Halo: Reach

Listen to me now. Focus with me. Your team mates in Halo Reach - they’re not your friends. When the opening sequence begins and everyone in the team reacts negatively to your arrival, rest assured they’ll continue to push their anti-you agenda through the rest of the game.

Like when you first encounter the Covenant on Reach, and you roll on out to kill your enemies as quickly as possible. You’d think the elite power-suited soldiers you’re rolling with would probably help you out, right? Maybe drop a couple of head-shots, steal your kills, make you realise you’re gonna have to up your game if you want to compete on the same level.

This might be true, but because they hate you they’ll spend the entire game shooting vaguely in the direction of your enemies while they let you get shot. And that’s when they’re doing anything at all. Sometimes they just stand there - like when you jump in a Warthog and spend the next five minutes honking your horn next to the other Spartan, willing them to get in.

And let’s talk about directions - since the series began Halo has had a problem with directing players. Halo CE was OK in all but one case, but Halo 2 and 3 both suffered at the hands of directions given verbally or... not at all.

Poor waypointing saw me and mates wandering aimlessly - maybe we’d been drinking and maybe we’d been joking (as you do when you’re playing coop games with mates), but we missed directions multiple times and just didn’t know where to go.

Halo Reach proves that despite nearly nine years of advances in first person shooters Bungie still refuse to give you even so much as a marker in most cases. At one point I was told by my team member that he’d shoot down dropships while I delivered a package to a ship (Alright! I’m a delivery boy!) - his directions were basically “I’ll stay here and you head to the ship”. Naturally I spent 15 minutes attempting to make it to the giant ship before I realised I was stuck - I had to wait for another ship to come pick me up, fighting off wave after wave of enemies until it arrived.

Oh, and those Covenant dropships he was shooting down? Every time I’d kill the previous wave he’d just miss three ships, they’d land and suddenly I’d be faced with a billion more aliens to kill. Necessary to keep the flow of the game going, or further evidence of my ‘team members’ attempts to let me die?

Your team mate AI is worse in contrast to the AI of your enemy - the series has a legacy of great enemy AI and Reach is no different. Even the grunts are smarter in Reach - where previously they were literally just cannon fodder, Halo Reach’s little guys won’t run at each other should you stick them with plasma grenades and they’re actually a decent aim with their nades.

It’s enough to make you wonder what happened between Reach and Combat Evolved - storywise, Reach is a prequel for the rest of the Halo series. This isn’t really demonstrated in any way via the game - weapons and vehicles are all upgraded beyond what is evident in technically (canonically) later games. The new Covenant enemies which don’t appear until Halo 2 or 3, the variants on enemies we’re used to through the series are just there - all of these things just disappeared until they showed up later... deal with it.

Speaking of weapons - Halo Reach suffers from the same problem Alan Wake had with weapons - there’s a distinct feeling of impermanence about them because at the end of each mission you’ll inevitably have them taken away and replaced with something crappier. Found the Plasma Repeater, a fairly accurate Plasma Rifle which never overheats and never really needs a reload (and it disappears from the Covenant arsenal after Reach)? Might as well use it up and throw it away, because you can’t keep it!

A stealth kill system has been implemented in game as well - and the game is worse for it. You can kill enemies without making a sound by standing behind them and meleeing - if you succeed, an animation will play and you’ll stab them brutally.

This is pretty cool, if a little pointless - there’s no reason to be stealthy as you’re not rewarded beyond not having to shoot anyone for a little while... until you’ve triggered the next drop ship, of course, and then it’s time for guns again. Stealth missions along the lines of Modern Warfare 2 would have been a great addition.

This doesn’t address the really bad thing about this sequence - you’re vulnerable to attack while doing this - so if you accidentally melee an enemy from behind in the middle of a firefight you’ll enter a forced animation I don’t know how to get out of. Cue sarcastic slow clap.

The story is tied to the novelette Fall of Reach - a title which spoils the outcome of the game all on its own. Your group - Noble team - cavorts about the planet trying to complete various missions as you pointlessly try to save the planet from the Covenant Invasion.

