Prior to the release, Bungie had been keen to express their desire to go all out in their final franchise effort with Halo: Reach. To say that this is the definitive Halo title, you wouldn’t be far off. However, Halo has arguably been driving the console shooter genre for the last decade. And if Halo: Reach is meant to be the culmination of a decade’s worth of experience, then it’s hard to see too much forward momentum for the genre in the near future. The moniker ‘Combat Evolved’ has long worn off. So the definitive Halo this may be, but that isn’t saying as much as it should, nor as much as many of the overexcited critics would lead you to believe.
Halo: Reach is a prequel to the original Master Chief trilogy. Set on the Planet Reach, a humanised colony that acts as the main military hub of the UNSC, the game recalls the events leading up to the original game, Halo: Combat Evolved. You play as a member of the Noble team (you’re simply dubbed ‘Noble Six’) who are a group of Spartan IIIs (an inferior model to Master Chief) that have been called in to quell a supposed rebellion. Unfortunately, you soon realise that it’s actually the Covenant that have been causing the problems, and are thrown into a full scale war engulfing the entire planet.
It's all happening on Planet Reach!
Halo actually has some fantastic lore and background that very rarely gets utilised to the best extent in the games. Halo: Reach probably does the best job so far of actually delivering a story in terms of presentation and pacing, and actually works well as a series entry point. Unfortunately though, there is a distinct standard military feel to it, punctuated by emotional detachment and lack of lore utilisation. It’s a real shame because all the games represent a missed opportunity to provide the definitive sci-fi gaming saga, though at least in Reach it’s not due to a lack of effort. Sure, there are a few moments that will have the fanboys squealing, but they’ll be the only ones changing their pants.
While RPGs have been doing the whole customisable protagonist for sometime now, playing as the customised Spartan is an interesting twist. You don’t have a lot of options to start off with, but you will eventually earn a whole bunch of aesthetic trinkets that will allow you to customise just about every segment of your armour, as well as your colours and emblem. You unlock items by completing in-game objectives and advancing player ranks, then buying them with the credits that you earn with everything that you do in the game. While this is nothing new, Halo: Reach does do a commendable job of integrating this into both single and multiplayer – your Noble Six, is yours in everything that you do with Halo: Reach.
The best that can be said of the campaign is that it’s probably the most complete and varied experience so far. As mentioned though, there really hasn’t been that much evolution since the original 2001 release. As such, a lot of the flaws have carried through the entire cannon. Overall, the Reach campaign is difficult to judge. Just like all the Halo titles before it, what’s there is good but could have been done better from a number of perspectives. Still, at least the minimum courtesy of fixing the save system from Halo: ODST has been covered.
This actually came out nicely.
Across the game’s nine missions, you’re taken for quite a ride. You cover a lot, and get to do just about all the things that made Halo enjoyable and as mentioned, Halo: Reach is probably the most varied experience so far. Not only do you get to cover a huge portion of the planet Reach, but the atmosphere above it too, as the game takes you for the first time into space combat. This much anticipated sequence actually plays quite well and fits in with the grand scheme of things. Outside of this, you actually have a nice mix of battles; be they up-close, mass scale or vehicular in nature. Throw in some assaults, assassinations and base defences and you’ve got liquorice allsorts. There is some minor retreading, but to a bearable level.
While not having much by way of personality, being part of the Noble Team helps the experience. When they’re around, that is. With the majority of the team is assembled together, you make a powerful and united force. It manages to add some scope to the battle, as you can now have AI partners that can put up a fight alongside you. Enemies will target them, as well as you, making the experience feel much more like an actual battlefield, more so than previous titles. Your environments encourage a variety of tactics too. From one area early on that will allow you to flank from two sides with rising pylons in the middle that can be used as impromptu cover for both sides, to the complex bases with a heap of hidden goodies lying about later on, Halo: Reach boasts genuine tactical options. And despite some scripting, nothing is guaranteed to work twice.
