Halo Reach

Halo Reach is an Xbox 360 game and it is a prequel to Halo Combat Evolved{Halo one}. The game is set on the planet Reach and you play as the newest member of the noble team defending the planet from the covenant. The first mission you go on is to check out a distress signal and you find out that the covenant have landed on Reach. You go on missions around the planet as it soon escalates to all out war as humanity tries to repel the alien invaders.

One of the first things I noticed was the slick new menu. It shows what friends are online and what games they are playing. You can invite them to parties and games with ease and check out their stats and records its good for getting into games quick.

I found the campaign very engaging and fun to play it sucks you into the story quickly. The characters you interact with help to set the tone and your squad mates have unique personalities which help drive the story. The missions at the start are a bit slow but they get bigger and better as the game progresses. The missions you go on take you to different environments from farms to military bases to battered city streets and to space.

 The graphics in the game are good especially in the cut scenes its makes the story look really well. Overall though I was expecting a bit better but they do not disappoint.  

Most levels are pretty big and offer stunning views which allows for some nice game play diversity.  The new level design makes so you can pick your own rout through the battlefield which makes for more exciting and strategized game play.

You can get your friends to help out with your campaign which makes it more enjoyable and leads to great moments of teamwork. You can keep score individually or as a team when playing the campaign if you turn on the skulls which is good crack when you’re seeing if you can beat your mates score. You can also play the campaign in matchmaking online if you’re a loser and don’t have other friends to play with or you just want to look for hardcore gamers who know what they’re doing which is handy.  These options make the campaign great to play and more of a buzz if you want to go back and play them again on different difficulties.

I fist played the campaign on heroic and took my time with it and found it grand it wasn’t too hard and wasn’t too easy. I wanted to get a feel for it before I dived into the deep end but I felt for such a high rating as heroic it was a bit to calm. I  completed it on legendary which is the hardest difficulty just one step up from heroic and its crazy some parts are so hard you can’t even move without dyeing you have to take it real slow and try pick them off one by one or try and run for the check points and hope you don’t die.  I like the challenge of it and you get so much more satisfaction when you pass a level. That sudden release you get which is epic and that sweet sweet achievement sound you hear for passing a level on legendary makes all the stress worth it and the fact alone that you are a boss for completing a halo game on legendary.

There is a firefight mode in Reach which offers up to four players an arena to take on increasing difficulty waves of covenant enemies.  You can play by yourself or with your friends or go online and play with others.  You can also choose to defend generators from the covenant.  There is also extensive game options that lets you customize loads of stuff like the weapons the gravity your shields and health and allot more which is good fun to mess around with. It’s a good buzz just for going and spraying a load of grunts if you don’t have Xbox live or if your just not arsed going online and playing against other gamers.

The buttons are different in Reach if you’re used to playing the other halo games it took me a while to get used to them when I first started playing, I kept pressing B to dig someone in the face but instead it just changed my grenade type and I would end up dyeing which was very annoying. I only figured it out later that you can go into the controller settings and change it back to the old layout if you prefer.

There are cool armour ability’s in Reach they work on a small timer and give players a specific power that can give them the edge in combat.  Whether it’s a quick run to safety or a jetpack out of the way or a camouflage for stealthy manoeuvres’ or the amour lock to survive an explosion or a quick decoy to avoid your enemy. These ability’s enrich the combat and offer a more strategic way to play and are great fun.

The multiplayer in Reach is great. You can edit what type of players you want to be matched up with. If you don’t want chatty players or lone players it’s handy but I found it didn’t make much of a difference and after a while you just don’t care. There is a new voting system in matchmaking which allows you to vote for a change of map or game type. There is also a new objective based game called invasion where it’s Spartans vs. the elites challenging one team to capture a sires of positions to win the round. It is a nice change of pace and is good fun to play.

 I played online allot in Reach when I first got the game. I enjoy going up rank and playing the new game types but after a while I just went back to playing Halo 3 online. There was something about it that didn’t keep me interested. I think it was the armour ability’s they opened up a load of new doors for combat and made you look at the battlefield in a completely different way but I think they took away from the basic core gaming of the multiplayer.

There is a new forge in Halo Reach that gives you allot more cool creation powers. There are nine forge maps including the massive forge world which is deadly. Forge ranks among the most impressive creation studios available on consoles today. I have spent hours on it just making one map.

Halo Reach is full of excellent content the campaign the addictive firefight mode and the completive multiplayer makes it a really good shooter.