I have had Halo: Reach for a couple of weeks now, but only been able to play online for the last week or so. And while I do love the campaign and Firefight mode, let's face it, the only reason any Halo game has been set above the rest is because of its amazing multiplayer. Hence why this review is coming so late after the release, because half the game is in the online play.
We'll start with the Campaign. The moment the story starts, we see a lone helmet lying on an ashen battlefield with a bullet hole straight through the face, then it cuts to Noble 6 (your character) putting on that exact same helmet (minus the burn marks and bullet hole). Letting us know that at some point, your character will most likely get shot in the face in the end. Kind of depressing way to start out, but then again this is a story about the "Fall" of the planet Reach, so really the whole time you're playing a game about a battle you know you will lose. So really, you should be expecting bad things to happen in this story. Anyway, back to the point. You play Noble 6, the newest member of Spartan team Noble, meaning you are part of a team and not some all-powerful lone ranger like Master Chief. Don't get me wrong, I love Master Chief, he's got a gruff manly voice and takes on all manner of insurmountable odds and comes out unscathed. But the game is much different, story and gameplay-wise, when you have other Spartans fighting by your side who, for story purposes, can't die. They don't really do lots of damage to enemies, leaving a bulk of the work for you do, but when 3 unbelievably powerful elites come at you, having an invincible opponent with a Gatling gun proves to be one FANTASTIC distraction, allowing you to get into position. The other thing this does, is to prove that the human military, at one point in the past, had better plans than pointing at things and saying "Master Chief, Kill!" which makes this in-game military seem like it actually has some realism to it, what with strategy and planning.
Now I'll just make a quick passover of my irritation. You know I hate spoiling things for people, so I'll be vague. When you beat the game, its satisfying and the story has come to a very good resolution....but THEN. There is something after the credits roll that really made me upset. And for reasons I can't say for fear of spoiling it, it angered me. And for anyone interested in hearing my reasons, message me, and I'll be happy to explain. Now, moving on.
The Differences. The glorious return of the Health system is a breath of fresh air. You have shields which go down and then recharge as always, but now after your shields are gone, you take health damage, which I thought would just be gone until you found a health pack, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Health is wonderful because it adds a sense of fear and loss to being damaged. In Halo 3, once your shields were gone, you could hide for a few seconds and POOF your shields recharged and you're good as new! But now, your shields go down, you get hit once or twice more as you run for cover. Then you wait a few seconds for your shields to recharge, and POOF you're...almost as good as new. Now you know that if you do that same thing and your shields drop and you get hit once more you will die. It discourages doing the same thing over and over and over until finally it works, which I appreciate, I like to think outside the box and I like to encourage others to do so as well....especially teammates.
The weapons are COMPLETELY different, and AWESOME. Playing Halo 3, I always heard varying complaints about the weapons given; a lot of people loved the Battle Rifle, while tons of others could not stand it. Most people just gave up on the Assault Rifle, while others (like myself) learned to use it to perfection and irritate everyone else who couldn't use it. I used those two example because a majority of the time those were the weapons available to you. The most commonly given to you in Reach, are the DMR, the Pistol, and a new Assault Rifle.
I haven't met anyone yet who doesn't just absolutely love the DMR, it is incredible. Its like the Battle Rifle's cousin, or rather, the Battle Rifle is the DMR's ugly and retarded cousin. It has a zoom function and is very accurate, but instead of the 3 round burst that caused your crosshair to ride up, it is a slightly more powerful single shot weapon with more bullets. The faster you fire it, the less accurate it becomes, but if you can keep a steady rhythm and a steady thumb, it kills things the way they ought to be killed; good and fast.
Now the Pistol, as with every Halo game, the Pistol is totally different. While it looks an awful lot like the original Halo pistol, its not. Think of the original pistol and the ODST pistol, and this new one is somewhere between there; It zooms, its powerful enough to kill someone with a single clip's worth of headshots, but if you fire it too quickly (and you can fire it VERY quickly) then it becomes really inaccurate. Everyone I've met either loves it, or respects that it can be a great weapons but they just can't use it well.
The Assault Rifle, is still very similar. Its a close-range-bullet-hose. This one seems to be a tad less powerful than Halo 3's, but it has a slightly larger clip, and instead of just being wildly inaccurate, it starts off with very decent accuracy which then declines the longer you sustain fire. So if you're in close, you can just hold onto the trigger and riddle them with holes, or if not, you can do short controlled bursts and remain fairly accurate from far away. But maybe that's just me.