Despite being a prequel and playing as the lower ranked Spartan III model, there are a few new weapons and power-ups to play with. The weapons don’t really add much more than variety for the sake of variety, especially the ‘Hammer of Dawn’ type weapon which we got to use once. Rather than being deployable, you now equip your power-up of choice, such as sprint, armour lock-up and the much anticipated jetpack. In the least, the jetpack actually feels like it should and does add some dimension to the game when you actually use it. Finally, there are a number of subtle gameplay ‘challenges’ that will earn you credits and ranks as you play through and complete them.
Surprise assassination!
While Bungie often seems to be proud to show off the innovations in Halo, they seem to do it with scant regard of the fact that a lot have been already done (duel-wielding anyone?). However, it’s the continual disregard for the flaws that really holds the game back. Aside from the seeming unwillingness to get back in front of the curve, the same mistakes and idiosyncrasies are made throughout. Even though having your whole Noble team makes you a force to be reckoned with, this is a rare luxury. Friendly AI is still flaky and lacking in survival or combat instinct. While you sometimes get helped by normal soldiers, they rarely survive without a major leg-up from you. And don’t bother taking the gun turret on a vehicle, unless you like seeing the twat driver go around in circles while the enemies camp behind a building.
Enemy AI on the other hand is ruthless on anything higher than normal, though it doesn’t help that Elites can take 18 shots to the head before gunning you down with a solitary pistol shot. It’s almost as if there is no better way to make the game more challenging without making you a sitting duck other than giving you enemies that don’t die and no ammo. It doesn’t help either that the objective and peripheral marking is uselessly backwards. You’re barely ever given more than a cryptic direction over the radio, leaving a lot of potential for getting lost. Furthermore, the scale of the battles in Reach make your 25 metre radar stone motherless useless. You’re dead before anything gets in the range. And there is still no way to know that there is a bullet/projectile/grenade coming from anywhere outside of your vision range until you’re back at the last checkpoint.
All this reinforces one solid fact; Halo: Reach is a multiplayer game. If you want to get the best out of the campaign, do so with a friend. The difficulty will scale, meaning more enemies with more people, but the upshot from this is you actually have someone competent to help you and get a true battlefield feeling from it. Introduced in ODST, Firefight has been given an upgrade, with a huge number of customisable options having been added to the mode as well as matchmaking and options to export any user created modes.
If you're not prepared to get owned, stay out of Reach.
Matchmaking in the general multiplayer mode works quite well too. All our games so far have been played out with minimal lag and a maximum amount of Australian voices. There are a bunch of new modes as well, including Invasion and *sigh* Infection - with a Halo twist. It’s hardly anything new but the variety is appreciated. Finally, Forge has been given an upgrade, both in size and content, and is now known as 'Forge World'. There doesn’t seem to be any explicit control explanation, but a bit of experimentation will allow you to make a heap of varied creations, as long as you have the patience and desire to sit through it. At the end, Reach cannot be accused of lacking communal options.
While Halo: Reach is the best looking of the series, that was never going to be a huge task. Reach definitely wins out in terms of variety and mass scale of the environments. Each mission looks significantly different from the last and watching battles from afar will give you some appreciation of the scale, as does the space combat sequence. At the end of the day though, Halo Reach is still behind the curve. Commonly criticised areas such as animation haven’t really gone anywhere, aliasing issues are prevalent and the occasional performance hiccup is disturbing. While usually the stand-out of any Halo title, the sound track is a bit more sombre and subdued this time around. While it successfully conveys the impending doom that you are facing, it isn’t as memorable as the ‘march to victory’ in Halo 3. The remaining sounds reverberates what you’ve heard over the last decade.
Perhaps those who aren’t fans of Halo would appreciate it more if it wasn’t held up as the supposed pinnacle of the shooter genre on consoles. Even as glorified but successful fan service, Halo Reach is without a doubt the most complete and varied title of the series, with a vast number of communal options that can make it a thoroughly enjoyable game with friends. As a complete single and multiplayer package, it’s difficult to fault. But for a title that supposedly represents the forefront of the genre, its alarming place behind the innovation curve and failure to live up to the original’s evolution moniker signal a desperate need for change. It is good, but maybe now it can finally get better.
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