Halo Reach – Review

It’s time to armour up, pick up your DMR and drop into an epic battle known as Reach. Is it worth ‘Reaching’ for or is it to far to Reach? Find out in this review.

Video Review

Story

The story takes place before Halo: Combat evolved, The game is set during the year 2552, shortly before the events of the first Halo game back in 2001. The story follows close to the book that is ‘The Fall of Reach’. You join the Noble team with Carter, Kat, heavy weapons specialist Jorge-052, Emile-A239, and marksman Jun-A266. Carter and Kat are the only two remaining original members of Noble Team. The story is based around  the story of Noble Team, a squad of Spartan soldiers, and their final stand on the planet Reach, humanity’s last line of defence between the  Covenant and Earth. This story follows a similar path of ODST being a  darker story thanks to the use of  grittier visuals. The first mission deploys you into covenant territory early on, where you will breach an attack on some new or ‘old’ grunts and elites depending how you want to categorise them,  also you will be encountering ostriches.

Through out the campaign you will be following the similar Halo concepts causing you to battle the covenant whilst finding human survivors and other team members from the UNSC. You will come across some other characters, which we will not spoil for you. The storyline is pretty straight forward and is understandable for any Halo fan. The story has multiple plot twists and will cause your brain to sometimes malfunction and go “WOAH DID THAT JUST HAPPEN” We wouldn’t want to spoil the story line for you but all we can say is the story alone is solid and worth picking up the title.   The campaign difficulties are still the same with Normal, Heroic and Legendary, the campaign can include 3 other players online or via split screen.

With the different difficulty settings you will notice a huge dramatic change in difficulty since ODST and Halo 3, the enemies this time around aren’t taking any nonsense and will easily cause you to die multiple times. Playing 4 player campaign is where the franchise will always stay strong rewarding players for playing together as a part of the noble team as you battle your way through the covenant trying to save reach from the alien scum’s mitts.  Oh and if your think your so good at Halo, and want to prove that, feel free to go for the achievement “A Monument to All Your Sins” which is worth 150G’s. The campaign will roughly last about 10 hours+ with 3 other players, taking to note with more players the harder it is.

Design

When looking at the design for Halo Reach you will notice a lot of similarities to both ODST and Halo 3. If you haven’t played either its hard to describe what the graphical design is like. The design follows a conception of making Reach feel as realistic as possible if a part of the universe was coming under earth breaking fire. The graphics have really picked up since Halo 3, Bungie have really spent a lot of time focusing on making sure Reach looks like hell has hit it, whilst also focusing on the armour to an extent it looks and feels like you are all suited and booted for the battle. Bungie was aiming for “a sense of accomplishment and success”As Reach ends with the destruction of the titular planet Well, congratulations to Bungie because hey have made players and ourselves feel exactly like that. Bungie made it their goal to capitalize on the Xbox 360 hardware to make every part of Reach look better than Halo 3. The weapons in the game have really taken a liking in to some new higher resolutions and polygon counts. The redesigned Covenant Grunts look brilliant, the elites look beastly, the weapons look much more realistic and sound more richer. All the small minor design things that aren’t too visible to the eye such as scratch marks on the vehicles, guns and building tear’s look amazing.
Overall we have come across no faults with the design itself with any of the design aspects, everything looks polish and fresh making 100% use of the X360 graphics to its full potential.
The level design is what Bungie’s is good at , the variety of different open battlefields, labyrinth styled buildings, along with closed of quarters for combat. The wide variety of Reach’s level design blend very well. Old-School players will be happy to know that the Halo 2 low-gravity field is referenced in this title.

