Review: Halo Reach

For all intents and purposes, I should not be the one reviewing this game. I'm not the Halo fan. I don't play much multiplayer, and the First Person Shooter is not even my genre of choice. But for those reasons, I feel it's important that my opinions of the game be offered to the gaming minority that would be included in any of those subsets.

Halo: Reach (Xbox 360)
Developer: Bungie
Publisher: Microsoft
Released: September 14, 2010

For the basis of this review, I am strictly only covering the Campaign, namely the Co-Op. I did not try out forge world. I did not play multiplayer or firefight. All of which I agree are huge components of the Halo series. So if you feel that these are factors that would effect your impression, please feel free to stop reading here or continue forward while keeping that in mind.

So getting right into it. I liked Halo: ODST better. I wasn't completely in love with the game mind you, but if you put the two Halo games side by side there's no question which I feel is the superior experience. They both had the same set up. You play a face less rookie/new recruit in rag tag bunch of personalities, going up against overwhelming odds to complete some sort of delivery objective. I understand Reach is supposed to be a more powerful story, seeing as you're destined to lose. But I think the uncertainty is definitely something that must be there to make what's going on relevant, which is how I felt through most of ODST. Although I wasn't completely moved by the situation, I was never quite sure if my character was going to make it or just be a last minute casualty.

Another one of ODST's advantages, I felt, was that it had much more memorable characters. The team was comprised of a group of characters. They had names and faces and although Reach also has names and faces for it's characters, a majority of the time they are referred to by their call number. When I look back at ODST, Mal, Jayne, Wash....I mean Buck, Dutch, Mickey, and Romeo made much more of an impression on me than anyone in Reach. Maybe it was the Firefly reference and cast, but that's a hole Bungie dug for themselves. Reach's group are robotic, boring, and honestly a little too overly dramatic. Everyone had to throw themselves at the noble cause of saving Reach (perfectly understandable) but leading to their early demise. There's only so many self sacrificing deaths you can pull off in a game before it because a little emotionless.

One thing that really bugged me about Halo: Reach was the bugs, literally. Not since Halo 2 have I felt this unhappy with technical problems in a Halo game. During my playthrough I had multiple internet problems, checkpoint problems, respawn problems, and of course even cheevo problems. On more than one occasion the game stuck me into infinite loops either checking pointing me within an explosion or spawning me over the side of a cliff. The game was smart enough to figure out the problem itself and revert back to the next previous checkpoint but the damage had been done as I had already experienced those blemishes.

In all fairness though, a lot of these problems could be attributed to the Co-Op Online Play, which is unfortunately the biggest reason I was excited about Halo: Reach in the first place. I took Brad's advice about not playing with a full squad of four and joined in a group with Arton and Nolon, both of which had never played a Halo Campaign. There is no doubt that one of the possibilities that the game story and experience suffered is because I played in a group with other people running around blasting things, creating a hectic mess. The elegance and strategy involved in Halo combat was reduced to what I can only compare to a late rush in StarCraft with the motto "send in everything, who cares  what dies." By far, the biggest fault in Reach is the Co-op experience. The game play is not designed to make a Co-op experience. It is simply an addition where a few friends and more enemies join in. Designing game play around having to work together in more than just combat is how a Co-op experience should be structured. Riding together in a Warthog is not it. Having to revive a teammate is. The biggest facilitation that Co-op created was instead of waiting to pick off Jackals hiding behind their shields, we could know just dispatch them with ease.

My biggest excitements about Halo: Reach ended up being let downs. Playing with friends allows you own stories and experiences. We had some good moments and funny stories from our playthrough, but Reach could still have innovated in other ways in Co-Op to make the experience better.

For instance one addition to Reach was the space flight sequence. Literally, it was one sequence. I found the sequence to be quite pedestrian. I flew around with typical fight controls shooting down enemy fighters and then attacking a larger ship's thrusters. I can't say that it was bad because there wasn't enough of it to leave an impression. I definitely see the potential for something spectacular but was never given anything more than just an idea. I'd hardly call it an addition to the Halo franchise but still there was another way Reach could have brought change to the series.

It could have come from the upgrade modules. Specific to Halo: Reach there are new powerups players can use to completely alter the previously one dimensional character classes. Invincible armor, decoy clones, sprint run, and even jet packs have been added to spice things up a bit. But again, I think mostly the changes are going to be limited to multiplayer, which sucks cause there are some amazing things Bungie could have done with the upgrades. I think there was a lot of missed potential in the single player. There could have been huge jetpack sequences. There could have had been new enemies that required you to use armor lock to expose weak points. There could have been the use of decoy clones to freshen up sniper battles. Heck if you really wanted to make this Halo unique, Bungie could have made it so that the upgrades were class specific. Each of those classes could be a different member of the Reach Squad. Then dependent on a player's preference they would select a character in that way. But that's not the way it played out. Reach ended up playing out much like it did it's ending sequence.

Suddenly with the credits and then with the obvious ending. There were a severe lack of Halo moments, either new or reused. The weapon variety seemed lacking. And even the music, which was fantastic and atmospheric in ODST, seemed awkward.

Both fortunately and unfortunately, this was the last Bungie Halo game. It was a little jarring to see this good-bye message from Bungie when the credits rolled. It's seemed like they weren't going to be around and in a way, I guess they won't. I say fortunately because I would like this talented group create something new and break out from just the Halo Shadow. I want to see if there's something else in their bag of tricks or if multiplayer and the Halo name were what really kept them going. I also want to see what direction Halo will go from here. I think it's time for a breath of fresh air, ideas, and concepts.

Score: 72
(70-79%: Solid - A solid title that has a few major issues)

David