I get home with Halo:Reach. I'm a huge fan of the story, so naturally I wanna play campaign FIRST, as not only a refresher course of Halo but because well... It is REACH....
For those of you that don't know the name Reach for us Halo fans is huge. Reach was the pin being pulled from the grenade that was Master Chief. The fall of Reach was that part in the story that always gets mentioned but was never seen. Think the "Jedi Wars" from Star Wars and you'll get it. If you don't know that reference well... I pity you.
Getting into the thick of it, your are Noble Six. You are shoved into Noble Team as they are deployed to Reach. Some of them at first are apprehensive. You are filling the shoes of a fallen soldier in a tightly knit platoon. Not to mention much of your past is kept secret. But ONI and the UNSC has plans for reach and you have to help. What follows is a roller coaster ride.
Lets start with any good story really, dialogue and voice acting. Top notch in both regards. It is hard to overstate Bungie's use of words. They weave a great story in every game and this is no exception. The voice actors do an amazing job. And if you have ever seen Castle, Firefly, Serenity, or Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog then there is the treat of hearing Nathan Fillion calling for your backup.
Now, the score was perfect. It was filled with sorrow, pain. It was soft and driving, but filled with the sort of impending doom I love in these stories. Now, again, for those that don't know why it is done this way.... Reach as a planet is taken over. The whole planet falls to the Covenant. And in fact, Halo fans know that what they are doing is futile (kinda) because in the end all the Spartan-IIs (Master Chief is a Spartan-III) that where on Reach die... Noble team is all Spartan...
And as a side note, thank you Bungie for giving me the one sequence in a video game I've always wanted. No spoilers here BUT wait till after the credits. It is possibly the single most effective story telling devices I have felt for the end of a video game series. As I sit here thinking about the heroics, and how the ending is conveyed I am almost in tears. It was simply beautiful. I wanted to see it... but I never wanted to see it... It is a thing that if you are into story telling it is amazing.
Now not everyone that gets Halo games are in it for the story telling.... Now rememeber When I said I'd get to two? Well.... Multiplayer is reason two that this is late. Bungie really raised the bar on arcade shooters. Every weapon feels well balanced and you never feel overpowered. Before the sword or the hammer or the fuel rod canon would make you feel like a God. Well in here, atleast to my eyes, they are very balanced. obviously some weapons are better then others, your not gonna wanna use pistols all the time, but they all have a distinct place. Couple that with some amazing gametypes (my favorite is Headhunter. Think of the rings in Sonic after you kill a guy, you gather them up and then deposit them back at base... the catch? If you don't make it back to base and you die all the heads you carry drop for the other person to pick up) and its addicting. As I type this I'm waiting to turn around and jump into it again.
People have complained that its "Not COD" and to that I say GOOD. This is an ARCADE SHOOTER. This has HEALTHPACKS and guns that DON'T make sense, and physics that are weird, they throw curve balls. If you wanna be competitive and try to outplay and be super 1337 and uber pwnerer and be pro or w.e., play CoD by all means. I'm not stopping you. What I wanna do when I game? I wanna have fun, with friends, I wanna laugh a lot. I wanna relax and just have a good time. Halo:Reach right now to me, for my dollar, is the best console shooter for that purpose.
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