Halo: Reach Review

Bungie, the creative development team, reached astronomical heights after Microsoft Game Studios swallowed them up along with their shining star title, Halo, as a launch game for the original Xbox.
Ever since then the franchise has literally exploded into one of the most profitable IP's in Microsoft's gaming arsenal, spawning an almost fanatical following so one would assume that Bungie's final offering to the fans before they part company with Microsoft would be something special.

Sadly and quite predictably it's not. Plagued with frame rate issues, shockingly bad AI and suffered more hype than the Pamela Anderson porn tape, it feels that Bungie have delivered a final reach-around to the fan base for their swansong title.

Opting to go down prequel avenue, Bungie have omitted Halo's most famous mascot and fanboy masturbational martyr, Master Chief, in favour of an entire squad of Spartan soldiers. Placing you into the trans-gender boots of Noble Six (you're allowed to select your gender at the start of the game), latest recruit to the testosterone filled Noble squad, you're then whisked on a paltry five hour campaign on the Planet Reach, trying to fill in the story which predates the whole discovery of the Halo technology/Pillar of Autumn/Cortana/Master Chief trilogy.

During this rather short and disappointing campaign it was apparent that while Bungie had made obvious visual improvements to Halo, it seems that they came at a cost as numerous times the frame rate for the game noticeably dropped below 30fps causing some choppy movements. Additionally, squad-mate AI is non existent. I had countless encounters with marines just stood doing nothing while an Elite would be shooting straight at them, I've had marines in a Warthog run me over on four separate occasions in the same section of the same level as I'm trying to advance on a Covenant emplacement. 

Finally when the AI actually saw fit to fire upon Covenant forces, it would seem their guns are loaded with blanks as they did the grand total of f**k all damage to whoever they were shooting, leaving it to me to take the enemy out.

The enemy AI however was a little more acceptable - at least this lot chose to duck, dive, weave and generally be a bit crafty when trying to outflank or out shoot me on the field of battle. But even this enemy AI is fallible due to a Banshee getting itself stuck under a rock face, Hunters being foiled by mankind's greatest barrier, a humble stone pillar and finally having an enemy grunt just completely ignore me to run and shoot my marine squad mate in the room ahead of me.

The mission structure is essentially a rinse and repeat of all previous Halo titles with the only exception being a completely out of place space combat mission. Every objective is dealt with by you, Noble Six, as the rest of your team is too lazy/incompetent/dead to do it themselves. It's down to you to recover this data, activate that comms relay, disable several anti aircraft guns while having a brush up your arse to sweep the floor as you go. There is no innovation, originality or anything remotely unique to this game which could have caused so much hype, essentially it is just typical FPS gaming in a generic alien-stan setting.

The story of the game tries to spin you a tale of great courage and sacrifice: that these Marines and Spartans of Planet Reach did not die in vain or for a lost cause which, in all fairness, is a load of crap as we knew everyone would die and that Master Chief would be the last surviving Spartan before the game was released. The best comparison I can think of at the moment would be comparing Halo: Reach to Titanic; Both titles have stories which the endings are pretty much public knowledge yet the masses still thought it would be a good idea to play/watch them.

Now the campaign mode is not the only option in this title, no no, you may go online and shoot other Spartans or have some Elite on Spartan gang bang action via a multitude of game modes. Additionally, Bungie have seen fit to allow players to run riot in their creativity with Forge Mode, letting sweaty palmed addicts create their own sadistic Halo settings and letting them share it with their brethren. The sheer level of customisation available to players is quite an eye opener, from hundreds of armour combinations to the player for that unique look, to the level of changes available to make in game maps, it's at least here, in co-operative and multi-player modes that Bungie regains some form of credibility as quite frankly the single-player experience sucks ass.

There is a definite air of "go play it with friends" surrounding the whole reach-around experience due to the number of multi-player/co-operative options available. Player Vs. AI is one Firefight mode which increases with difficulty as the game progresses, without any storyline nonsense getting in the way proves to be an entertaining distraction for a little while. However our time in Slayer death-match was not as successful, our very first match online in an eight player match saw us gain the most double kills for the match along with finishing 3rd in the scoreboard, which in all honesty should prove to be a bonus for newcomers to the whole Halo franchise as this should ease them into online gaming.

Bungie have also given Halo: Reach considerable replay value due to daily and weekly challenges. These challenges can range from simple things to getting 30 headshots in campaign or matchmaking or firefight modes or to getting 30 kills in a single matchmaking game, all of these carry varying credit values, the games currency for purchasing different armours or other bonuses for the player along with contributing to the players overall rank.

While no doubt the fanboy cults would instantly purchase this title purely on the basis that it's called Halo, for those outside the fanatical winds I suggest merely renting this game to begin with, if you enjoy it after your rental period then feel free to purchase however there is no harm in over looking this average shooter as you're not missing anything groundbreaking in terms of pushing the FPS envelope at all. Overall Halo: Reach could only grab onto that mundane rung of the ladder.