Gameplay

If your new to the franchise Halo: Reach is a first person shooter.  You take park of playing as a super soldier part of the Noble 6, engaged in combat with an alien collective known as the Covenant. The gameplay hasn’t changed to dramatically since Halo 3/ ODST. In Halo 3 you could duel-wield pistols and SMG’s, this time around similar to ODST you can only wield one gun at a time. There has been a few additional tweaks to the weaponry, the Assault rifle is a lot finer than the Halo 3 version, the BR is now known as its predecessor DMR (which shoots a single shot burst) the needler sniper rifle and many more new weapons like the Spartan’s M319 Grenade Launcher / re-invented weapons also make an appearance.   The gameplay animation is truly amazing, the cut scenes look fantastic and fluid and realistic. This time around if you didn’t feel like you were in a futuristic battle, this time you will and oh god does it feel good. The gameplay has only changed slightly and the controls have taken the ‘Call of duty’ approach to combat. It will only take a few minuets to get to grips with the minor layout changes, once your ready its all about dropping into reach, getting ready to battle on graphically stunning environments, new and inventive enemies’, driving in more responsive vehicles and shooting some covenant scum! The gameplay this time around is spot on, no issues as

everything is at 110% of solid motion. There have been some minor changes this time around as players are now granted abilities, these include a hologram, where the player spawns a “dummy” twin, jetpack, active camo, sprint, and “armour lock”, which makes the player invincible in exchange for the loss of mobility. The abilities really do change up the gameplay, throughout the different multiplayer modes different abilities are available. Practise is important and finding an ability that suits you best will come at ease after a few multiplayer matches. There are many new modes for players to try and battle each other on, a few of the old classic multiplayer modes make an appearance including team slayer, swat, big team battle, rumble pit, slayer, odd ball, king of the hill, VIP, Juggernaut and Grifball.

Multiplayer

This is where Halo Reach stands strong against its predecessors and competitors, this time around Bungie have managed to tern an already popular multiplayer into something  more amazing. It’s hard to imagine how they can make a multiplayer that use’s some of the similar elements of Halo 3 and make them feel fresh and brand new, its a great feeling and really does make Halo Reach stand out from the rest.  This time around the multiplayer modes (as mentioned in gameplay) return along with some brand new modes.

The new modes included are:

Assault
Infection
Forge 2.0
Race
Bumper Cars
DogFight
Golf
HogPile
Soccer
HeadHunter
Invasion
StockPile

Co-Op Arena

Forge returns  making the community very happy to know that is really does feel much more powerful standing out from its predecessor. The level editing is huge and feels like you have been given a separate game to be able to create what some creators will be able to make. The amount of options are endless giving players able to create their own game variants. As long as the community is ready for Forge 2.0 expect some amazing maps and level variants to be designed.

As you would of guessed the majority of them are self explanatory,  The armour abilities  really do make the gameplay for the multiplayer have some new lie to it. Invasion feels like an all-new mode. It’s an objective based game,  this game type is were strategy and team work comes in hand. The objectives are dynamic  putting Elites Vs Spartan’s against each other, plasma rifles, and assault rifles will be crossing paths. Expect to see full battles of Scorpions Vs Wraiths throughout the matches. Reach also introduces a new type  of co-operative class based play  which really fits the elements that Reach has to offer. Headhunter is another new mode that  stand-out’s out, how we would like to describe it is, take on Oddball, players collect these “oddball skulls” build up as many as they can and defeat other players to steel theirs, causing the gameplay to be constantly hectic and on edge.

Included with the other multiplayer modes includes the well known ODST multiplayer mode Firefight, this time around has online options where you can now search for random players, also you can now battle them. Weekly challenges also appear for in-game battles scoring you achievements and more credits for more armour upgrades. The credits system works well and continues to keep the multiplayer in perfect balance, weapon unlocks would only ruin it. Luckily there is none.

Overall – A Must Have

Halo Reach is a fantastic title for Bungie to end on, it will be a shame to see Bungie leave the Halo franchise but what a title to leave on, Even though the campaign isn’t all that clear on where your next objective is, its nothing to much to worry about. The weapons are great, multiplayer maps feel like the classic Halo 2 maps whilst still staying unique, forge mode will continue to keep players interested and we are sure some crazy maps will be hitting the internet soon. Bungie have still managed to keep that Halo charm brining more countless hours to spend on the new multiplayer modes and some of the classic fan favourites. The campaign and story is solid and has made more sense to the original trilogy for those who are unsure. This is a must have for anyone into first person shooters, hardcore fans will be very happy with this title as the gameplay is still addictive and enjoyable to play.