Halo: Reach afterthoughts

After some extensive time spent with Halo: Reach’s many modes, I’ve come to some conclusions about the game. Some good, some bad – either way, I’ve already made it to Major Grade 1 and I still haven’t gotten burned out on the game.

-It used to be that vehicles in Halo were nigh-invincible – hit a Warthog from Halo: CE with as many rockets as you want, it still won’t explode. In Reach, it seems like every vehicle was modeled after the Ford Pinto – everything from Ghosts to Scorpions go up in a ball of fire from collisions to small arms fire. It’s mainly just an annoyance but it’s just odd when you used to be able hop in a Scorpion and not have anything to worry about except getting jacked to now you have to worry about everything from kamikaze Ghosts to sniper rounds being able to take you out.

-Big Team Battle is still kind of an oddity to me. Usually I prefer smaller games on smaller maps to playing Slayer or Snipers on a huge map. Lately though, played BTB on Hemorrhage or Paradiso has been a ton of fun. Because of this, I’m always a bit wary when picking BTB. Usually in the voting, there will only be one straight up Slayer game to choose, with the other two choices being Territories, some kind of CTF game or whatever. And for some reason Bungie has non-vehicle friendly maps, like Countdown and Boardwalk, in the BTB playlist and winning on these maps usually boils down to who has less cannon-fodder on their team than who actually played better. I still enjoy BTB, though, since most people usually seem to vote for the Slayer game anyway. Always having a bunch of vehicles to choose from is great and it’s pretty easy to get kills since you usually start with a DMR and not an assault rifle.

-My last point reminded me – I hate Countdown. Oh my god, do I hate that map. But not because it’s necessarily a poorly made map – it’s too busy. There’s too many hallways, floors, narrow passageways, lifts and places for people to camp. If it were just a little smaller, it’d probably be a great. As it is, though, Bungie just tried to do too much with it and it comes off far too busy and cluttered for my liking.

-More maps I’m tired of already/just plain dislike – Boardwalk (Too busy. Plus, does anyone honestly ever even go into the lower/sewer part of the map? No, so why even have it.); The Spire (Just a lame map overall. First there’s The Spire itself that’s incredibly tall and fairly useless, unless you were looking to draw more attention to yourself. The area around the Spire is too cluttered with rocks and random stuff for any battles going on at the base of the Spire to be fun. Then there’s the far side of the map that’s literally completely useless and hardly anyone goes over there unless they get spawned there.). In fact some of the only maps I like are ones Bungie made with Forgeworld and shipped with the game, like Pinnacle, The Cage and Asylum (and two of those maps are remakes – what’s that tell you, Bungie?)

-Most underrated weapon in the game? Some might say the Needler, which is definitely right after my number one choice. No, my pick for the most underrated is without-a-doubt the Plasma Pistol. While its single fire is next to useless in multiplayer (it’s actually incredibly effective against enemies like Brutes in the campaign, though), the charged shot can be devastating. Not only does the charged shot still take down shields in one blast, it homes even better than in Halo 3, and makes for incredibly easy headshots/beatdowns. It’s so powerful, nerd-ragers even dubbed the BR(DMR)/Plasma Pistol combo the “Noob combo” since it’s so easy to destroy someone’s shields with a charged shot then pull out your DMR for an easy headshot kill. The Plasma Pistol was powered up even more for Halo: Reach as it can now temporarily disable vehicles with a charged shot. I can’t tell you how many times a charged PP shot got me out of a tough situation that involved a Warthog or a Ghost or even a Wraith harassing me and usually ended with that vehicle in flames or hijacked.

-I’m not afraid to say it - Elite Slayer is great. Not only because the new Elite models are pretty awesome but there’s just something about being to start with a Needler, Plasma Pistol, two Sticky grenades and Active Camo that just can’t be beat.

-Team SWAT was both a blessing and a curse. SWAT was at one point a part of the Team Slayer playlist but was made its own because of nerds raging all over the internet about how much they hate it. It seems much more difficult to get headshots in Team SWAT than it was when SWAT was a part of Team Slayer - I don’t know if this is true or just some excuse I came up with during a poor performance but I’ll just throw it out there. Not only that, but the introduction of Team SWAT has seemed to lead to a huge increase in camping in SWAT – especially on Sword Base. Most maps in SWAT are fairly small, with bigger maps like Power House and Hemorrhage thrown in there as well. Sword Base is a smaller map, all things considered. Two, three story levels of the complex face each other with a narrow ground floor in between. The sides are connected by ramps and walkways and there are also lifts to take players higher on either side. On the top floor of one side is a large open room, partially made out of bulletproof glass. Too often lately while playing SWAT I’ve noticed that whatever team happens to control this room first makes a habit of never leaving it. Ever. As you can image, sitting on one side of the map, watching the other team camp in one spot makes for some very boring games. Camping will happen in any game type, but in a game as fast paced as SWAT usually is, dealing with campers is even more annoying.

-I never played Halo ODST but if I had, I would’ve realized how much I love Firefight. Playing the regular campaign is fun but there’s always objectives getting in the way of my alien slaying. Most of the time, playing Firefight is a ton of fun – even if people do like playing Rocketfight or Sniperfight. One aspect of Firefight really, really annoys me and though it’s a small complaint, it should be one that’s easily fixed but hasn’t yet been. The respawn time in Firefight is a little bit longer than in a standard multiplayer match (somewhere between 7-10 seconds where as MP is around 3-5) – but that isn’t my complaint. Each round of Firefight is divided into five waves. If you’re stuck respawning at the end of a round – i.e. you’re still respawning when the next wave of reinforcements is announced – your respawn countdown is reset. I know, it’s really minor but if my respawn timer gets reset literally as I’m about to respawn one more time, I won’t be responsible for my actions.

-It’s hard to say which Armor Ability I use the most or even would say is the most useful. Generally I use Sprint because it’s a good all purpose skill that can get you out of hot areas or help you close the distance on a weakened enemy. Lately, though, I’ve been trying to get better using Armor Lock to survive explosions, sword attacks and sticky grenades. It always seems to work better when supported by teammates so that when an enemy is focused on your Armor Locking, your buddies can swoop in and catch them off guard. One of my favorites for fooling enemies is the Hologram (which was replaced by the incredibly useful Evade in some playlists). The Hologram fooled people pretty good at first but lately, and especially once I ranked up more, people have stopped falling for it as easily. The Jetpack is a fun ability to use but in practice it gets you into more trouble than it’s worth. It’s a useful ability to get height on enemies in Firefight and also to traverse levels like Countdown and Sword Base more easily, but most of the time the Jetpack just turns you into a helpless, floating target.

-As you can probably tell, I spend more time playing multiplayer than the single player campaign. For a while I had been trying to get the “Monument to all your sins” achievement, which is for completing the campaign on Legendary by yourself. After completing about 5 missions solo on Legendary, I decided that 125 achievement points just isn’t worth the frustration of Legendary. In co-op with some friends Legendary isn’t so bad. On your own, though, a few Grunts can take you out easily, let alone fighting off multiple Elites, Jackals and Grunts all at the same time.

That’s about all I can think of now. I may have more afterthoughts on Reach in the future but it’s going to get put on the backburner with Fallout: New Vegas coming out in just a few days.