thing is just awful. If you have a 50inch telly then you can get away with it but on my 26inch Hd telly its unacceptable - not even an option to turn it off. Just put up or shut up.
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or play the game squished at 4:3 mode. otherwise you lost 1/3 of your screen real estate to their bad programming otherwise they would be able to render it full screen. Sounds like this time they couldnt even optimise the single player. There are plenty of great looking games out there that don't slowdown. Maybe the next halo games will be programmed better
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mattfrompa said:
My friend and I just beat this on co-op last night. We both loved it. I can't wait to try out the new Firefight modes including gruntpocolypse. Truly a great last Halo game for Bungie. The way this game was put together made me wish they were going to at least be involved in the next and as always I wish the game was longer
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Looks like a fitting farewell for Bungie, the poor old 360's hardware really is beginning to show it's age by the looks of things. Halo Reach aint no Crysis. Probably would have looked better on PS3.
Please port it to PC Bungie!
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I'll admit, as a former Halo fan, the game is quite decent even though it's just Halo rehashed yet again. I did like it though and at times it did remind me of the good old days of Combat Evolved. I think Bungie has done all they can with the franchise on the 360, so with that note I bid farewell to one of the most popular and respected game franchises of all time. I actuality I said goodbye a long time ago anyways
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tengeta said:
I ordered a copy tonight, I didn't bother with ODST so I figured I'd give this one a try. Not to mention I think its the first game I've bought in all of 2010.
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St1ckM4n said:
Didn't I see somewhere that Xbox 360 is good for another 2 years+? It was official statement too.
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From my understanding the xbox has more graphics capability than the ps3. Xbox has a unified architecture that you find in graphics cards now days were as the play station is still using pixel pipelines.
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The 360's graphics card is a dinosaur now, it's based off the old X1900 series GPU's. God help it if it has to chug along for another 3 years! No wonder they had to bring out that gimicky "Kinect" nonsense, they have to keep the fanboi's living in the past. Anyway the PS3 is based on the ancient Geforce 7800/7900 GTX so it is marginally better I suppose, but again thats not saying much.
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your an ***** kinect is not nonsense it is the newest and best technology availible for the xbox 360 or any console
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