Halo Reach - Xbox 360

From the beginning, you know the end. And it ain’t pretty.

Ten years ago Halo bounced onto the original XBox. Within weeks, that game alone had sold millions of copies, saved Microsoft’s white elephant from the scrapheap and launched a brand which has gone from strength to strength, spawning two sequels, a real-time-strategy title, add-on packs, animated films, books, posters and… soap.

Halo is a powerhouse.

So we come to Halo: Reach. The last hurrah. Bungie’s final goodbye to one of the most influential gaming series’ of my generation.

And my goodness does it kick ass.

As a package, Reach ticks all the boxes – stellar story, great gameplay, thrilling multiplayer and so on – but what really shines through, as soon as you pop the disk in your shiny white box, is the sheer effort put into the game.

Picking up shortly before the beginning of the first Halo game, Reach tells the story of Noble Team, a six-strong unit of Spartan supersoldiers, and their battle to protect the human colony of Reach from the invading Covenant armada – a battle which, thanks to the series’ rich storyline, we already know ends badly.

The player assumes the role of Noble Six, a new recruit to the team, who is quickly thrust into an arching storyline which fits nicely into the Halo canon, and features just about every good bit from the other Halo games.

There’s a stealthy mission with snipers and night vision, huge tank battles, close-range sword fighting and fighting retreats against the endless tides of the Covenant, among many other stand-out levels.

There’s even a space mission – which plays a bit like Lylat Wars – and is a nice addition to the campaign, acting as a welcome change of pace from shooting hunters in the back with a shotgun.

The rest of Noble Team, which are often fighting alongside you, all have their own characters and abilities, and watching the disparate personalities of the Spartans play off against each others is a highlight of the campaign.

As Carter, the leader of the specialist unit, says: “You can drop the ‘lone wolf’ crap, Noble fights as a team.”

A good thing then that rather than being the traditional Halo NPCS (of mis-thrown grenades and constant death fame) Noble Team, and the other marines you run into on your long journey, are clever, fast and deadly accurate.

Good thing too, as the Covenant are deadlier than ever. The Elites (at this point in the Halo storyline still the bad guys) are agile, command their squads intelligently and have bought a whole load of new tech, weapons and vehicles along for the ride.

The new weapons on offer range from the deadly needle rifle (think a needler with a scope), to new shotguns, assault rifles, an improved rocket launcher, a weapon which fires four plasma grenades at once and my personal favourite, the ‘focus rifle’ – a sort of sniper beam weapon which cuts through shields like a hot plasma sword through Spartan armour.

Also included this time are ‘armour abilities’. These pick-ups give your Spartan extra skills, be it the ability to sprint, dodge incoming fire, fly into the sky with a jetpack, turn invisible or put up a bubble shield – there’s even one which makes you invulnerable (and immobile) for a second or two. These abilities are a pleasant evolution of the pick-ups from Halo 3, and can really mix the action up, both in campaign and multiplayer.

New vehicles making their debut include the Falcon – a combination helicopter and transport gunship, a small, two-seater Covenant skimmer with a miniature Wraith plasma mortar attached and a new variant on the Halo standard Warthog – this time rocket pod-flavoured.

All of these vehicles fit brilliantly into the long campaign’s big levels, which are less corridor-shooter and more open-world than previous titles. There are usually two or three routes to an objective, but whether you fly in, shoot your way through the massed ranks of grunts or try to sneak around the back is up to you. The only downside to this open world effect means it’s quite easy to get lost. The game doesn’t use waypoints very much, meaning I quite often had to look at the objectives and match the ‘go to the east’ instruction with the compass in my visor.

Outside of the campaign (which can again be played with three friends along for the ride) the game is fully loaded with all the Halo classics you know and love.

First up, there’s the multiplayer.

Once again Bungie have served up a masterpiece of competitive battles, ranging from team slayer to rocket race (Mongeese and unlimited rockets = good times).

The maps are varied, including a new version of Blood Gulch, and are perfectly rounded when pitted with the vehicles and armour abilities on offer.

Several new modes also make their first appearances in the menus. These include Invasion – a six vs six battle which plays a bit like Battlefield, and high-roller matches for the wannabe MLG professionals among us.

