From the beginning, you know the end. Such was the tagline for Bungie’s latest and supposedly final entry in the Halo franchise. In case you have been living under a rock, Halo: Reach tells the story of the Covenants assault on Reach, eventually leading to the fall of the planet, putting in motion the events of the main Halo Trilogy as Spartan 117 fled Reach’s final battle.

Reach is told from the perspective of Noble Team. This rag tag team of 6 misfit Spartans. As you can expect from such a tale, Noble team have unorthodox methods and don’t always play by the rules, but as a unit they are nigh on unstoppable. You play the newest recruit. Noble Six. Your history is unknown and your file speaks of experience in a highly classified, top secret project which makes you perfect for such a team. The story begins with Noble team investigating an unspecified rebel force and their attacks on a UNSC facility. You soon discover that the attack isn’t the doing of rebels, but in fact the Covenant are on Reach. From there your job is to investigate their presence and why they are there. As the story progresses, there are twists and eventually it is up to Noble Six to save the day. It is the fact that you know right from the very beginning that you fail that makes this the best Halo game since Combat Evolved helped launch the big black box back in 2001.

First things first, this is the first Halo narrative which has been able to step out from the giant shadows laid out by the infamous trilogy. ODST’s main issue with storytelling was that it attempted to turn what was fundamentally a subplot to an overall arch. It was totally unnecessary, way too short and I for one felt no sense of compassion for any of the characters. Hell there weren’t even any Spartans in it. Halo Wars also suffered from a similar problem. The story was too small scale and was set too many years before the trilogy to be considered a true part of the franchise. The diversion from FPS to RTS didn’t help much either. Reach however, doesn’t have this problem. The fall of Reach is so essential to the mythology that this story should not be given the classification of sequel. In fact, if the main Halo trilogy had in fact been a quadrilogy, this would have been the first part.

It also helps that this story has a very definite beginning and end. A major issue I had with Halo 2 and 3 was that all the great potential that Combat Evolved started with, all seemed to get bogged down in mythology and what was left was a story that was far too complex for new comers and far too unimaginative for fans. It was a bit too cliché and spread out too thin to last 3 games, with the last game of the trilogy being reduced to literally just: “Go here shoot this, now go here shoot that” etc. (Thank god for the awesome set pieces). Reach doesn’t suffer from this thankfully and is both an approachable, original and refreshingly simple story. The pacing is spot on and some of the set pieces are truly thrilling. It does the right thing by staying away from as much of the unnecessarily complex mythology as it can without disappointing the fans (after all, being the first story it doesn’t need the mythology) and by keeping the overall objective a simple and clear one. Yes, the story could have been told better (Bungie really don’t now how to fully flesh out a narrative) and there are still evident plot holes, hell the premise of the game probably deserved a better plot, but Halo games have never been the known for their Shakespearian level of narrative, it’s more about the Halo experience, and to be fair, this is certainly the clearest and most well controlled story that Halo has produced since it’s roots.

The characters are well written, each different team mate, very distinct and with a very different personality. They are all very likeable characters and it feels right that these six people would work so well together. There is an excellent dynamic between each of them and this is mostly down to the vocal performances and the scripting, even the smaller, non-essential roles feel like real fleshed out people. This makes it all the more tragic knowing that it all ends so badly.

This tragic tone is set right from the first cutscene. You can tell that Reach’s colour palette is significantly more washed out than previous Halo games. Sure the vibrant purple’s, greens, and yellows are still there, but they don’t look as bright as they did before and the amount of browns and greys throughout the environments is much increased. The fact of the matter is though, because of the tonal difference from the rest of the series, it feels right. It also looks bloody good. This is the best looking game of the series with some stunning vistas and an incredibly impressive draw distance.

The environments themselves have great detail and fit perfectly with the planetary scale that this game is set, with huge mountain ranges and futuristic cities and enclosed forests, there is a lot of variation in the playing areas with even one level set in space (coincidentally proving to be one of the best levels of any Halo game ever). It isn’t all perfect looking though. Some of the textures are a bit low resolution and several of the cutscenes suffer from some rather aggressive motion   blur, which can prove to be quite distracting in times of fast paced action. There has also been occasional texture popping and once or twice, entire props or NPC’s appearing or disappearing right in front of my eyes. However, it really doesn’t happen that often and it is entirely forgivable considering that this is the first Halo game to look truly next gen. That said, if you’re looking for graphics on par with games such as Red Dead Redemption, Assassins Creed, or the Mass Effect series, you won’t find them. Bungie’s graphics have always been just short of top of the range, and though there is a significant improvement here, it still doesn’t match what we all know the 360 is truly capable of.

