Halo: Reach Review

Written 10/19/2010

Note: The screenshot and video are courtesy of Bungie.net and Youtube respectively, and all credit goes to the original recorders.

It's been a long haul for Halo, particularly where Master Chief and Cortana are concerned, but we've almost always been in the boots of our friendly neighborhood Spartan. In fact, Master Chief has been the only Spartan we've had the pleasure of slaughtering the Covenant as; until now. The fine folks at Bungie have given us a prequel to Master Chief's odyssey of a tale in the form of Halo Reach; a tragic tale in which you know the end of the journey from the very beginning. It has a very definite end, as does Bungie's relationship with the Halo franchise. This, my dear friends, is Bungie's last Halo game, and they are taking themselves out with a bang!

Visuals and Presentation

Halo Reach uses an upgraded version of the Halo 3 engine by rebuilding it from its base code and optimizing the daylights out of it. The result of that optimization in the visuals is very plainly seen; as Reach is a very pretty game! In a developer diary I had seen a while back, it was mentioned that in weapons alone the amount of available polygons the team could create on each individual weapon was nearly tripled from what it was in Halo 3. This is most visible in the new Assault Rifle and Battle Rifle (now called the DMR) models. Both have intricate and technical designs and insets all over the models that are actually modeled in instead of being bump mapped into the models. Character and vehicle design also greatly benefits from the same treatment with the best looking models presented in any Halo title to date.

While the environments are great as well, and also benefit from the engine optimizations, I do find them to be Reach's weakest visual point. I'm not saying they are bad by any stretch, but some of the larger set pieces that were meant to be really epic just didn't come off as awesomely as I felt Bungie really wanted them to. The flow of the environments in both the campaign and multiplayer is by far the best of any Halo to date. Basically, if you're paying attention even just a little bit, you won't get lost, period. Man, that really reminds me of how bad the library level was in the original Halo. Overall though, this is the best a Halo's visuals have ever been hands down!

Visuals and Presentation Rating:

Sound

Halo's sound has always been a trademark of its experience, especially the music! I mean, what other game franchise aside from Mario, Zelda, and possibly Call of Duty can you recognize simply by listening to it? Reach is no different in the least. In fact, some might say it's even better than the other Halos' sound! The weapon and environmental sounds are exactly the same as they always been with some hardly noticeable tweaks to the originals (of course, I may be hearing things because I played Reach on a newer TV) and some new additions that keep the same quality as the rest.

The real stars of this show are the music and voice-acting. Martin O'Donnell is back as the composer for Reach, and he has absolutely outdone himself this time! You will only hear one short tune from the previous Halos during the course of Reach, and a heavily remixed track during the credits. Everything else is 100% original for Reach's darker and grittier setting. There are tranquil melodies, depressing dirges, tense transitions, and adrenaline pumping action tracks; all crafted so eloquently that you would swear it was ripped from the best three action and drama movies you've ever seen. I can't overstate how good this soundtrack is! It can put you in awe when combined with the visuals one moment, then bring a tear to your eye the next, and get your heart pounding as you fight for survival the next. Martin O'Donnell is without doubt a master of his craft!

The voice-acting in Reach is also top-notch with no expenses spared for the sake of quality. The writing is very easy to understand and everyone plays their roles to excellent effect. I hate to keep sounding cliché here, but the voice-acting and writing are movie quality work. Overall, you just don't get this awesome of an audio experience very often, from any form of media.

Sound Rating:

Gameplay

If you've played any of the previous Halo titles, and who hasn't, then you'll feel right at home with Reach. While it's mostly the same, Bungie has tweaked everything just a bit to further perfect the formula beyond what we've seen so far. I felt that balance issues in the weapons were very minimal, if not non-existent; though I'm sure a more seasoned Halo player than myself can correct me if I'm wrong. Along with those excellent tweaks we now have two new gameplay elements at our disposal, Assassinations and Armor Abilities.

I should really rephrase though, as Assassinations have always been in Halo, but never in this form. Typically when an assassination occurs, one player will simply hit another player in the back with a melee attack, and the poor sap dies. That same poor sap still dies in Reach, but in a much more humiliating fashion. Assassinations now involve one player jumping onto the back of another player, shoving his combat knife into the poor sap and almost disemboweling him, or forcing the n00b to his knees and breaking his neck. If you are the dealer of such pain, it's an extremely satisfying experience to say the least. If you are being dealt that pain, it's almost as bad as being tea-bagged; especially if you do get tea-bagged immediately after being assassinated.

Armor Abilities on the other hand, really are a new gameplay element! Basically, Armor Abilities give Reach a somewhat class-based perk system. In full, the abilities you have access to are Sprint, Armor Lock, Evade, Jetpack, Active Camo, Drop Shield, and Hologram. For the sake of keeping this section less than two pages long, I've made each Armor Ability above a link to a demonstration on Youtube. While I haven't tried every available Armor Ability (namely Evade and Drop Shield), I've found that each ability is balanced well; considering you know when to use a particular ability.