Firefight, the Gears of War Horde-alike mode, also makes a return – and it finally has matchmaking.

The gameplay is as intense and enjoyable as ever, and thanks to Bungie’s ridiculous amount of game customisation options, if you want an entire wave of grunts armed with fuel-rod guns who explode in a ball of confetti when you kill them, that’s perfectly logical.

Also, if you fancy throwing a spanner in the works, some of the spots on the enemy waves of dropships can be taken by human players, making the whole experience a heck of a lot more intense.

Forge, Bungie’s incredible sandbox of death, also makes a welcome return – but this time, it’s on steroids.

Not content with giving you every multiplayer map to tinker with, Bungie have created a massive arena (with its own ecology, including animals and birds) in ForgeWorld.

Within this gargantuan space you can build just about anything your imagination can come up with, and the game lets you save all your screenshots, game modes and maps to share with your friends.

The really good homemade maps are even slated to enter their own matchmaking mode, so keep your visors peeled for that.

As for the matchmaking system itself, it’s as tidy as ever, and the developers have made it a lot easier to move from multiplayer to campaign to firefight without losing your party – it’s now as easy as pie to zip about, trying the numerous modes.

The only mode which can’t handle a party is the theatre mode, which is a shame, as it would have been cool to re-watch that sweet grenade stick with a few mates in the back rows.

Graphically the game is a cut above Halo 3, and has been built from the ground up to portray Reach in all its glory.
The colour and depth the developers drew the world with is simply stunning, and the textures are lush with no discernable pop-in, even when the action gets intense, as it frequently does.

The animation is sharp and does a brilliant job of showing off both Spartans, humans and Covenant at their best.

The score is another series highpoint from composer Martin O’Donnell, who manages to go from quiet drumbeat to a symphonic climax and still create a sound which is quintessentially Halo, but has a haunting melody of its own.
(He also does a great line in drum-heavy battle themes.)

The voice acting is also excellent, with Noble Team each having their own personality and inflection on their characters.

There’s not much else to say about Reach. I can’t recommend it enough. If you’ve never liked the Halo games, stay clear, but if you’re a fan, or indeed have never played a Halo game before, get your wallet out.

That’s an order, Spartan.

Score: 9.5/10

Good Stuff:
Great plot
Brilliant gameplay, both online and off
Great score and graphics
ForgeWorld is just ridiculous

Not so good stuff:
No parties in theatre mode
The AI, while improved, still struggles with driving

See the trailer here

Taking control of a SPARTAN soldier known as Noble Six, players will assume the role as a replacement Lieutenant of a UNSC special operations unit, known as ‘Noble Team’.

Halo Reach marks the last time that developers Bungie will oversee a Halo game and should be released during the later half of 2010.

Halo 3: ODST

Master Chief may have finished the fight in Halo 3, but the war was still going on at the time of Halo: ODST, and it’s an altogether more brutal war when viewed though the helmet filters of a normal human, rather than the lofty view of a Spartan supersoldier.

ODST places you in the size 12 combat boots of ‘the Rookie’ – one of the UNSC’s elite Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (ODSTs) – who deploy in drop pods from orbiting spaceships into the very heart of the battle, bringing their fancy armour, brutal fighting skills and silenced SMG in with them.

Set at the time of Halo 2′s storyline, the game sees a squad of these marines jumping into New Mombasa, a mega-city on the coast of Africa which is was destroyed by a ship jumping into ‘slipspace’ (hyperspace) inside the city limits.

While the rest of the Rookie’s squad makes a safe landing, he is knocked unconscious for six hours and has to fight his way through the twilight city to find out what happened to the rest of the team.

To figure out the story, the Rookie has to crawl through the city, alone, and find certain items abandoned in the earlier fight, be it a helmet, a discarded remote detonator or a sniper rifle bent in half.

The game then puts the player in control of another ODST as they carry out the earlier mission, be it leading a charge in a Warthog, sniping Brutes in a high-rise building or defending a top-secret warehouse from invading Covenant forces.

The contrast between the relative calm and stealthy approach of the Rookie’s ‘hub’ and the full-tilt action of the flashback sequences makes for an entertaining game, especially once the plot of ODST starts to become clear.

Though ODST originally started out as a short add-on pack, it quickly grew into a full-priced game, and this is reflected in the main campaign.

