i finished halo: reach this past weekend. overall it took a week of off-and-on playing to complete it. i played a couple of missions on the weekend and then a single mission on weekdays if i felt up to it.

reach is pretty good. another solid release in the halo franchise. i felt that the story was much more straight forward than halo 3’s. there’s about to be some *spoilers*. what the story had working against it though was the overall lack of surprise. if you’ve played the previous halo games and paid the slightest bit of attention to the cutscenes and lore then you’ll know that the planet reach fell and that master chief is the last spartan alive. despite the outcome being obvious the story is not boring. i think part of that success is based on elements of the story being character driven. you want to know more about the noble team including yourself. the writers then try to break your heart by killing off your team members one by one. some of these scenes provoke sentiment, but they end up being weakened because you know it’s going to happen…it’s just a matter of when. i liked jorge’s final scene best. i’m not sure if the game ever mentions what happens to jun?

gameplay-wise my favorite parts were when noble six was completely together. i’d love to play a whole game in this squad format. i imagine that would be too easy of a game though. speaking of which, they definitely cranked up the enemy difficulty and skill level in reach. that’s logical since there’s multiple spartan squad members at any given time. the elites and jackals seem a lot more agile than before. also the enemy shields seem to be as strong as the player’s. even the grunts seem to take more shots than usual. i remember thinking who thought the hunter needed to be tougher?? when i first encountered one in reach.

i liked how the warthog handled in this game best (not sure if it was the same in halo3). conversely, i did not like how the 4-wheeler handled. the night vision was cool (also not sure if this was in a previous halo game). i liked the needler rifle, but it was only effective on shieldless or de-shielded enemies. i did not care for the plasma repeater. flying the sabre was a nice change of pace. my least favorite missions were the civilian evacuation one and where you fly the falcon throughout the city.

i died the most on the clearing the landing pad finale. there’s so many enemies here from so many angles and some with very powerful weapons. i’d say i died at least 6 times. when this segment was over i was surprised by the abrupt ending…it seemed so anti-climatic. i was looking for a final boss or some kind of adrenaline racing halo finale. instead you just get one final shoot out. i’m at least glad there was the post-credits followup. now that i think about it i’m not sure that the finale could have been done any other way (and continued to make sense).

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