Quick Final Impressions - Halo Reach

My friend recently got a Halo Reach addition Xbox 360 that she’s been keeping at my house because she doesn’t have anywhere to put the console for the time being.  Since it came with Halo Reach, we played through the campaign on co-op mode.  It’s a prequel to the first game, and you’re not playing as Master Chief, but you’re still playing as a Spartan so that doesn’t really affect the gameplay.  My previous complaints about the first couple of Halo’s having repetitive campaigns were rendered pretty moot by this one.  There is a lot more variety than in the other Halo games I’ve played.  There was a space ship shooting frenzy level which was really fun and felt like what a modern 3D shmup could really be.  There were also different goals during the campaign like blow up certain enemy utilities, protect something, etc. and other vehicle-oriented areas, so I didn’t have much of a chance to get bored like I did in previous games.  The story was pretty cliché at times and by its very nature predictable, but was a lot of fun.

My friend had a two-month free trial of Xbox Live Gold so I played the multiplayer quite a bit to give it a good chance.  It was pretty fun, a lot more so than I found Halo 2.  There are tons of new game types in addition to the classics, some of which I didn’t get a chance to play long enough to figure out what was happening, but many of them were chaotic and enjoyable.  I especially enjoyed using the various special abilities like the jetpack and armor lock.  They added elements to the gameplay that I hadn’t experienced in a Halo game before.  There’s also a ton of character customization available as you gain points for playing multiplayer that you can spend to unlock various armor pieces and styles, but I didn’t really care too much about customizing my Spartan.  

The forge world element of making your own multiplayer maps was actually less fun than I had hoped and I didn’t spend much time playing with it, but I might revisit that at a later date.  The firefights were a lot of fun, especially teaming up with a friend to fight the massive waves of enemies and a welcome addition to the game for me.  I’ve had a lot of fun with the game, and will probably continue to pick it up to play with friends even though the Xbox Live membership has expired as long as the game’s being stored at my place.