Halo Reach: A Brief Summary

As this is my first review I will try to keep this short:

It's EPIC!....... too short? Ok -

I am a long term Halo fan and have been following the series since the start so my opinion may be fairly biased but I would say this is a must have for any shooter fan. It is the best of the Halo games by a long way and it is the reason I finally got X-Box Live.

The story is really well thought out and although any fan of the series will know how it ends, it still delivers a great campaign from start to finish. Something I have always liked about the series is just how many ways you can approach the set pieces and Reach takes this to a whole new level. Whether you like to snipe, melee or just spray and prey, generally you will find a way to play using any method and this adds a lot of replay value. My only complaint about the story mode is that the Armour Abilities are quite limited - for example, you can only use Jet Packs twice so that was disappointing as it was the feature I most looked forward to.

The graphics are some of the best I have seen in any game and the maps look fantastic. It's easy to see that it is part of the Halo universe but it all feels new by adding completely new locations.

But as always with Halo the main selling point is the Multiplayer. This is the most fun I have had playing with friends online. The action is fast paced and there are so many game types that there will always be something for everyone. All of the Armour Abilities feel balanced and add to the chaos! This has the potential to keep you entertained for years.

AND in my opinion, the character in Reach is much better than Master Chief! I did fall in love with the customisation feature for your spartan (Noble 6) and with the ranking system, challenges and commendations, there is plenty to unlock and improve on your spartan all the way along.

Feel like this has become quite long but I've hardly brushed the surface of everything this game has to offer. Definitely the game for you if you love the idea of raining death down while jet packing over people, deflecting incoming rockets with a shield and sticking grenades to the crotch of your enemies! Fun fun fun!

Really, the only bad thing about Reach is that it will be the last Halo game produced by Bungie!

Final verdict - 9/10

Hi Trudgian this is a good review, thanks for adding it to the site!
I have the original halo for the xbox and have played halo 2 round a friends, i absolutely loved playing halo 1 but didnt spend enough time playing halo 2 to make any conclusions on it.
Love the sticky grenades!!!

finally, another person on the forums who likes halo as much as me, i must say, it is a very good game, but yet i was slightly upset with it in total, this hears very strange coming from me seeing i bought the halo reach xbox and the legendary eddition for it. its because they changed the story line of the books, which got me quite angry seeing i really liked the books, like in the books there is a huge space battle over reach where 300 human ships fights over 1200 covenant ships (complete masscare to the humans) but yet in the game, they made reach look like it only had two ships in its entire navy, claiming they only have a hand full of ships even before the game begins properly. also alot was cut from the game like alot of characetrs and also alot of missing chapters because they did the same thing they did with the original halo game "they could not make up their mind on what they wanted it to be" and so thus the game feels abit hollow with the campain. but yet the multiplayer makes up for it, but yet again, all the 5 year olds on it piss me off thinking they are john and spelling there names like "maste7 chef spaerten 117.132" that really gets me annoyed, but yet alot in halo makes no sence, due to the mistakes with the original game, like they could not think what they wanted the game to be about, they also could not think what they wanted it to be, mmo, fps or rts. thankfully they made it a fps, but yet they changed their minds like 5 times before it was made.

i think if the halo franchise wants to continue, the story needs to be re-written, but by the original authors, most certainly do not sell it to the japanese, they do really bad story lines, like they completly ruined halo with halo legends, i watched it, i saw milllions of mistakes with the story line and alot of projectile vomit from seeing "cute" and "friendly" spartans.

if people really want to understnad halo, read the books, play the trilogy, but yet read up about the mistakes, otherwise you may just turn into one of them annoying fans who think all spartans have teddy bears!!! also play marathon, a old game from bungie what you can now get free. alot of halo is based from it, like AIs and alot more.

its a shame halo has not been allowed on pc in recent years due to microsoft not liking the pc any more due to them losing to steam. but i aggree on the 9/10 rating you gave reach. i just really hope in the future that someone comes along and fix the story line before people like the creators on halo wars and halo legends ruin it. (strange seeing some of the creators of halo wars also worked on halo legends, and it is known they are trying to get halo on the japanese market. at least i now know who to send the hate mail to)

Ah, see I haven't read the books (they are on my list of books to read after Simon Peggs autobiography) so to me the story seemed pretty good but I can totally see why it would annoy you if you go into it already with something in mind of what to expect.

I haven't bothered with halo wars - I played the demo and thought it was pretty dull and just really didn't feel right. What did you think of ODST? I seem to be one of the few who enjoyed it. I liked that it was more of a creepy atmosphere with all the small corridors etc but it was nothing compared to the trilogy.

I really hope Microsoft don't ruin this franchise completely, and yes, I saw the first 10 minutes of Halo Legends and thought it was pretty terrible so I stopped watching so I agree about not letting the people responsible for that write any of the games.

And to martian - Thanks for the comment - Who doesn't love the sticky grenades?!

i dont know why many people did not like halo ODST, i really liked it, it was a change from playing a geneticlly modified human all the time, just play a normal person. it was originally planned to of just been a mod for halo 3, but very quickly turned into its own game, i really liked the dark atmosphere of it, it gives a much better feel to halo, like halo seems abit too bright and colourfull most the time, making it feel not realistic, yet ODST made a nice dark feel which i really enjoyed. the engine used in the game as well was very nice. and the story line acctully let you get to know the characters, and i also like it how bungie decided to make it in the styly of the director who made district 9 (all the camera cutscenes and so on) he was acctuly ment to be making a halo movie, but it got unfortuently cancled and instead he did district 9. to be honest though, i hope no one makes a halo movie, movies recently have been terrable, all american ameture rubbish, district 9 was alright though. but yet alot of silly movies are being planned like a gears of war movie, which is extreamly silly because there is no proper back story of gears, also the resident evil and silent hill movies recently have been terrable, i really do not want halo to go down the same route.

but yeah, ODST is a very good halo game, i dont know why many people do not like it, it was nice to go in the story line of halo in more detail as well, and extreamly good how they fixed up the crap design they did for new mombasa in halo 2 (halo 2 was extreamly rushed due to greed from microsoft after they saw the profits from the first halo game, alot of visural and story line mistakes in it) like in halo 2, 117 was ment to drive a forerunner tank through a sort of forerunner city, but it was cancled due to time and visural effect problems.

i acctully find it funny that the MYTH engine which bungie made and used for the first halo game, worked better then the havoc what they used iin the second game... lol.

anyways, i suggest you get the fall of reach book first (really good read) it goes through what dr halsey did to the spartans during their training and how they where picked. like alot of noobs think john is acctully a robot, which is quite silly, some people think he is a woman, due to a silly marvel halo comic awhile back (more companies trying to distroy the franchise)in the book you find out how much of a evil B***h dr halsey really is, but yet you also see she does care about them alot, and has alot of guilt for what she made them go through from the age of 6. get her journal from the legendary or collectors eddition, i was shocked when i found out i have quite a few things in common with her (ideas, believes, things i do) apart from the coffee drinking, i hate coffee... XD

anyways, if you have any questions about halo, just pm me, i am always looking out for the next thing in halo.