Halo Reach Review

This weekend was kind of boring, so I basically just played that new Halo Reach game all the way through. I've got to say, I really thought it was going to be better. There was so much hype about how amazing the game play was going to be; even the commercial had a ton of amazing cinematography. The game was supposed be the great history about all the Spartans that existed before they all got wiped out in the war against the Covenant. I’m not even that big of an Xbox fan, but when I heard this game was coming out, the concept of it got me excited for it. I had been anticipating something that was going to be more in depth and captivating. As it turns out the story was only about six particular Spartans, and throughout the game they all died one at a time. It was supposed to be the game that showed you where it all began, and in my opinion they didn’t really put that much creativity into the story line. They didn’t go into the history; it was just a simple straightforward war like plot basically identical to all the other games. The first game was amazing because the concept of the story was original and it was all new adventure, but game by game they kept dragging it on, milking as much money as they could out of the idea of Halo. The entire game took place in only a few different places on the same planet, planet Reach, and the missions were really about nothing except driving the enemy out of one area at a time. Then two missions before the end of the game you’re taught the affiliation it has with the first Halo game. All of a sudden the story changes from fighting aliens off the planet, to discovering and saving Cortana; an artificial intelligence from all the other games. When this happened I was disappointed because throughout the game I kept waiting for it to get interesting, and as soon as this happened I knew where the story was going. I realized it was just some cheap prequel to the first game where all they did was basically back track from the beginning of the first story board since they wrote themselves into a corner writing in the other direction. It wasn’t giving the history about where it all began, it was just like “oh, yeah, here’s what happened in the month right before the first game began…enjoy.”

          Aside from just the story line, there was basically nothing new about the game play either. There weren’t any new weapons that didn’t already exist in Halo ODST (the game that was supposed to tide everyone over till this one came out). There weren’t any new vehicles; just the same basic warthogs, ghosts, banshees, etc. They also for some reason decided to take out dual-wielding which makes no sense; because that was a feature they introduced to make the game a lot more action packed in the first place. All the enemies were all the same familiar faces from all the other games; nothing new there either. Honestly the only thing I noticed about this game that I liked was the improvement of graphics. Halo Reach was anticipated to be the final bang of this series, but it’s more like the waning ripples of what used to be a bang.