Halo: Reach - The end of an era

It’s been a long time coming. I didn’t think it would even happen, honestly. Ever since I first played “Halo: Combat Evolved” for the Xbox, I figured Microsoft would never let Bungie stop making Halo games. But Bungie, as the saying goes, saved the best for last with “Halo: Reach.” Set several years before the original Xbox hit, “Reach” follows the story of Noble team as they encounter the Covenant horde on the last days of the fortress planet Reach. Everything about the tone of Halo: Reach just oozes epic – from the intense, sweeping campaign, to the multitude of options in Matchmaking, Firefight, Theater, to the expanded Forge World to the franchise’s lengthy history, Reach is the zenith of the Halo series.

As with all Halo games, I like to start with the campaign. Though many people pan Halo’s story for being a stale, generic space marine game, I’ve always really enjoyed the lore of the universe – the brutal hierarchy of the Covenant, the various Spartan programs and its shady beginnings, or just all the incredible tale of human resilience against a seemingly unstoppable, unknowable horde. I’ll be honest – I’ve even read some of the books and out of those book, “Halo: The Fall of Reach” was probably my favorite. Though it had some mighty big expectations to live up to, from the campaign, multiplayer modes, and Forge World, Halo: Reach manages to deliver a stellar package in nearly every regard.

Now since this game has a ton of content, this will be part one of two – this part focusing mainly on the updates to the series and the campaign with my thoughts on the multiplayer, theater and Forge World in the next.

I’ve been a huge fan of the Halo series since Combat Evolved. Some of my fondest memories of college are, freshman year, sitting in the dorms on a weekday after classes, hooking my Xbox up to ResNet (thanks for the bandwith, Shippensburg University!), and engaging in tense CTF games with my hallmates. Using ResNet we could even play with people in other dorms, though we pretty much always destroyed any competition (Mowry’s got nothing on McLean 3 South). In those days, Hang ‘Em High was pretty much our DE_dust. On a side note (hopefully I don’t get too off topic) but what’s with never remaking literally my favorite map of all time, Bungie? You guys love bringing back Blood Gulch every time you put out a Halo game and you remade classics like Sanctuary and Ascension but never my favorite map. What, is Hang ‘Em High not good enough to be remade, Bungie? One of the first things I did when I booted up Reach the first time was go on the File Share and download a fan made map of Hang ‘Em High, go into a custom game and just wander around, a smile forming at the corners of my mouth as memories of battles long past flood my mind – this was where Cyan would race to grab the pistol as the beginning of a match; this was where Alex used to snipe from; the tombstones, the sky bridges, the ramp and the tunnel under the Blue(?) base and the ridge on the far wall where the needler spawned and so on and so on. It makes me wish all my hallmates from McLean had Halo: Reach and downloaded a copy of that map so I could relive all those epic afternoons. Anyway…where was I? I’ve kinda just been rambling this whole paragraph, haven’t I? As you can see, me and Halo go way back and no one would be harder on Reach for besmirching the series’ good name than I would be.

One of the things that makes Reach’s story stand apart from every other Halo title (apart from ODST but, honestly, I never played ODST because I didn’t want to spend $60 on Firefight and six hours of thrown together story), is the team dynamic of Noble squad. In Halo: CE, 2, and 3, Master Chief is in a one-on-everyone fight against the Covenant and has the weight of the universe on his shoulders – if he fails, humanity will either be absorbed into The Flood or obliterated by the Covenant. Though Noble team is in an equally dire situation – Reach is, next to Earth, supposed to be the most well guarded human colony in the universe, yet it is covertly invaded by a massive Covenant force – you never get the idea that if you succeed, evil will be vanquished. Remember, the events of Reach are long before Master Chief and the Pillar of Autumn discover the first Halo installation, and one theme is prevalent throughout each mission of Halo: Reach – humanity is losing this war.

Though you embark on numerous, equally epic missions and despite your continued success, Reach does an amazing job of never letting you forget that you’re always moments away from annihilation. Luckily, Noble team have some new tricks up their sleeve that would make good ol’ Master Chief jealous. Reach offers many new weapons like the Designated Marksmen Rifle (DMR) and (one of my favorite) grenade launcher with a special secondary EMP blast as well as new vehicles like the rocket Warthog and the Falcon (UNSC’s answer to the Banshee), the most useful new tools available to the team of Spartan-IIIs (and one Spartan-II) are armor abilities.

Replacing the cumbersome and awkward deployable items from Halo 3, armor abilities are rechargeable and offer a wide array of helpful powers. You most always start with the Sprint ability, you can swap it for the Jetpack, Active Camo, Armor Lock, Hologram, Drop Shield and the Evade (though that last one is normally only an Elite ability).

Without giving away too much, Halo: Reach’s campaign both succeeds and fails. While it is full of epic sequences and sets up many, diverse missions, the campaign as a whole isn’t all that memorable and the end is rather anti-climactic. However, while the ending may be anti-climactic (though not nearly as bad as Halo 2’s ending), the ending serves its purpose by reinforcing the notion that was hammered in throughout the game – humanity, no matter how many victories are garnered, is all but doomed. Despite all your struggles, despite all your desperate attempts and successes on supposed suicide missions, humanity is still on the verge of being wiped out by the Covenant. Missions like Tip of the Spear and the one where you go into outer space (see, I can’t even remember its name) provide plenty of variety to the standard run-and-gun gameplay but lack the blockbuster moments that make any one mission stand out.

Keep checking back for part two of my Halo: Reach dissection. It’ll probably be up some time next week, so in the mean time watch out for my next post – my thoughts on the newly released, 10-minute first look at Bioshock Infinite gameplay. It’s wild and definitely has a Bioshock vibe to it but that’s all I’m gonna say about it for now.