Halo Reach: Why haven't you bought this yet?

Box Art for Bungie's latest and greatest - photo courtesy of vgboxart.com

First, let me say its good to be back.  After all of this Harry Potter craziness I just wanted to take a little break and make it easy for the HP fans coming in from all over the universe to find the answers they were looking for.  But I can remain silent no longer.  If you are still looking for Harry Potter stuff, you can find it below this post and in the archives on the right bar of the blog.

That being said, if you have not purchased Halo Reach yet, I give you permission to stop reading my review and go purchase it now.  It is that good.  But if you already have a copy or are dead set on waiting to hear what I have to say before purchasing it, then I am flattered and here comes the review.


Right off the bat you are drawn into the game through its cinematics.  The intro sequence when you turn on the game is good, but its the action of the first cinematics in the campaign mode that will really get your pulse pounding.  I can honestly say that this is the second, maybe third best looking game I have ever seen.  Falling short to Mass Effect 2 and God of War III.  I actually think God of War III is the better looking game as far as graphics capability goes, but the cinematics in Mass Effect 2 are always just so epic that is tough to beat.  The fact that I am lumping Halo Reach in with these games graphics wise should really let you know just how good it is.   But what makes it better is that it still has that level of unreality that makes this series stand above the Call of Duties and Medal of Honors of the first person shooter category.  While both great series, COD and MOH (not as cool of an acronym as COD) are set in real world scenarios which often makes the game a little to real for my tastes and certainly hits closer to home.  For a lot of people that is a plus, but for me I like to play video games for the grandiose stories, epic characters, and the frivolity of sneaking up behind an alien or other spartan and knifing it in the throat.

But graphics aren't the only thing Halo Reach has completely overhauled since Halo 3.  The way you play has been completely redone as well.  There have been some action relocations on the controller that you may find annoying at first, but they are done for good reason.  You won't be tapping B to melee anymore, and you won't be using LB to switch which grenade you are using.  Instead you use RB to melee, B to switch grenades, and LB to use one of your new armor powers, like Armor Lock which makes you temporarily invulnerable, jet packs which give you new ways to bring death from above, and my favorite, the hologram which allows you to send a hologram version of yourself running head long into the fray while you sit back to let your enemies waste their ammo or come out of hiding, giving you the upper hand.

Can you tell which one is the hologram and which one is going to own the noob trying use a scoped weapon effectively while flying? - Photo courtesy of video-game-forums.com

So, you be frustrated for a while when you try to melee by pressing B and simply switch grenades while your enemy murders you or attempt to board a vehicle by pressing RB and end up meleeing your vehicle into oblivion.  But you will learn to adjust as you have in the past.  I think the button changes make since at the very least.  If you were shooting at a charging opponent in real life then you would have to stop shooting when you go to melee them.  But in Halo 3 you continued to shoot up until the last second when you would press B and your opponent's skull would cave in.  So in Reach it makes sense that you would have to move your trigger finger off the trigger and onto the melee button, causing a brief but realistically more accurate lull in the attack.  For a full look at control changes take a look at the images below.

Halo 3 controls - photo from 1up.com

Halo Reach controls - photo from haloreachinfo.wordpress.com

Some other great changes you have to look forward to are new weapons, revamped old weapons, and new game modes.  Instead of the BR you have the DMR which fires in one bullet bursts instead of the three bullet burst from Halo 3.  You also have the addition of the Target Locator gun which allows you to call in an air strike that literally removes whole squad of grunts, jackals and elites right off the map in one pull of the trigger.  They have also added Firefight mode which is where you, or you and friends, are in a base fending off wave after wave of Covenant troops, with each wave being more dangerous than the last, with only a limited number of respawns and ammo.

But by far my favorite change to the game is in the multiplayer, where they have unloaded a brand new arsenal of game modes for you to play, and better yet, a way to choose which one to play.  Instead of just voting to veto a map, you now get to vote on three choices for which map and game mode you want to play.  While you may still end up on a map you don't want to play, you will have had much more of a chance to get what you wanted in the first place.

That's all I have to say right now.  I could say more but I really want to get back to playing.  If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments or via email at yuragamer@gmail.com.  Otherwise, I will see my friends in game as soon as I turn on Halo Reach, because the first screen you get to has a list of all your friends playing Reach and what they are playing so you can jump in with them at the next available moment.  Halo Reach gets a whopping 9.75 Grunt corpses out of 10, losing those .25 points only for the fact that while the game is great it is not revolutionizing gaming, it is after all a series we know and love already.

This was the only picture I could find with at least 9 grunts, unfortunately none of them are corpses...yet - photo from kombo.com