Halo Reach Campaign Review

By BatRastered — September 20, 2010
Tags: bungie halo review

Bungie's last Halo game goes out with a bang.

Prequels tend to suffer from the problem that the technology has advanced even though the events in the story take place earlier. Halo Reach is no exception. The Spartans in Reach have abilities that the Master Chief did not. The armor abilities include sprinting, flying around with a jet pack, a bubble shield (as first appeared in Halo 3 as equipment), invisibility, a holographic clone, and armor lock (an ability that locks your armor down making you temporarily invulnerable but also immobile). Some of the advancements are actually explained a bit, but only if you have the collectors or legendary edition and the desire to read through all the stuff that comes with it.

The story actually does have some nods to those who have been following the Halo universe beyond the game, including the appearance of Dr Halsey, whom I'd imagine most players wouldn't know from Jimmy.

A nice touch is that the points and leveling system from the multiplayer works in the campaign too. You earn points for killing covenant and beating levels just like you would from killing and winning multiplayer matches. You can also play through the campaign in co-op up to four players with either competitive or co-operative scoring enabled.

You play as Noble-6, the newest member of a six spartan special forces team (Noble team) tasked to investigate a disturbance at a research facility on the Planet Reach. Reach, if you didn't know already, is the HQ planet for the UNSC and is where the Spartans were created. Think of it as the Halo version of the Pentagon. The point is, it's a very important military world for the UNSC, and as you may have guessed the disturbance you are sent to investigate turns out to be Covenant related.

If you've been paying any attention to the Halo story at all, you know how this game ends already, as the beginning of the original Halo is the escape of Master Chief from the invasion of Reach aboard the Pillar of Autumn. Halo Reach goes to some lengths to fill in the backstory of how and more importantly why the Autumn fled and found the first ring.

Along the way, you will pair with various members of Noble Team through the games 9 levels. For instance, you will team with Jun the sniper specialist on a recon mission at night. This provides some nice variety to the missions, and for the first time in a Halo game, we even get some outer space combat. It's relatively short and very simple (only two types of enemy fighters to take out, and some targets on the big ship to disable). All in all, a nice breather from the constant firefights you face on the surface.

The difficulty levels provide about what you'd expect. Easy is laughable as you can take two fuel-rod cannon shots to the face while you viciously beat down an elite commander with the butt of your rifle. Normal is not very challenging unless you forget to fire your weapon like a Jimmy or let yourself get surrounded. Heroic is tough, but fair. You will have to plan your way through certain groups of enemies, four elite zealots in a room will force you to think really hard to outsmart them and take them down one at a time. Legendary adds a bunch of tweaks like making an elite sniper invisible. On legendary, you need to really take your time even to take out a pack of grunts.

The end is awesome, and without spoiling anything, you'll likely want to play the very last level on legendary with a group of 4 a few times. It's bad-ass.

Oh, and I hear Reach comes with a pretty good competitive multiplayer game too.

Verdict: Buy it

Halo Reach

Halo Reach Campaign Review

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