I had been planning on making a better effort to post here, at least daily, but what was supposed to be a quick post of Tuesday kind of took over my spare time. Two words: “Halo: Reach.”
The gameplay is classic Halo, if it moves and isn’t you shoot it. But, Bungie did add some changes that make the game infinitely better. Now your SPARTAN has “abilities” as in cloaking, sprinting or (my personal favorite) the jetpack. These all make campaign and online much more interesting and require a more intelligent level of play than simply running for the nearest rocket launcher and firing till all you hear is clicking. Case in point: on one mission in campaign were you are blessed with the use of a jetpack it suddenly becomes much easier just to jet above a ferocious alien with a giant blue sword running at you than emptying a half-loaded magazine into him and praying.
Oh and then there is the plot. To sum it up in one sentence it is good, really good, but has a few problems. There are some plot holes a Covenant super-carrier could fly through and some previously released Halo canon was simply ignored (like the fact that only three SPARTAN-3’s are alive in the Universe and some items that are major spoilers). It’s just that, and feel free to skip to the next paragraph if you don’t feel like reading some Geek-Rage™, it isn’t that hard to make sure that everything fits correctly. They could have all been SPARTAN-2’s and had the armor abilities, it is a military planet with major amounts of tech, and it wouldn’t be inconceivable. It just leaves me disappointed in the abilities of the Bungie staff having smart story telling, and frankly has me worried about what their next game is going to be, being as that this is the final Halo coming from the dream team.
Online is amazing, simply the best experience I have had with or without friends on my Xbox since Halo: Combat Evolved was released. The balance system has been fixed since “Halo 3” and the $60 price tag has, so far, kept the airwaves clean of whining seven-year-olds that swear more than Rahm Emmanuel when he sees the presidential approval ratings. There is also a new feature for customizing what type of people you would like to play with, which may also be why I have yet to come in contact with the main reason why I hated playing Halo 3 online.
On the achievement front the game is fairly easy. Beat it on normal and legendary and play probably about 20-hours worth of online and you will have your 1000G. With that said, the inevitable DLC achievements that will come with map packs are probably going to be just as annoying as some of the “Halo 3” and “Gears of War 2” do X number of Y on Z map(s) achievements that devs seem to be so fond of.
In summary, this game is a definite buy if you own a 360, which you should (like really if you don’t have one go to Best Buy right now and fix it, it’s a moral and ethical imperative). It’s an instant classic that shows just how far gaming has come since you first stepped out of a cyrotube and shot Captain Keyes just to see how long you could last.
Gameplay- 9.0
Graphics- 8.5
Plot- 7.5
Online- 10
Replay value- 10
Final Grade- 9.0
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