halo reach review

Bungie has managed to do something that eluded George Lucas years ago: create a prequel to a beloved sci-fi series that not only simply works, but is at times better than the installments it precedes. After spending ten hours with the campaign, and another eight or so with the multiplayer, it's already clear that for their exit from the Halo franchise, the developers at Bungie have crafted a fine sendoff in Halo: Reach.
One of Reach's immediate improvements is its storytelling. The Halo trilogy's story has been impeded by both inconsistency (a curious mix of either over-explaining or obfuscating dialogue), and by becoming a fan-only affair overflowing with series technobabble a la Star Trek. Reach rectifies this "inside baseball" feel by telling a broader, more accessible story that doesn't require knowing tons of Halo terminology beforehand
Don't assume that because you know there exists a Halo novel called The Fall of Reach -- which details Master Chief's origin and his experience during the Covenant glassing of the United Nations Space Command fortress planet Reach -- that you know how Reach the game ends. The campaign focuses on Noble Team -- a UNSC special operations team composed of Spartans (think Delta Force by way of Iron Man) -- and the missions it undertakes. You control the team's newest member, Noble Six (you actually replace the previous Noble Six, whose fate is detailed in the most recent commercial), as Noble Team is tasked with investigating what happened at a downed communication outpost.
Without spoiling anything further, the campaign ultimately unfolds into a grand re-telling of the Battle of Thermopylae, but portrayed from a gritty, ground-level perspective across multiple missions like Band of Brothers, and all done with typical Halo flourish. It's about elite warriors (interestingly, Spartans in both stories) and the sacrifices they make during their last stand against insurmountable odds, and the lasting impact their actions impress upon the rest of the series

As noted earlier, with a more straightforward story and less reliance on Halo jargon, the storytelling is generally improved from previous Halo games. Only minor quibbles interfere with Bungie's tale-telling. Similar to Mass Effect 2, having a main cast of six characters within Noble Team, plus numerous others encountered within the campaign, doesn't leave much time for character development or interaction. In fact, you end up learning (and empathizing) most with Noble Two (Kat) and Noble Five (Jorge), by virtue of spending the most time with them (you tend to be paired with one or the other during the campaign). By comparison, I almost forgot that Noble Four (Emile) even existed for a big chunk of the campaign, as I rarely saw him. The large cast ends up not being about a group, but more about a couple of characters and a lot of generic archetypes.
Also, Reach is a bit conservative when it comes to exposition and context; even though you often change times, locations, and objectives based on mission, you're not given quite enough info for where or why you might be where you are. Sometimes, vital information such as why you can pilot an experimental spacecraft simply gets dumped into terse expository dialogue without warning. Still, even with these minor stumbles, Reach is a significant improvement from Bungie's previous narratives
But how does it actually play? It's in the flow and design of combat that Reach demonstrates what Bungie has learned in crafting the Halo trilogy plus Halo 3: ODST. Instead of adding radically new features, Bungie opts to take the better elements of Halo combat, and tweak it. The Battle Rifle's rate of fire gets toned down to become the Designated Marksman Rifle. The Magnum gets its scope back. Single-use Equipment from Halo 3 turns into reusable and swappable Armor Abilities for Reach. Noble Six's survivability lies between the extreme supersoldier that is Master Chief from the main Halo trilogy, and the glass cannon that is The Rookie from ODST.
It's this sort of cherry picking and then tweaking the best parts of previous games, that enhances Reach's "combat sandbox" the most. At any one moment, you're given a set of tools (weapons, abilities, vehicles, even friendly A.I. soldiers), straightforward objectives, and free reign on tactical approach. Guard the teammate hacking the door open. Make your way to the extraction point. Push the button inside the well-guarded room. So to achieve those, do you then use Active Camouflage plus long-range weapons to sneak about and pick off your foes? Do you distract with the Hologram, and then sneak up from behind to pull off an Assassination (a special melee takedown complete with badass animation)? Or do you close the distance and rely on grenades and assault rifle fire to soften foes before delivering a smackdown via melee? Combat in Reach stops being linear and allows for some player creativity in tactics. One time, after unsuccessfully attempting to scale a fortified structure on either foot or Warthog jeep, I simply decide to try using a Jetpack to reach my objective -- and by golly, that worked.