Kirk Barron

Let me rephrase that; One more reason why I don’t like prequels.

Halo: Reach is actually a very good game. It plays like the previous Halo games even with the addition of sprinting, jet packs and other load out options. But like most of the other Halo games, the story stumbles in places where it could be great.

The game looks amazing. So many crazy lighting effects and little details.

The appeal of Reach isn’t the suspense of what will happen to the planet. I’ve played through every Halo, even Halo Wars, so I knew the gist of what went down on Reach before I played the game. I haven’t read any of the books so I don’t know what else is added to the lore in those, but I knew Master Chief was the only Spartan to make it off the planet alive.

Obviously Bungie faced a tough challenge to come up with a compelling story when most players already knew the main characters can’t survive. It’s such common knowledge that I probably don’t need to put a spoiler warning on this review. Though, to be safe, some of what I am going to write about from here on out might count as minor spoilers.

The campaign on Legendary is tough, very tough.

I thought Bungie did a good job, for the most part, in creating a story that was engaging. But I was disappointed in a few things. The first and biggest thing that bothered me about Reach is the lack of an introduction to Master Chief (SPOILER? There isn’t a mention of him during the main story but there is an easter egg that shows him briefly near the end of the game). Here is a game that tells of the fall of Reach and launches you directly into the storyline of Halo: Combat Evolved yet there’s no mention of any Spartan getting off the planet alive. Well, there’s not really any mention of the Spartans in general. Just Noble Team and the shit they went through. I hoped the story would provide some back story about the Spartans and what they were doing on Reach. Instead, the game made it seem like the planet was basically just a research outpost and not much more.

Another small issue I had with the story was how some of the other members of Noble Team were killed off. Some made sense but others seemed like they ran out of ideas. For instance, one member of your team dies by getting shot through a hole in the roof by a sniper on a Phantom floating overhead – moments after an intense firefight where the same Spartan was shot in the head hundreds of times to no ill effect. It didn’t add anything to the story the way they died, it was just like they had come to a spot in the story where the writers felt somebody should die, so, bang, bullet to the head.

Even this Elite took more than one sniper bullet to the dome to kill.

I’m not sure if I’m confused because I hadn’t played the previous Halo games recently but this game raised a lot of questions. More questions than it answered. If Bungie was trying to get people to replay the series in chronological order, congrats, because I think I need to go back and do that to see if some of this stuff doesn’t make sense because I forgot parts of the story or if it doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t actually make sense.

Reach is another highly polished product from Bungie and I’m glad I bought it but, like Halo Wars, the story just misses me. I don’t mean to compare Reach’s story to the nonexistent story of Halo Wars, but I don’t think either provides much background to the story which is what I look for in a prequel. I wanted Wars to tell me about the first encounter with the Covenant, it didn’t. I wanted Reach to tell me how Master Chief was the only Spartan – the only member of an army of badass super soldiers – to escape that planet alive. Instead the story ignores everything that went on in the battle for Reach except what happened to this one small group of Spartans who, though they did play an important roll, were just a small part of a big war.

Never use a shotgun on an outdoor level, especially on Legendary.

I’ve had similar gripes about the previous Halo games. Often the story seems to only exist to get the player to the next area. Ultimately this is OK because, like the previous Halo games, each of those sections is damn fun to play.

Usually my first play-through of a game is on the Normal difficulty setting. I like playing the game and following the story without losing momentum when I get stuck on a particularly difficult section. I’ve beat the three main Halo games on Legendary but I always do so on my second play through. I’m glad I did that with Reach because Legendary is just as ridiculous, and rewarding, as in the past.

You know, like when out of nowhere a Banshee dives down from way up in the sky and splatter you.

You have to be a video game god to play Halo on Legendary alone and still follow the story. I can play on Legendary and get through most areas fairly easily but on every level there’s a section or two that increases the difficulty and it takes me 20 deaths to figure out a way through. Usually, by the time I’m done with that section I can’t remember where in the story I am.

The last Halo game I played online for any amount of time was Halo 2. I still haven’t popped into matchmaking yet and I’m not really sure if I’m going to. I played multiplayer a bit in the Beta but I found it frustrating. It seemed like everyone was using the jetpack and if I got close to them they’d just jetpack in the air and shoot me in the head while I pumped bullets futility into their feet. I don’t know if that’s still the case but as I get older and more apathetic about my gaming habits I find online play to be less fun. Taking the time to master the skills you need to not get destroyed every five seconds takes more time than I feel like investing.

It only took me about 6 hours to beat the game on Normal and I’m finding I can get through a level in about an hour on Legendary so I don’t know if I’d recommend buying this game if you only want to play through the campaign once. It might be better as a rental. However, there are enough extras such as Firefight, Matchmaking and Forge as well as the appeal of actually beating the game a second time on Legendary to make it worth buying if you’re a fan of the other Halo games.

I can be very cynical when it comes to critiquing games and movies so I still enjoyed Reach as much as the other games in the series.