Depending on your difficulty level the game offers a good 5/6 hours of gameplay, and the action of the flashback scenes is sure to make you want to play them again on your own, or with three mates along for the ride.

I particularity enjoyed the hub’s stealthy sections, playing as the Rookie, which were a surprising change from the action of Halo 3.

You have to consider your strategy before a fight, and I often found myself nervously waiting for a pair of Hunters to pass by rather than taking them on – as I would have done in Halo 3.

Despite the Rookie’s combat training, he’s lacking Master Chief’s recharging shield, inhuman strength and motion detector. He’s therefore at a severe disadvantage against the troopers of the Covenant, though the reappearance of the magnum (with much-missed 2x scope) makes headshotting once again the order of the day.

ODSTs can also call on the imaginatively named VISR – a heads-up-display which acts as combined night-vision goggles, map and friend/foe identifier – incredibly useful in the night-time city.

Using the VISR also shows up terminals which are tapped into the city’s AI overwatch, a program known as ‘The Superintendent’, who helpfully guides the Rookie through the city by using the city’s roadsigns, flashing up ‘Detour’, ‘Turn left’ or ‘Make a U-turn’, in the space of actually talking to the stranded soldier.

I discovered the Super’s intents by accident, following the signs until I realised that I was being told which way to go – it’s quite an eerie feeling, being offered directions by a faceless assistant.

Accessing the terminals also allows the rookie to download audio files detailing the fate of Sadie, a New Mombasa teenager who is caught up in the Covenant’s attack and forced to battle her way through the city under siege.

The metastory is told through the audio and a comic book-style series of still images shown on the Rookie’s VISR, and despite a few odd scenes and the occasional bit of flat voice acting, Sadie’s tale is a nice distraction to the Rookie’s plight – do keep in mind however that listening to Sadie’s recordings does not pause the real-time action in the city, as I learned when I exited out of a file only to come face to face with a Hunter, which promptly killed me by throwing a car at my head.

The main story is a compelling adventure overall, with enough content to keep die-hard fans happy and a storyline which offers some interesting views on the Halo universe. The action between the ODST squad members themselves is one of the best aspects however, as the pithy dialogue really makes you feel like part of a whole, therefore making the search for your squad all the more compelling.

The voice acting from some of the cast of TV’s Firefly and Battlestar Galactica was also a good move by Bungie, and adds a familiar edge to the proceedings.

Also packaged with the game comes a new multiplayer mode – Firefight.

Basically the same as Gears of War 2′s Horde mode, firefight sees you and three mates fending off wave after wave of increasingly difficult Covenant forces in a number of locations.

The play is fast and intense and teamwork becomes essential as the later waves flow over your positions – lives are drawn from a central pool, and once they’re gone, they’re gone.

The only downside to the mode is the lack of matchmaking support, so I would quite often have to trawl to the very bottom of my friends list to find anyone who had bought the game, though I expect Bungie will probably rectify this in a coming update.

On its own Firefight might not have been enough to please the paying public, so the inclusion of the entirety of Halo 3′s multiplayer content was a wise move by Bungie.

The second disk included in the box contains every map, mode and weapon combination from Halo 3′s ever-popular multiplayer, allowing even a Halo-noob to jump right into the action without needing to buy each of the DLC packs, saving a fair amount of cash in the process, though people who’ve already bought the DLC may feel a bit short-changed.

Graphically the game isn’t that much different to Halo 3’s shiny environments, but the textures have been polished a little more.

The sound design is a step up from the previous game however, with the music being a particularity strong score, combining mournful jazz with upbeat action music for the flashback scenes..

Despite its humble beginnings as little more than an overpriced add-on pack, ODST has more than enough content to stand as a game in its own right. A compelling storyline, brilliant multiplayer and the addition of the Halo 3 multiplayer experience makes it a package worth the money, especially if you’re new to the Halo universe. I found it to be a brilliant blast through a familiar world, told from the viewpoint of just a normal soldier, and all the more compelling for it.

Score: 8/10

Good Stuff:
- Great story
- New approach to Halo action
- Firefight is brilliant

Not So Good Stuff:
- No matchmaking support for Firefight
- DLC downloaders might feel short-changed