In the aftermath of E3 and after the dust has settled on the Halo: Reach Beta (in which over 2.7 million player participated in) it's time to begin my personal impressions and predictions for next title in the Halo series Halo: Reach this game is without a doubt one of the most anticipated titles for the Xbox 360 in 2010, as well as my most anticipated game of 2010, and Microsoft didn't wait long into its E3 press conference this year to unveil some more details about the game. Don't know what reach is? I'll catch you up
Story
Halo: Reach occurs before the first Halo game, days in the timeline to be precise, specifically on the planet called Reach that has become the last stronghold for humanity from invading Covenant forces. Reach is also where the Spartan program was developed, which in turn creates the Spartan super soldiers that combat the covenant such as (Master Chief) now what you may not know judging on which games you've played is that Reach falls and is taken over by the Covenant, there is also a novel of the event following Master Chief titled the "Fall of Reach", during the Fall of Reach most of the Spartans are either killed or M.I.A
GamePlay
After playing the beta I could defiantly tell Halo: Reach is heading back to its original Halo: Combat Evolved roots. The game's HUD is stripped, with a map on the lower left, shields on the top of the screen, and weapon and ammo indicators in the top right. At E3 the Spartan being played during the demo (Noble 6) was sporting an assault rifle and soon had to make use of it as hovering Covenant ships began to eject drop pods with Elite's, that's right folks those bad boys are back from a 3 game hiatus and they're meaner than ever. Now let me just say that after watching the demo this game is beautiful, Halo: Reach no longer uses the Halo 3 engine but a brand new engine and it does it justice, the maps are huge and gorgeous.
The action was pretty frenetic, and there seemed to be some extra armor abilities in play from sprint, to armor lock. The Covenant were attacking a human base near the top of a mountain, and a group of four Spartan soldiers had to battle their way up to the installation to rescue the marines and to help fulfill a crazy plan by Noble teams 2nd in command Kate. At the top, a sizable group of Covenant had taken hold, where quite a few Jackal enemies sporting shields were camping. The Spartan in the demo then pulled out the brand new grenade launcher that was seen in the multiplayer beta--this weapon could explode its projectiles on contact or could be timed until it bounced into a more advantageous position after letting go of the right trigger, as the demo showed when the Spartan launched a projectile but waited to detonate until it bounced under the shields of some Jackals.
Once the Spartans were inside the base we saw a close-quarters execution kill, with the main Spartan soldier sneaking up behind an Elite, stabbing it in the back before finishing it with a brutal strike to the neck (all with the camera zoomed out to third-person perspective to view the action). I think that there are going to be a ton of people loving this new feature including me. After dispatching the Elite, I begun to think "This is going to be the greatest Halo game yet!" but then I was astonished by what I saw next. Over the Spartans comm. set you heard your Noble teams leader Carter-259 order Noble 6 to "get to the Sabre before the Covenant wreck it." My first thought was "Oh cool a cut scene where we'll actually see some air-to-air combat with some Broadsword fighters," but I was proven wrong again by Bungie, the Sabre turned out to be a multistage rocket, which the Spartans quickly boarded. The Sabre then launched straight up, eventually breaking the atmosphere of Reach and flying into space. At this stage, the Sabre's booster rockets ejected, leaving a much more maneuverable ship then it switched to game play, the Sabre then flew directly into a Covenant fleet, machine-guns and homing missiles firing at every enemy it saw ranging from Banshee's to Seraph fighters which seemed to always be in the books, and background of previous games, but now have a larger role.
Overall space combat looks like one of the big new additions in this latest Halo offering. Just when I was getting into the space combat, the demo ended leaving me to only want more, and counting the days till its release.
Firefight- That's right firefight is back! And it's much much better than ODST's firefight mode. One of the biggest improvements shown in Reach is the ability for Firefight matchmaking. Similar to how the multiplayer system works already, players will be able to connect to Xbox Live and find other players or friends to help them wipeout those pesky Covenant. Players who took part in the beta already know that they will be able to create a custom Spartan that will appear in multiplayer and campaign. This Spartan will also carry over to the firefight mode both offline and online. It was not mentioned by Bungie whether or not the map editing ability of Forge will be available but I assume it most likely will be. Another big improvement is that you can customize wave lengths and which species of Covenant are in the waves. You can also create your own skulls and combine abilities and what waves they will be in. Firefight looks bigger and badder than ever
Multiplayer- Halo's multiplayer is a staple in the series, such a strong staple it's managed to be number 1 or number 2 on the Xbox Live charts for 3 years, Halo: Reach's multiplayer will be a much stronger big brother to Halo 3's multiplayer. I won't dive too deep into this because I know that a lot of you have played the beta but once again aside from the launch hiccup Halo: Reach's multiplayer is sleek, fast, and fun, and I'll be playing it for years to come
Predictions- Halo: Reach will defiantly be one of the highest selling games in 2010 just from the title "Halo" alone, but to the true fan boys like me it will be a fitting end to Bungie's years developing Halo games, Halo has truly changed the way FPS games operate, both in single player and multiplayer. I think that the multiplayer will top the charts for Xbox live, judging from the beta most player I talked to say its light years better than Halo 3 everyone seemed to enjoy the new weapons, bigger maps, and old school Halo ****which were the main selling points. But the thing that interests me is the new campaign mode, Bungie's last Halo game ODST was much more character driven and was my personal favorite Halo campaign, so it'll be interesting to see if they can carry that over with this new campaign. Defiantly check back here while we count down to Halo: Reach's release on September 15th 2010
source: http://e4g.info/article/46/1/halo-reach-impressions-and-predictions/
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