Halo Reach Review
Halo Reach is the popular, first person shooter from developers Bungie exclusive to the Xbox 360. Set in the distant future Halo Reach is about a group of Spartan super soldiers, genetically engineered to be far better than any normal humans. The Spartans are sent on incredibly dangerous missions to defend their home planet of Reach (A human colony world used as a military base of operations) from the Covenant; an evil Alien Race intent on killing all of mankind. They also search the universe for mysterious relics left behind by a mysterious ancient race known as ‘the Forerunners’.
Reach comes in at number six in the Halo series and has big shoes to fill. With previous titles achieving the game of the year award.
First off on the menu is the Campaign. It’s clever, interesting and has varied missions. Although a little short the missions range from generally shooting “bad guys”, sniping at night, flying space ships, rescuing civilians, flying helicopters and defending important locations and people.
One of the latest features is FireFight, this was first introduced in the previous game Halo 3 ODST. Now that it’s had some time to develop FireFight features new options such as enemy difficulty level plus weapons for the Spartans. You can now also play as a member of the Covenant forces such as the Elites. Just to clarify The Elites are large lizard like creatures that make up most major units of the Covenant army.
Other game modes include:
Let’s go over to the Pros and Cons
Pros:
Cons:
Conclusion
We believe Halo Reach to be fantastic FPS based game. There are some minor errors that, unfortunately can’t be ignored. However when you’re playing, and not looking for them you don’t really notice at all. It’s a great addition to the already successful series. We recommend it to any shooter fan, novice to experience, or anyone who is looking to try it out. However if you’re looking for a highly realistic and almost perfect online experience. You may want to miss this one out.
Reach comes in at number six in the Halo series and has big shoes to fill. With previous titles achieving the game of the year award.
First off on the menu is the Campaign. It’s clever, interesting and has varied missions. Although a little short the missions range from generally shooting “bad guys”, sniping at night, flying space ships, rescuing civilians, flying helicopters and defending important locations and people.
One of the latest features is FireFight, this was first introduced in the previous game Halo 3 ODST. Now that it’s had some time to develop FireFight features new options such as enemy difficulty level plus weapons for the Spartans. You can now also play as a member of the Covenant forces such as the Elites. Just to clarify The Elites are large lizard like creatures that make up most major units of the Covenant army.
Other game modes include:
- Matchmaking: This more of an online based feature and includes live game modes such as Big Team Battle (8v8) Invasion (6v6 objective match) and Multiteam (3v3v3v3), as well as normal 4v4 matches known as Team Slayer.
- Forge: This game mode allows you to create your own maps to play on with friends, online or split screen. This is a great feature and is a surprise that it hasn’t been seen on many other games.
- Custom game: This feature allows you to test your own maps and control the game.
- Theatre: This feature allows you to film anything funny, surprising. You can also film any glitches you happen to notice in gameplay.
Let’s go over to the Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Campaign: It’s fun interesting and has enough variation from normal games to keep you coming back for more.
- Matchmaking: There are plenty of map packs available from the Xbox Live Market Store to make playing online a joy. And even without them the amount of game modes will keep you interested for a long time.
- Armor Customization: This cool feature allows you to change the appearance of Spartan’s armor. Such options include helmet variation, shoulder plates, chest plates, knee guards and other armor items. You can even change the gender of your soldier. This then changes the voice in Campaign and Firefight. There is even an option to change your elite soldier to your preferred rank.
- Forge mode: This feature is particularly special as it’s a very rare option on shooter games. Although not as good as the map creator in Far Cry 2 Reach does allow you to create maps in which you can place weapons, vehicles and on some bigger maps large structures to create your own map variants.
- Split Screen: Split Screen on this game compared to others is a whole load of fun. Specifically for the people who don’t pay for Xbox Live. You’re able to fit 2-4 people on one screen and are able to play different modes such as Forge, Custom Games with friends.
- Challenges: The daily and weekly challenges set by 343 Industries (the developers that now run Halo) are great fun to complete and reward you with credits (these can also be earnt in other game modes but in lesser amounts). These challenges give you something to aim for make sure the game is different every day.
Cons:
- Forge Glitches: These are more common than other glitches found in games, lots of features in Forge mode and are all fairly glitchy, especially when playing multiplayer. They can usually be fixed by changing the settings a couple of times, but it’s still very annoying, even though it’s not a major issue.
- Joining Lag: When anyone leaves or joins a online game halfway through, it generally sends the game into a lag which sometimes lasts for a few minutes. However it is usually over within 15 seconds. It also has the occasional error of spawning vehicles, weapons and sometimes yourself into the middle of a match.
- Pummel Glitch: The high powered Pummel (Melee) attacks are great fun when used in Campaign, however when two people Pummel each other at the same time both people will end up dead. It’s even more strange when only one person Pummels and both people die.
- Only on Xbox: One of the unfortunate things about the Halo franchise is that its exclusive to Microsoft/Xbox .The first two were originally released on the original Xbox, however they have recently been remastered so that they’ll work on the Xbox 360 platform; Halo anniversary.
Conclusion
We believe Halo Reach to be fantastic FPS based game. There are some minor errors that, unfortunately can’t be ignored. However when you’re playing, and not looking for them you don’t really notice at all. It’s a great addition to the already successful series. We recommend it to any shooter fan, novice to experience, or anyone who is looking to try it out. However if you’re looking for a highly realistic and almost perfect online experience. You may want to miss this one out.