Along the way there’s actually a fair bit of dialogue with your team - and your team mates are actually a great addition to the game (when they’re not trying to get you killed through inaction or pointlessly repeating themselves while they’re not shooting anyone in a fire fight).



They’re fairly cliche characters - a big heavy weapons guy, a tech specialist who can hack anything... the kinds of characters you see again and again in games - especially games with squads. Fortunately they’ve been injected with a lot more character than most FPS cohorts - they all have extensive back stories and relationships which they react from and build upon.

There’s actually a decent amount that’s positive in Reach, despite the bleak picture I’ve painted so far. The voice acting and characterisation is just one - my favourite thing in the game is piloting a Sabre - a UNSC starfighter capable of low orbit launch.

Upon shooting yourself into space you’re thrust into a dogfighting sequence - shooting down enemy fighters is pretty easy, but the atmosphere of the mission is phenomenal. Everything takes on an eerie feel as sounds are muted and explosions are everywhere.

You seamlessly land on a battlecruiser and commandeer it - leading to another sequence that’s out of that world. Vehicles remain the best part of the Halo experience, and the two major vehicle sequences highlight the core of the work Bungie has done in Reach.

The second vehicle sequence puts you in control of a Falcon while you fly around helping people out - the flight itself is responsive if not especially quick, but the really cool thing is that you will fly from building to building and when you land you transition immediately from Falcon to ground combat - indoors and against numerous troops, up elevators and through large halls.

It’s great to avoid a loading sequence for this run - though the effect is diminished when you cop some frame dropping in cut-scenes and in-game sometimes.

Multiplayer then, is the saving grace of Halo Reach. As it has been in every single Halo game, multiplayer is the real reason anybody plays Halo - and while it’s never been my cup of tea, Halo Reach’s multiplayer is the best yet.

When Halo CE dropped I played multiplayer over and over - it helped me get used to using the controller, and the slow pace of the game eased the learning curve for others as well. As more First Person Shooters hit the consoles gamers got more and more proficient - but Halo stayed pretty much the same pace.

This is why it doesn’t exactly resonate with me compared to the likes of your Modern Warfares or Bad Companies - even if I’d prefer to play those games on the PC, my controller FPS proficiency is high enough that I like all mp games to be fast-paced.

Compared to the likes of the Quake or Tribes games, characters in the Haloverse are forever fighting through a world made of treacle. This is why Halo doesn’t work for me - but I can still appreciate an excellent effort.

Firefight - the only reason Halo 3 ODST was worth anything at all - returns, bringing with it a versus variant and a heap of new maps. The core of ODST’s gameplay involves fending off wave after wave of covenant troopers - and it’s so much better with partners. In a nod to Left 4 Dead’s versus mode though, players can assume the role of a Covenant Elite - pitting two teams of humans against each other, with dozens of cannon fodder thrown in for good measure.

The pure versus MP sees a return to quite a few classics - Slayer (Deathmatch), Capture the Flag and King of the Hill are stock standard now, though the customisation for the host remains available. The new Invasion mode is similar to the Bad Company series’ Rush gameplay mode - as players complete objectives the map alters, forcing players to adapt their strategy.

The real strength of Halo’s multiplayer though is that a lot of the criticisms made about the singleplayer don’t apply here. You’re not weighed down by poor team mate AI or confusing objectives. The story doesn’t come into consideration in multiplayer, because you’re playing just to shoot others.

In fact, if you play coop with a person who already knows what they’re doing and where to go a lot of Reach’s problems simply disappear - leaving a fun experience almost anyone can jump in and play.

Through strong multiplayer it becomes apparent that Halo Reach has quite a bit to offer - especially in the bang for buck territory - provided you find that multiplayer to be to your liking. The variety of game modes and the variants on top of those demonstrate a committed effort to delivering a game with a long life after purchase.

You can (and should) basically ignore the singleplayer portion of Halo Reach. If you must ‘experience’ it make friends with a diehard Halo fan, let them deal with the litany of gameplay problems and enjoy the story with their guidance. Be warned though - diehard Halo fans usually have an early bed time and homework to do.