The single-player campaign, while a bit short at 6-10 hours on Normal difficulty, has got to be the hardest one of the series. It's not impossible mind you, but the Legendary difficulty truly is legendary this time in my opinion. The AI is smart and nothing dies as easily as in Halo 3. Remember when you would see an Elite in the original Halo and freak out because they were one of the hardest things in the game to kill? Well, Elites ARE the hardest things to kill in Reach, especially the ones with Energy Swords. Just accept it now, they WILL kill you at least a few times, even if you are proficient in Halo! The pacing of the campaign is excellent with your typical run-and-gun gameplay, as well some stealth missions, vehicle set-pieces, and an awesome StarFox-like space combat sequence. Personally, I feel Reach's campaign is the best in the series.

Just like every other Halo out there though, Reach truly shines in its multiplayer; which is by far the most refined in the series. The gameplay is almost identical to Halo 3's, but the addition of Armor Abilities makes it an almost completely different animal. You think that rocket's going to kill that guy right in front of you? You better hope that guy doesn't have Armor Lock equipped, because you might just be eating your own explosives! Got a shotgun in your face? Evade out of the way and avenge your would-be death! Got a trigger-happy n00b on the opposing team? Send a Hologram in ahead of you and pull off an assassination while he's distracted! The possibilities are really quite expansive; you just need to know when to use a particular Armor Ability in any given situation.

The maps are all well made, but many of them are throwbacks to previous popular Halo maps. There's nothing wrong with that in my opinion, but it definitely does cut down on originality. Map selection also seems a little limited compared to Halo 3, but that's probably because Halo 3 has so many DLC map-packs. The gametypes are mostly what you would expect with Slayer and Team Slayer, as well as odder gametypes like Crazy King and Oddball. There are also little gems here like Rocket Race, which is by far my favorite gametype in Reach. In it there are six teams of two players each, and each team is given one Mongoose and a rocket launcher with unlimited ammo. One player drives the Mongoose and tries to reach checkpoints places around the map before everyone else. The other player rides on the back of the Mongoose and tries to shoot rockets at the other drivers. Each checkpoint you reach first gives you a point, and whoever reaches the point limit wins the match. It's an extremely fun deviation from the norm, and I would highly suggest everyone try it at least once!

You can also find companions for Firefight matches and cooperative campaign romps via the matchmaking system found in all of the competitive modes. When playing through the campaign cooperatively now though, the game's difficulty will ramp up depending on how many players are present. So playing cooperatively with a full group of four players on Legendary is actually Legendary x4. Teamwork is an absolute must in a situation like that! Overall, this is the most refined gameplay experience of any Halo to date, and any self-respecting fan of the series should definitely not miss it!

Gameplay Rating:

Story

Without giving too much away, Reach probably has the easiest story to understand of any Halo I can immediately recall. That doesn't mean its bad in the least though! Its simplicity allows the drama to impact you in a much more effective fashion than if there were a lot of smaller nuances you needed to keep up with. For an almost purely military story like this, it just works!

From the intro of the game, you're looking at the end of the game. Everything after that cutscene is a flashback of how everything got to be the way it is. You are Noble Six, a Spartan sent to replace the late member of Noble Team by the same number. After a short introduction with the rest of Noble Team, you are all sent to investigate an abandoned colony, or so it seems. It doesn't take very long before you discover that the Covenant are on Reach, and things start going badly for the entire planet, very badly. SPOILER ALERT! Get this into your head right now, you will not win! Everyone dies by the end of the game, even you!

My only real complaint is that individual character development seems to have been left out in the cold in favor of focusing on the overall story. That's fine in case like this, but I think it would have given the story that extra little “something” to make it truly perfect. Overall though, the story in Reach is simply spectacular! While simple, the writing is always top-notch, and the drama is superb! If you want a new shooter with a compelling and engaging story, which is terribly hard to find these days, definitely give Reach a try!

Story Rating:

Replay Value

Reach's replay value is honestly dependent on how much you like Halo in general. If you like Halo at all, then you'll love Reach hands down. If you've always hated Halo or are a staunch Call of Duty fanboy and refuse to betray your beloved franchise, give Reach a try at a friend's house or rent it; but there's not much here that will change your mind about Halo in general. If you enjoyed the campaign or multiplayer in the least though, there's anywhere between 50 and 200 hours of solid and enjoyable play time.

Replay Value Rating:

Final Thoughts and Overall Score

For this being Bungie's last Halo game, they certainly left the building with a bang! For all intents and purposes, this is THE definitive Halo game that everyone should try at least once. If you own a 360 and enjoy shooters at all, you're doing yourself a massive disservice if you don't play this game; especially if you enjoy Halo! If you own a 360 and don't enjoy shooters, what's wrong with you?!

Halo: Reach Overall Score: