It’s been over a half a year since Reach came out, so I’ve had time to mull it over alone and with friends. I decided to edit this post a year and a half later after Halo: Reach’s launch, just to make it more up-to-date on my opinion. Basically everything you need to know is in this first paragraph. I’ve come to one conclusion: yes, it is a good game the game was extremely disappointing and boring. It has great gameplay and great horrible multiplayer. It’s got an impressive sizable, yet bland platter of features, no question. However, upon closer inspection taking but the slightest glance with trained eyes, Halo: Reach just feels half-assed I don’t know whether the word I’m really looking for is full-assed or no-assed, so I’ll go with Halo: Reach just being shit. How, well, let’s take a look.
First off, let’s start with the campaign: in a ViDoc, Bungie mentioned how they planned the entire Reach campaign, the military, in-universe one. From July 24th to August 30th in the year 2552, Bungie mapped out how the battle developed. When I heard that, I imagined we would see huge clashes with the UNSC and the Covenant, shit just blowing up left and right, people dying, alien monsters laughing in their alien tongues at you, that was what I imagined, you know, kinda like in the “Deliver Hope” trailer. In the game we get just small-scale skirmishes with that one incredibly stupid jeep attack. The UNSC “spearhead” of a bunch of jeeps, a few ATVs and maybe one or two tanks really makes me sad. I imagined you’d be fighting against legions of Grunts, Jackals, Elites and Hunters. Maybe blow up Ghosts, Wraiths and Scarabs in a Scorpion or maybe even one of those grenade launcher Falcons. Hell, why not let us pilot a Pelican with rocket pods and shit. No. Jeeps and quadbikes.
There’s no plot in Reach whatsoever. No, a series of disjointed skirmishes against the Covenant cannot be considered a real story. How are they disjointed? Well, because you fucking teleport from one mission to another. Example one, you are in a city. Cut-scene starts, shit happens, fade to black. Then another cut scene starts and you’re mystically transported into a fucking GLACIER. What the fuck! I would’ve wanted to see at least some form of dialogue in between, considering that in the cut scene before the jump, a pretty damn important plot advancement occurs, one of the Noble team gets fucking SHOT IN THE HEAD AND DIES. Another example is when Jorge throws Noble Six out of the Covenant Corvette. That’s it. We don’t see Six’s re-entry into the atmosphere. Next cut-scene, Six is already walking about the planet’s surface, maybe favouring one foot. I would’ve wanted to see how that thing that was on his back the entirety of the last level works! Oh, and not to mention the ship you and Jorge set out to destroy? It had already fallen out of the sky lying quite contently on some mountains. I would have wanted to see that hulk crash to the surface!
Don’t get me started on the levels ONI: Sword Base and Nightfall. First, you’re talking to Doctor Catherine Halsey, a pretty major fucking character in the overall Halo storyline. You know, the woman who not only INVENTED the SPARTANS themselves also invented THE MJOLNIR ARMOUR and of whom Cortana, yes your A.I. sidekick in the main Halo trilogy, is basically a computer program copy of! Jesus Christ, man! No introductions! She’s just in the fucking glass box talking about shit. When my eldest brother, who is not by any definition a gamer, played through Reach he was like, who the fuck’s that bitch? To him, Dr. Halsey was some random person talking down to Spartans, supersoldiers, for no apparent reason. And what happens after the you meet with Halsey? The next cut-scene has you on some random cliff in the dead of the night. And nobody says anything, except when to cater to punk kids who think sniping in Halo is some sort of impressive skill. That’s not impressive in the least. Take out four guys armed with an assault rifle and one (1) grenade, now that is impressive. No shooting in the shin twice for a kill bullshit, just chucking lead full-auto. But I digress.
