When it comes to telling a story, having a large segment of your audience already aware of the ending you have in store is a difficult challenge. Hell, you can’t really expect to stun everyone when you’ve already released a book entitled The Fall of Reach nine years prior to the game coming out.
Regardless, Bungie was determined to further explore the Reach story arc. Introducing new characters (the Spartans of Noble Team) and a player-customized protagonist who inhabits the game’s cutscenes, the development team managed to tell the tale of the Halo universe’s original doomed planet.
The members of Noble Team aren’t nearly as interesting as the environments they inhabit. While Reach itself boasts variety in its globe-trotting level settings, the protagonists are contained within such gung-ho military stereotypes that they failed to connect with me at any level. Along with sappy line delivery, potent melodrama, and just plain dumb dialogue by supporting cast members, what was supposed to be a dramatic and grim conclusion to Bungie’s run with Halo became an unintentional cheese-fest.
Maybe I’m heartless, but I found myself laughing when (spoilers!) a couple of the team members died. Sorry, but when the game shifts from immersion-breaking vehicle bugs (coupled with EXTREME marines belting out EXTREME catchphrases) to a slow violin playing over the top of a somber death sequence framed by picture-perfect character placement, it’s inconsistent and laughable. If this were a SyFy Original Movie, all you Halo fans sharpening your knives and Googling my address right now would agree with me. Really.
Story aside, there’s not much more to Halo: Reach‘s actual gameplay or combat isn’t carried over from previous titles; which is fine — if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Bungie has mercifully removed the equipment pick-ups from Halo 3 and moved in a direction that could be interpreted as an olive branch to Call of Duty players by introducing loadout schemes. While some of these power-ups influence your character in a more passive manner (like Sprint or Camouflage), others take more drastic steps with the conventional Halo formula and alter the way players fight their enemies. Armor Lock, for instance, will freeze your Spartan (or Elite) in position and leave him invulnerable for a short period of time. On one hand, it gives new Halo players a chance to slow down the pace of the combat enough for teammates to swoop in, but it also gives high-level players a new toy to master. That, coupled with jet packs in multiplayer, certainly add to the subjective “Oh, bullshit!” factor when facing another player. The Halo purist in me needs to see them removed from the high-end competitive Arena mode, and thanks to Bungie’s eternally updating/tweaking/fiddling with online systems, I’m hopeful to see results soon.
The multiplayer suite of Reach is delightfully the best of the Halo series. Everything Bungie seems to have dreamed of including in the mode is here in some form or another. Endless playlists, game types, and, thanks to a revamped Forge mode, new player-built maps are always available. I’m pleased to report that I spout out “Wow, you can do that? Cool!” while exploring Reach’s customization and creation tools more often than the typical “I wish I could do this” that is present in other games.
The aforementioned Arena modes are a competitive Halo player’s dream — high-level ranked play, complete with placement matches and “seasons,” which reset your rank after a given date. It allows players who fell off the ladder early on the opportunity to prove themselves in the brutal, player-matched fields of battle. Its Team Doubles game type is the most intense and fun time I’ve had with a multiplayer partner in a long time. On top of all that, there’s the promise of new official maps in the future, and if the first batch, Noble Pack, was any indication of Bungie’s plans for us, we’re in for a real treat.
The sentence I’ve used to describe Halo: Reach since its release has been, “It’s kinda like the last one, just more messed up.” There’s a general lack of polish in the campaign that’s unexpected coming from Bungie, as checkpointing issues, glitches, and tonal inconsistencies are sparsely, but noticeably present. Its saving grace and inevitable legacy, however, is its multiplayer, which manages to surpass every other competitor in the console space — and likely will for the foreseeable future. I mean, most other developers still haven’t reached the level of Halo 2‘s online polish. In that, Reach rules; long live the king.
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Things We Liked: Incredible multiplayer component. Arena matchmaking provides an outlet for high-end players. Manages to iterate on the formula without screwing it up.
Things We Disliked: Wildly inconsistent narrative. Addition of equipment is a mixed bag (all or nothing, baby!). Disappointing lack of polish in the campaign mode.
Target Audience: Online shooter bums. Extremely competitive people. Halo fanboys.
(Halo: Reach – Developers: Bungie. Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios. Available for Xbox 360. Unfamiliar with CFD!’s review system? Read our newly revised explanation here.)
Interesting. As CFD’s resident Reach junkie, I’ll say that I agree with you for the most part. But if you want the loadouts cut from the game, I suspect you don’t know how to manipulate each one’s weakness. Let’s play together sometime and I’ll show you. Also, be careful about any negative notes on the game–I don’t have to Google your address. I already have it. :)
“The Halo purist in me needs to see them removed from the high-end competitive Arena mode,”
I don’t mind them as much in the regular matchmaking simply because I don’t consider it the true competitive aspect of Reach. My friends and I use MM as a cooldown from Arena because we don’t take it seriously. I just wish the pure Halo mechanics of shooting, moving, grenades and schwaps were the only aspects of Arena because I consider those the ‘true’ Halo skills. Everything else seems filler and cheap in comparison.