Halo: Reach

If you enjoyed Halo (more towards Combat Evolved or even ODST), then you'll enjoy Reach. The graphics engine has been overhauled, and as such graphics are better than the other games (although they weren't bad to begin with). The game likes to boast such things through-out, as it often has moments where you are facing a stunning vista backdrop of the planet, or some large-scale battle happening, and you just let a little "wow" slip out. Details on things like guns and armor are even better, helping to add to the overall cosmetics, although every now and then you'll notice little hiccups (such as Emile's skull helmet paint randomly missing in-game).

The enemies...well, they are essentially the same, with some minor tweakings - Elites (the predator-mouthed aliens that were missing as enemies in the third installment) are ridiculously difficult (at least on Legendary difficulty) thanks to their re-tweaking of Shields and balance of firearm damages. You find yourself actually elated by the appearance of the brutes later on, even with their helmets and heavy hitting, simply because the elites (as designed) have returned to being the scariest opponent in the game. A new form of jackal (skirmishers) make an appearance as well, being toted as the "close range" specialists compared to the jackals, although with their crazy jumping antics, I found myself getting more often sniped-at by these little hairy lizards then punched at. Missing also is the Flood, something that I personally don't complain about although I do hear some murmurs of sorrow from others (psssh). Oh, yes, they also have a pair of big Rancor-beast looking aliens that you run into in one segment, but difficulty wise they may as well be non-existent. Ideally, if you didn't like any of the other Halo's due to lack of enemy variety, then this also probably won't be your cup of tea.

The weapon selection is much of the same, and many will find themselves gravitate towards sniper-esque weapons such as the Designated Marksmen Rifle (DMR), pistol, and alien Needle Rifle, ideally due to it being much easier to kill something with a shot to the head then deal with emptying multiple magazines of the less than ideal Assault Rifle (not as good as it was in the first, but an improvement over some of it's later trilogy sequels). Some of the other new additions are a crack-barrel grenade launcher, a covie "sticky grenade launcher" that mildly tracks targets, and a few variations of the plasma rifle - a more rapid fire version, and a slower one that serves as an inbetween for the stronger explosive weapons and the rifle itself. Assassinations are also new, performed simply by holding down the melee when behind an opponent. Although it's nice to just snap someones neck or bury a knife in them dynamically, you risk getting blown up, shot up, or otherwise killed while doing so - much like in the newer AvP. Missing as well are all grenades except the original sticky and frag grenades.

The campaign spins a fun story, that throws much nostalgia at the user ("This stage feels just like Y stage from Halo X"), but in the end it seems to putter out. I mean, anyone that's up to date with the halo mythos at all knows that "reach falls" (even the commercials tell you that), so you expect the end outcome itself, but just how it's presented leaves you wishing they could have come up with something a bit cooler - and this is coming from a fan of epic last stands. Now, outside of that end point, the story does indeed keep you going, trying to see what they will do next to try and win the fight, and the missions themselves are fun - even the two or three stages that turn into semi-railed vehicle shooters. The only downside to this is that there is no real tutorial to the game's newer features worked in, so anyone who doesn't know whats going on could be left clueless as to what exactly a specific item does - unless that little pop-up happens that tells them to hit the back button to show you what the items you have do.

The new features themselves - the "armor abilities" - are nice, but you don't get as much use of them as you'd like in any of the play modes. The jetpack, although fun to fly around with, most often will get you gunned down as you sail hopelessly through the air at pretty slow speeds. The 'armor lock' that turns you into a little invulnerable ball will save your life a few times ("oh noes, I was stuck!" lock for the save!), but often times if you are in the situation to need it, you will die as soon as it goes off and all the good folks who were patient enough to wait for it to expire kill you. The holographic ability that sends a fake you running to the point you said works a charm on the AI, but isn't always successful against humans that have had it used on them/for them. Active camo got downgraded quite a bit, making it only moderately useful if you do anything beyond crouch-walking (you decloak if you move to fast, shoot, get hit). The drop shield is especially handy in the campaign, as it functions as the bubble shield in Halo 3 (stops rounds and explosives from coming in) but also restores your health bar like a health kit. There's also a default sprint/dive roll. Now, these and weapons are combined into pre-made 'loadouts' that you select (for most game variants) at the start of the match and during respawn.

Multiplayer wise (and somewhat single), the "armory" armor customization is a nice improvement - finally you get to customize your look to more extent then just picking a handful of colors. I've been asking that of FPS games since they did it back in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. Now, although I enjoy and I appreciate it being added in, the actual delivery method is an annoyance. First off, things are locked off in two ways : one- in game credits (earned by playing the game in any form, although to get any significant increase it must be done through online Matchmaking) are spent, and second - you must reach specific requirements (such as Rank - "leveled up" through earning credits, and owning other parts of gear in the chain). Now, this seems silly that we would need both of these, since the largest problem is that the cost in credits of some of the later items is ridiculous (average real good match might net you 2k points, and there is one helmet that costs around 2 or 300 k). To make it a little more frustrating, you will at some 'rank up's earn new gear, which is silly because this gear has pre-reqs of even higher levels that you ha vent obtained yet - why not just unlock it when you could actually use it. There was also some items that are unlocked from preorder/edition of the game you got. This leads to easier killings in multiplayer, when everyone thinks they are cool running around with helmets wreathed in fire, allowing you to see their mugs from across the map with your scoped weapons. Still, strangest yet about this system even though logically it make sense, when online you still see everyone wearing pretty much the same outfits.

The match types are wide and varied - slayers, capture points/flags, races, collect the most of something, "zombie" infection types, and team variants. There is also a mode that is called "Invasion" which comes in slayer and objective formats, which is a multi teared affair, with loadouts and weaponry escalating as events happen/time expires. It's what you'd expect out of something that is the 5th installment of a series of games. From what I can tell matchmaking doesn't offer customizable matches, which is a shame since its the only way to really earn a decent amount of credits.

Reach is also one of the few games that offers gear for your Xbox live avatar through achievements (the 5 members of Noble team you don't play give your little self helmets, if you can achieve the goals). More games should do it, as its a much better alternative that paying for all this stuff for your little bugger. The only downside is that three of the five helmets can be gotten ONLY through multiplayer matchmaking.

Control-wise, as long as your cool with a controller, its responsive and smooth. During a recent LAN party, I did notice a strange mishap where a grenade would be tossed while jetpacking (although the button was not pressed to do so), but this could be a controller issue and not the actual game. It's standard fair shooter controllers for the standard console gamer.

By the way, It would be a shame for me to not mention the 3 tiers the game comes in - default game, game with a super-fancy box that contains bonus in-game DLC and a journal that contains all sorts of thing (patch, 'ID cards', map, etc), and the version that contains all that PLUS a big mcfarlane-style statue of Noble team (minus noble 6 of course). Is that statue worth the extra 50 some-odd dollars? We'll dictate that when someone buys it from ebay for 20 bucks :-P

All in all, Halo is one of the games that helped make the Xbox, so it's only fitting that this game keeps the tradition going. I enjoyed it, the campaign on normal took only about 6-7 hours (legendary took more along the lines of 12-15 hours on co-op, and I expect it to take even more than that when I try to solo it all, albeit the first two stages only took 4 hours - but they are the easy ones).