In Halo 3, the whole deal with the portal under New Mombasa and how it leads to the Ark, you know how that would’ve been done in Reach? Master Chief blows up the AA gun, does dramatic pose, portal activates sending everyone flying, fade to black, WHAM, next cut-scene, you’re flying in a Pelican over a landscape you have never seen. Some NPCs make vague references to an Ark, but you can’t really tell. And what the fuck? When did Guilty Spark get here?! What about in Halo: CE, you get to the escape pod in the first level, Master Chief says: “Punch it,” fade to black, WHAM, you’re in the destroyed pod and the others… in the impact… there’s nothing you could do. Oh, oh, what if in Halo 3: ODST, they took out the semi-free roam sections out and just jumped from flashback to flashback? That is what the Halo series would’ve been if they had been done like Reach.
Yes and the characters are paper-thin. Unlike the squad of ODSTs who actually have more facets than “aggressive black guy,” “tech-savvy, russian-esque accent girl” and let’s not forget, “by-the-book commander man.” Just, wow.
Now, the ending was good, I still haven’t changed my mind. Predictable as shit, but still, it was a good ending. Quite different from all the other Halo games, but that is the only praise I’ll give to Reach’s campaign. However, it was soured by Red Dead Redemption already doing basically the same ending.
All in all, with the campaign, it felt as if Bungie didn’t really give two shits about it. You HAVE to know your Halo backstory to get any sense of what’s going on. I’m not talking about playing the rest of the Halo games, oh no, I’m talking about reading the novels, which I have. The fact is this: for a fan of the series who knows the lore, you already know what’s going to happen. To Reach, to the Pillar of Autumn and to the galaxy. Bungie probably assumed that there’s no need to elaborate any further, flesh out what happened during that fateful struggle. Reach’s doomed, but in the end Master Chief fires a laser at a light bulb and everyone lives happily ever after. However, for someone, like my eldest brother, who has NOT read the novels, he’ll not get what’s happening at all, BUT he doesn’t really care for a deep story. He just wants to shoot shit up. Reach wasn’t made for Halo fans. Not at all. It’s tailor-made for casual gamers. People who buy up every Call of Duty and its knockoffs on release. That is a lame goodbye, Bungie.
But wait! There’s more!
Getting into multiplayer, I’ll make one thing clear: bar a few things that I would change in a heartbeat, Halo: Reach has the best multiplayer out there. Nuff said, but let’s look a bit deeper. For starters, the multiplayer maps, not Forge World mind you, I’ll get to that later. Well, what can I say, Bungie was lazy with them. Every single one of them is ripped right out of the campaign. Which means that these maps were designed multiplayer first which were then added to the campaign. Ergo Halo: Reach was developed MULTIPLAYER first. That’s not the Halo I became a fan of. I bought the Halo games for their campaign first, multiplayer second and in Halo: CE’s case, multiplayer was an added bonus!
And now we get into Forge World, this is just personal preference, but I hate every single Forge World map. They are tight, yet open areas, ideal for sniping, which I don’t do. Every map looks EXACTLY the same, which is like shit, to be honest. I see Forge World as the personification of Halo: Reach’s development laziness.
I won’t get into the DLC maps, because you have to play in their own little playlists to actually enjoy the maps and the playlist contains objective game modes. Good luck trying to win with complete idiots as your teammates.
What’s this all boil down to? Well, for me, Halo: Reach was a letdown. I expected it to go out with a bang, being the game depicting the greatest, bloodiest battle in the war that the whole series is based around, but no, it was a lousy whimper. People say Halo 3: ODST was a letdown, but I really can’t see why. It hands-down beats Reach.
I’ll leave you with a quote:
“Take my advice, Rookie. You ever fall for a woman? Make sure she’s got balls.” – Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck.
P.S. I gave Bungie a lot of flak in this here post. It’s simply because Bungie was easier to blame, since they developed the game. I don’t know if these issues I have with Halo: Reach are, in fact, a fault of Bungie or if it is Microsoft or 343 Industries breathing down their neck, I don’t know.
Know Thy Games 