Review | Halo Reach

Love it or hate it, the Halo franchise is responsible for winning over the hearts of many sworn enemies of the console first person shooter; Microsoft’s most venerable Xbox hero, Master Chief, has made his way into the lounges of many a PC gamer who almost managed to admit an FPS was kind of, sort of, maybe, just maybe playable with something other than WADS and a mouse. The Xbox’s big old cuddly controller and Halo’s easy to grasp gameplay mechanics, not to mention engaging characters and an always involved and well fleshed out plotline certainly made it easier for them.

Halo: Reach is the sixth title in the Halo franchise (although, chronologically, the action in Reach takes place before the first Halo of the entire series) and focuses not on Master Chief and his familiar shenanigans but on a group of Spartans known as Noble Team who set down on the planet Reach as the last line of defense between the ever advancing Covenant and the destruction of Earth.

If you’ve not played Halo before, you owe it to yourself to pick up an Xbox and give it a go. Playing a first person shooter on a console’s really not that hard; and besides, it’s not all first person shooter action; there’s bikes and tanks to drive and small ships to pilot as well so stop being a baby and just have a go.

As is the Halo way, you can only carry two weapons at a time, switching between them as the need arises. You can pick up a lot of different types of weapons throughout the game (including Covenant weaponry) so choosing the right ones to use at any given time can give you a tactical advantage. Sadly, grenades have not been given much focus in Reach; they’re the same old sticky or plasma variants that we’ve had for a while now; in our opinion we could do with some more options here. This reviewer in particular is a grenade FREAKY FREAK but a word of warning, the little bastards are a lot trickier to take out by lobbing a little sum’in sum’in in this most recent of titles.

What you aim for with those weapons have also had relatively little revamp, at least externally. You’ll recognise most, if not all of the enemies you face, however many of the bad dudes have been reworked considerably; some of them are harder to kill and some are much much easier than you’re used to so be careful: you’re not going to be able to just pick up and go hard, at least for the first several levels until you’re nice and happy with how things pop.

As we said, you play as part of a squad; this may have sent at least some of you scurrying for large rocks to hide under or perhaps reaching for the tissues to blow your noses after a good long cry and for good reason here we’re sorry to tell you; your artificially intelligenticised (it’s a word) squad-mates are complete retards who manage to stuff pretty much everything up, always. It’s not completely dire because for the most part you can ignore them but damn Bungie, why on earth did you leave them in when they’re so stupid?

While a lot about Reach has remained true to the Halo franchise — for the most part things look, and play the same as always — there has been some considerable changes as well. As well as giving you a lot more customisation options to give your character, um, character, the new backpack system now lets you change your character’s abilities to a certain extent. There are a number of these backpacks available, and the enhancements you get range from invulnerability, to invisibility to a jetpack and more. Some of these you will find more useful in multiplayer than through the single player campaign, but we played the game through on Ultra-Mega-Badass and we needed all the help we could get. Dashing from cover to cover throwing out a decoy here and there is very satisfying and on the harder difficulties will mean the difference between making it through unscathed or reloading a bazillion times.

While the single player campaign is fun and all (and runs at a decent length too) the real fun lies when you bust out the multiplayer. If you’re a fan of the Halo multiplayer modes then you’ll be blown away by how much they’ve done to it for Reach. There’s a huge amount here, including new matchmaking features which hopefully make sure you don’t get completely outclassed. There are a bunch of new game types including the awesome Rocketfight, where everyone runs around with unlimited rocket launchers and causes absolute mayhem amongst the waves of advancing Covenant.

If the mountain of multiplayer content already on offer doesn’t please you your Majesty, there’s even a completely fantastic level editor which lets you create your own custom levels. You can make pretty much everything your heart desires and bundle it up as a multiplayer level.

Whether you’ve been a fan of the Halo series or not, we reckon there’s enough here to please even the toughest critic. The balance between the single- and multiplayer offerings has been perfectly tuned, the gameplay’s been tweaked, and the game in general is, well, pretty awesome. There are a few niggles here and there; some of the graphics could have been a bit better, and damned if the AI of your squad members couldn’t have been improved but we’re stoked with this new Halo offering and think it makes a damned decent purchase.