With my general disinterest in Halo, the only two titles in the series that I’ve always been genuinely curious about weren’t the numbered ones. And now that I’ve played both ODST and Halo: Reach, I am impressed. This one might be the best Halo game from the ones that I’ve played so far. Which is hardly a glowing recommendation, but I did like this one quite a bit.
What’s really interesting about Halo: Reach is that it feels like an attempt to add the elements that were common for the “cinematic military shooters” of the time into the far more old-school feeling formula that Halo has used up until then. Which somehow worked. You get more focused-feeling levels and objectives, yet lots of levels remain very open and you can still more often than not just run through lots of level sections without being locked into an arena. And jumping around is still important, even if there’s a tiny bit more weight to everything.
The story is a bit more personal and quite predictable, given that this is a prequel to the first game and we know that Reach fell, so everyone will probably die. As such, there’re lots of dramatic moments, building all of the team member personalities (as much as you’d expect from an 80s action flick with a team of specialists that is) and, of course, the player character is the absolute best hope of all humanity who will save everyone. Though, this time the player character is completely customizable to be even more of a player avatar than Master Chief was.
But again – it all somehow works, it all manages to click. Maybe part of the reason the story feels perfectly serviceable is because the visual delivery is really good this time around. While this game is missing that magic “space opera” feeling that Halo 2 had, it creates its own take on the universe that looks and feels absolutely great. The Covenant no longer feel like Disney enemies as even Grunts sound and behave less like angry teletubbies and more like a weird alien invading force. The visuals in this game still hold up despite being 10 years old by now. The music is usually darker and enhances the mood really well. And the locations are really well done and varied and occasionally involve very surprising and unexpected gameplay sequences.
As I understand it works especially fun in coop, more so than other Halo games and while I’ve played it solo, I might revisit it some day. There are some annoying sections, as always, and if your partner is an AI they do some bizarre stuff and tend to constantly run in front of you, even if you’re throwing grenades or shooting with an explosive weapon. But at least there’s no Flood, so most enemies are of the “fun” type, not too many encounters that feel infuriating rather than challenging. Oh, also the health is not fully regenerating in this one, just like it was in the first game.
The MCC version on PC is really good too. It still has some weirdness to it, but a lot of the initial issues from when The Master Chief Collection just launched on PC seem to have been fixed. At least in the campaign as per usual I didn’t ever bother with multiplayer.
Overall, I’d say that Halo: Reach is a game that’s worth checking out if you’re in a mood for a fun FPS that combines several generations of approaches to making FPS titles in a very neat package. It has a simplistic, but well told story. It has fun levels. It looks, sounds and feels great, despite being from the era of shooters that over-relied on scripted sequences and predictable arena fights. And even if you don’t plan to check the coop or multiplayer, you can have lots of fun with it. I certainly did.