Gameplay wise it is the usual run, gun and cover affair, but everything feels a lot more streamlined and smoother. The main point though is how well the co-operative AI runs. It does work, and it works well. AI will never match the skill of having a real person on the other end of a second controller, but here you will see some solid friendly AI in your fellow members of Noble team. They can actually fight and hold their own, and Bungie’s decision to make them invincible was a great one. You don’t have to worry how your team mate is faring, something which was endlessly irritating throughout Gears of War 2’s campaign. You know they will be fine and you can leave them to get on with their thing. The other friendly NPC’s outside of Noble team fair slightly less well with soldiers in your fireteam occasionally getting stuck on objects and not attacking enemies who are right in front of them. They are still perfectly functional though and having a full fireteam can, at times, prove to be very useful indeed. There are also some really fun additions to the arsenal. The Needler rifle and the Spartan grenade launcher are great, and let’s face it. The weapon choices weren’t exactly limited or boring to begin with.

Undoubtedly the games longest lifespan will obviously come in multiplayer so fans will be glad to know it remains basically unchanged as there are no real additions to this section of the game. Usual competitive game modes, such as Team Slayer, from Halo 3 make a reappearance, as does a fully realised Firefight showing up after it’s reasonably successful “demo” as part of Halo: ODST. The version here is significantly improved and features full rule customisation, overall making for a much smoother, thought out experience that what was seen in ODST. There is now also full public matchmaking for Firefight which should prove to be a welcome addition.  Forge also returns from Halo 3 and this is the mode which has undergone the biggest overhaul. Whilst still playing the same as always, the controls have been redone to allow for much easier editing. The addition of phased physics object movement also helps significantly. Bungie stated that their intentions with Forge was to make it as user friendly as possible, to the extent where fully fledged map editing and creating, as opposed to object editing, can happen. I can safely tell you that it is a huge improvement. Forge was always something incredibly fun in Halo 3 and made for some excellent competitive moments between friends. However the editing tools themselves were unbelievably clunky to the point where it was practically impossible and incredibly frustrating to try and build anything. Here, the emphasis is on building structures and not just spawning weapons and vehicles when needed to beat someone. Having tried it out for about an hour of solid building time, I can say that there is going to be some truly dazzling user created content built with these tools. One side note. Forge world is big. Very big. Great things are on the horizon for that map if combined with a little bit of imagination.

Just a quick mention, the score for Reach is fantastic with some really brilliant and rousing pieces of music accompanying the action, and by god the main theme is beautiful.

Verdict:

Halo: Reach is the game that Halo Wars and ODST both wanted and tried so hard to be. It is the true follow up to Halo 3 and justifies being a proper Halo game by being suitably epic in scale and by telling the most important story of the Halo universe yet to be told, apart from Halo 4 of course. A story that needed to and wanted to be told, not one that was forced upon us and unnecessary (yes, I am looking at you ODST. You too Halo Wars). Newcomers to the series will undoubtedly revel in this also due to not needing the backstory to justify what was happening. The multiplayer stays the same, why fix what isn’t broken many fans will say, and Forge receives some welcome upgrades. This is the Halo game people have been waiting nearly five years for, and not one aspect disappoints. Well done Bungie, you have done the impossible. You have restored Halo’s greatness from the ashes of mediocrity.

Score: 9.5

P.S. Stick around till after the credits. (No the Chief doesn’t make an appearance)

N.B. Having played through some of the final missions again, it seems my judgements regarding friendly AI were way off. Whilst still far from being terrible, towards the end of the game they appear to stop being able to aim at targets properly, and very rarely kill anything without your assistance. One particular example comes in the final level of the game. You enter an open courtyard and are asked to fight off against two Hunters and a small group of Jackal’s. The Jackals are fairly easy to dispatch whilst avoiding Hunter fire but when all that is left is you, fellow Noble Spartan Emile and the two Jackals, things become irritatingly tough. Hunters must be attacked from behind to kill them. An expected tactic would be to have Emile distract the two enemies and you run up behind and pop them in the back with a couple of shotgun shells, right? Wrong. Emile is obviously very scared and all he does is hide in cover, leaving you to somehow get behind two Hunters whose full undivided attention is focused on you. Now I am not saying your experience with the AI will be the same, but on a second playthrough of some of my favourite missions, I noticed incidents like this. Frequently. Still, as it stands, my updated (with hindsight and without distractions from trying to follow the story) view on the AI is that it is relatively capable and no way near the worst I have seen, just don’t expect your team mates to always have your back. Cause they won’t.  (Added – 13th September 2010)

(This will be discussed on the next GMCRF fm)