I wrote a freaking long post the other day about this but I don't feel like it again, so I'll just do a short version.
3 had a far better campaign, and I was pretty indifferent to the multiplayer in either.
Edit: J/k I'll just copy/paste that post
I liked Halo 3 more. Reach's campaign didn't really click in any way for me. There were no really climactic battles or epic scenery compared to stepping onto the arc in Halo 3, or battling the scarabs. Sure they did some cool ship vs ship every now and then but nothing compared to the fleet battle described in the book, or the fight you see near the end of Halo 2. The flood's absence obviously makes sense in terms of the story, and plenty of people dislike them, but without that variety, I just feel like I fight the same fights over and over. None of the characters were even remotely developed, and the story does very little with halo, while still somehow managing to break plenty of canon. As a whole I just felt it didn't really develop the universe, or make any significant impact on me at all. I was pretty disappointed frankly.
Halo 3, while certainly not the best shooter I've played, had a better campaign for me. Some of the stuff with the characters and how they are resolved ends really awkwardly, but there are lots of really really cool scenes and scenarios to play through. The part where your fighting through the shipyard with the storm and covenant floating over the arc in the distance is really cool, it's a huge and unique setpiece. The end of the 7th chapter is still an incredible scene to me, one that stuck with me long after playing. I really like the final scenario very much, even if it's similar to Halo 1's ending. And of course there are the scarab fights.
But most importantly, I felt like what I was playing through actually mattered. With Halo 3, it felt like an exciting, final battle to top of a great trilogy, where Reach told a story we already knew, but in a slightly different way. It had none of the intrigue of mystery that pretty much drove the story. And I also had 2-3 games to get to know some of the characters in Halo 3, so seeing what happened actually made me feel something. Not a lot, but enough to care more about what happened to them. In Reach, they just pick people off one by one and it's like "oh gee another one dead, that generic female character I heard talk maybe 5 times and said nothing worth mentioning." Granted, some of the ways they go down are pretty cool, but with absolutely no development I might as well watch bunny rabbits die gloriously in combat.
On another small note I thought Halo 3 had a much better soundtrack. Halo 3 had a little too much rocking out on piano, but it still came through with great sounding battle music, as well as plenty of tunes that were familiar but changed enough to really feel great, and really clicked with the more important moments of the story. Reach's soundtrack is... ok, but it doesn't really build off of the series, and doesn't really pack the same punch. Not sure there's really a better way to explain, but the Halo 3 score justfeelsbetter.
I walked away from Halo 3 googling the soundtrack, wanting to play co-op with friends, have fun and find skulls. I walked away from Reach.
As far as multiplayer goes, neither really stuck with me all that much. They just felt like well executed arena shooters to me. Pretty fun for a while, but not really up there with stuff I would play all the time, like Starcraft 1-2, Battlefield, or Team Fortress. I will say that I thought Reach's level design was pretty damn lazy compared to Halo 3. They literally copy/pasted levels from campaign into multiplayer.
TL;DR: Halo Reach is weak.
Vaasman
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