Halo Reach review

13 Oct, 2010

Note: This review contains no spoilers.

This is it.  Even though Halo will live on with 343 Industries at Microsoft, this is the swan song from the team behind the Halo franchise, it is fitting then that Reach brings us back to the planet that Master Chief was trained at.  Based just before the events of the original Halo game, as Nobel Six you work through the events leading up to Master Chief’s grand awakening.

Nobel Team are a group of Spartan-III super soldiers who are originally tasked with dealing with rebel uprisings on the planet Reach.  You join them as Nobel 6, a war torn Spartan with a classified past in the UNSC and is equally as tight lipped but as lethal as the big man in green.  Soon your team discovers that reported attacks aren’t coming from rebels but that of the Covenant.  From here a “Winter Contingency” is declared meaning that all humans must evacuate the planet and destroy all sensitive research and intel to stop the Covenant discovering earth.  Your team of Spartans are then tasked with holding the Covenant off as long as possible for the fate of humanity.

Halo veterans already know how the story ends, but the exploits of Nobel 6 have never been told.  Thus giving the most hardcore of Halo fanatics enough surprises in the storyline to keep engrossed.  Instead of the Halo trilogy’s emphasis of being an action game, Reach feels more like watching a war documentary based on a great tragedy.  Moments in the plot tease the element of hope, before the ultimate fall of Reach.

The Halo series has had a history of great pacing, and that holds up here.  The script is solid and is the easiest Halo story to follow as it doesn’t require you to know everything about the universe to understand the events unfolding.  Coupled with strong voice acting and a much more humanised set of characters, it is easy to sympathies with Nobel’s plight and stay engrossed to the end.

Halo Reach isn’t simply Halo 4, it is also a decades worth of experience with evolving the gameplay mechanics and direction of the campaign, and it shows.  Reach is the hardest game in the series thanks to Bungie’s smart enemy AI.  Sticking this game on Heroic or Legendary will test you to the brink of your ability where once certain enemy types Master Chief would steamroll over, now are a big enough threat to kill you if you’re not paying attention.

Learning from the triumphs and mistakes of Halo 3: ODST, the two-tier health system has returned.  You have a shield and separate health bar which regenerates in stages, and can bring the adrenaline levels up as you cling to life scrambling for a health pack.  New weaponry like the Designated Marksman Rifle (DMR) and the old-classic Halo Magnum are here to give you a fighting chance, but the weapons are so well balanced that every weapon has a counter forcing you to vary your battle plan when the situation calls for it.

Weapons aren’t the only thing changed, armour abilities are also available to give you a super power in your pocket.  Set to replace the deployable from Halo 3, instead of a few specific items you can only use once, now you have more choice and can use the same ability repeatedly as long as it is charged.  From something simple like Sprint to the very entertaining Jet-pack, there’s something for everyone in Bungie’s toy box to add a whole new layer of strategy to the sandbox.

Halo has always been known for its great multiplayer, and Reach is no exception, the multiplayer suite is simply massive.  FireFight returns from ODST and this time allows you to customise the game until your heart’s content.  The ability to adjust things from health and weapon load out, down to what Covenant troops deploy at which phases of them match is staggering and should have you playing for years to come.  Included also is FireFight matchmaking, meaning you can look for people online to create a squad and play specific modes Bungie have created when you want a challenge.  The action stays frantic and scaled to your skill level, meaning that you can keep addicted to FireFight for months of sleepless nights trying to scrape that high score.

The meat of it all though is the versus multiplayer and it’s deeper and more expansive than ever.  With twelve maps on the disc, more game types and variations than you can possibly count and Bungie’s matchmaking service which is still the best in gaming, it’s hard to fault such a robust suite.  New game types such as Invasion which pits Spartans vs Elites in a game type similar to Bad Company 2‘s “Rush” mode and Headhunter which sees players collect skulls of fallen enemies to score points both show the different styles of play Halo can provide.  Map rotation at time of launch is a bit on the short side, but Bungie has dedicated to updating the playlists every month with balance tweaks and game mode variants.

Forge returns with improvements and inclusions from Halo 3, as Bungie was shown by its fanatical community just what forge should be able to achieve.  This time editing or creating maps of all scales and styles is possible thanks to new tools like being able to alter physics in objects and a greater budget thanks to the improved engine.  To give master craftsmen a grand canvas to perform on, Forge World was created as the simple biggest environment Bungie has ever created.  Greater in size than five large maps, there are a variety of places to build your dream map in any landscape you desire.  The only limitation this time is your imagination.

Unfortunately though, Reach is not perfect.  The mission variety is lacking, and when you do something different it’s over too soon making it at times become monotonous, even if that tone is the high pitched sound of gunfire.  Throughout the campaign, all you do is go from one encounter to the next with the objective of killing everything not human and either moving on; or flicking a switch and then moving on.  The events in the game’s story also do not match the Fall of Reach story which Bungie claimed was canon, thus meaning players who take Halo’s canon seriously will become confused and irritated that Bungie changed events to make for a “Hollywood” style ending to tie into Halo: CE.

Graphically, Reach is leaps and bounds above Halo 3.  Great art direction and strong use of colour gives a less cartoon look to the game and thankfully a greater reduction of purple everywhere.  The detail in the high resolution textures on character models at times can look stunning, and the gun and lighting effects are some of the best in the generation.  The great vistas on Reach can at times be breathtaking, yet it never manages to stay in the upper-tier of this generation’s graphical powerhouses.  Yet when you see the beautiful skyboxes, you stop caring.  The campaign struggles in various places with frame-rate stutter and sometimes under-whelming attempts to make the conflict greater than it actually is.

Martin O’Donnell returns to score the music to Reach and again he has knocked it out of the park.  Powerful war anthems pulse behind the action to keep you emotionally charged in the conflict.  All scored in familiar Halo styles, this time giving the sense of impending doom can bring an element of drama to the plot that only Marty has been able to capture.

Halo Reach is the complete package and is truly a love letter to the Halo community.  As Bungie spreads its wings in a new direction with Activision, they wanted to leave their fans with the tools and the game they have always wanted.  In sheer content alone, Reach is pure value for money as Bungie’s vision and scope was never compromised in creating its Pièce de résistance.  Master Chief might be retired, but calling this Halo 4 is no reach.

[rating:5/5] Buy it