Oh yes, another wonderful addition to the armory is the Needle Rifle. Its like a Needler, only not. Imagine the described above DMR, and then mix it with a Needler. Half mid-ranged rifle, half explody pink needles, ALL awesome. Like its human counterpart, the DMR, it zooms and has great damage and accuracy. I'm not sure yet, but it seems to me that it does a little less damage, but it shoots faster and stays more accurate, but I could be wrong. Regardless, it definitely has this one-up on the DMR, Supercombine. When you hit someone enough times in a short period of time with the Needler, those needles all explode simultaneously and kill the person, and you get a shiny pink medal for doing so. The Needle Rifle has the same thing, so even if you can't quite get a headshot everytime, just aim for center mass and plug them full of needles to they pop.
Ok, I could go on all day about the new weapons, so I'll just finish with this; I LOVE the new sniper rifle. Its not much different, at least that I can place, but for some reason or another it makes me happy. NOw I'll touch on the Armor Abilities, which if you don't already know of them, you are in for a treat. Instead of having pick-upable equipment like the almighty Bubble Shield, or the active camo, you know have one Armor Ability. During multiplayer, you choose a loadout and the beginning of the game and can change it every time you die, it consists of 2 weapons (generally they are the same for multiplayer, but some options give you different choices) and one armor ability. In Campaign you have to find them and swap them out just like you would a weapon. They are thus; The Jetpack, rather self explanatory, you hold the button and up you go. you only have so much thrust before you have to stop and let it recharge, so be careful and save some for the long fall downward (you can easily commit suicide with a jetpack). Evade, usually reserved for Elites only but sometimes Spartans can use it too, its that dive roll that Elites always use whenever you throw grenades at them, you can use it twice before recharging. Active Camo, it lasts quite while, and its efficiency is based on speed, so if you run with it active it just makes you a little blurry, but sit perfectly still and its almost impossible to see you. The bubble shield, same as before except its blue and if it takes enough damage it can be destroyed. Spring! This is the default ability, you will see it many times in campaign and games like SWAT has it as the only option. Simply enough, you push the button and you run really fast, but you can't fire while running, so its a trade off. And lastly, one of my favorites (The jetpack and this are competing for the favorite) Armor Lock. You pound the ground and are stuck motionless on the ground for as long as you hold it, while in armor lock you can't move, and can't BE moved, and can't be hurt in any way. If you hold it long enough, you build up a charge which bursts out when you come out and destroys nearby enemy shields, very useful. And when I say you can't be moved, I mean that if a rushing ghost is coming to destroy you, you can drop down into armor lock, and not only will you be fine, but the Ghost will essentially be slamming into a wall and will explode if he's going fast enough.
Now to the multiplayer. You have the usual gametypes; Free-for-All, Team slayer, Team Objective, and Big Team Battle. I've always kind of hated free-for-all games because I get most of my kills stolen from me, but there are some cool new games there now. Like Headhunter; If you kill someone, they die and a flaming skull pops out of their head and you can collect it and others, and take them to a scoring zone, BUT someone can then kill you and take all those pretty skulls you collected, first one to collect 15 or 10 at once wins. So if you like free-for-all and fun games, you'll love it. Otherwise, its good for a laugh every now and then and might make you enjoy them.
I've always loved Big Team Battle, and now its not much different except that you can only have a max party size of 2. This greatly upsets me because I often play with my two brothers as my guests, and so now we cannot play Big Team Battle :(.
However we can play Multiteam. Multiteam consists of 4 or 5 teams of 2 competing in all manner of crazy games. I don't know what kind of games, because we only vote for Rocket Race. You and you're partner share a Mongoose, and you both have rocket launchers. I believe you are invincible while you are on the mongoose, but once you fall off...not so much. You race around the map trying to get to the objective point first, giving you a point. First one to 15 wins. It seems simple, but when there are 5 Mongooses (Mongeese?) and 10 unlimited rocket launchers on the field, chaos and hilarity ensue.
The Arena is great. I much more prefer this than to the other rating system. You can play Doubles Arena (2 vs. 2) or Team Arena (4 vs. 4), aside from team size, they function the same. At the beginning of the game you start with 1000 points, and as you kill people or assist other kills, this goes up, but as you die it goes down. Betrayals are twice as bad as a death, as they should be, and you get a small bonus if you win. So each game gives you a rating, generally they range from 1000 to 1600. I'm sure somewhere they could be people getting into the 1700's and 1800's on a regular basis, but I've yet to see them. If you play at least three games, you get a daily rating, which is the average of your 3 highest scoring games. After getting ranked 10 days, you get a division assigned to you; Steel, Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Onyx. Onyx is the highest of the high, and apparently is super rare.
All in all, I have to say Halo:Reach's campaign is solid; good story, good characters, fun to play (I'm still upset that I didn't get to fight a single Scarab!). But its multiplayer is by far my favorite of all the Halo games. Halo 1 will always be fantastic in its simplicity and ease of play. Its mechanics might be "better" than all the others in a sense. But to me, Reach's multiplayer is by far the most fun, and isn't that one a game is all about? Being fun?
