This game exceeded my expectations, but does that give it the perfect ten? Read on people. **WALL OF TEXT COMMENCING**
The story follows noble team and their role in the tragic story of planet Reach which takes place just before Halo: CE. You would be forgiven for thinking that the story would be pointless to those who have read Fall of Reach, but no. Noble team was never followed prior to this game. The story starts when noble team are asked to investigate some disturbances on a nearby farm. They find Covenant soldiers.
A company of aliens then turns into a truly huge fleet of Covenant and then saving Reach quickly turns into getting vital intel off Reach as things get more desperate. The story is well told through the eyes of noble six, allowing you to get an insight into life on Reach and build an attachment with noble team. The ending after the credits really does give you chills and it is great fan service.
The campaign is paced pretty well and moves you from mission to mission without switching you off, many players complain about a minute amount of big set piece events but this quantity of them in my opinion is perfect. Call of Duty tried too hard, basically. You get just enough time in each location as you start to realise that you have seen the location you are in enough, the game then moves you to another.
In fact, this game seems to be possessed by Bungie, when you are about to throw your controller or say a bad word about it, it seems to cushion you and make you want to keep going. It is spiced up with vehicle sections, a space craft mission and a low gravity firefight. The only beef I have is the checkpoints. When you die, they seem to spawn you in an awkward position sometimes, considering how well place checkpoints are in other Halo games, this is a bit absurd.
This becomes a serious problem near the end of the game, I found myself dieing ten times in a row from one checkpoint. This is a mix between how hard the game actually is, how poor a job this mission does of telling you where enemies are and where that last checkpoint is placed. On normal difficulty this was quite a big problem, leaving me wanting to turn off the campaign and go straight to matchmaking, on legendary I could imagine it being a crippling pacing problem, forcing you to start the mission from scratch.
The difficulty was strange at first, forcing me to rethink my beloved Halo-run-in-and-whack-them-in-the-face strategy which made me like the game in the first place, but after sticking with it and using cover a bit more, this became a non issue. Overall the campaign is well paced and designed, not as much as other Halo games, but it is much more epic and will not dissatisfy.
The Halo formula has been changed in many ways. You can only carry two types of grenade now, and two grenades each of those types. At first this was a bummer but realizing how sparse spike and flame grenades were in Halo 3, this is not an issues. Also your aiming cross hairs become bigger as you shoot and add more recoil, becoming smaller as you stop using the weapon, forcing more strategic weapon use.
The vehicles have also been given an upgrade with less glitchy physics and a much more realistic experience behind the wheel. Assassination animations have been added, when you hold the melee button you will do an animation on the person you are assassinating, this is quite cool in firefight and campaign, but in competitive multiplayer situations this serves nothing more than an extra animation for screenshot takers. Health from Halo 1 is back and works in the same way as it did back then. Overall the Halo formula has been tweaked for more careful gameplay and more immersion.
New vehicles make their way into Reach, the Falcon, which is much like the hornet but with turrets and more seats and the Revenant, it is like a ghost but with an extra seat and a Wraith gun. Some vehicles have been changed too, the Warthog now has a variant with a missile turret and the Banshee bombs now have to be switched to. Not many wholesale changes here but I am happy about that.
Weapons have been revamped all throughout the game. The battle rifle has been replace with the DMR, the same thing but with a one shot firing rate. The magnum is now like Halo 1, but it is also semi automatic. There is now a new weapon which fires homing plasma grenades and has a weapon timing similar to the spartan, there is a new weapon which fires medium plasma bolts at enemies and a laser type weapon with a sniper scope that drains energy shields and health at an alarming rate as long as it is hitting the target. The rocket launcher now locks on to vehicles which will be loved and hated at the same time. It is hard to judge how much the weapons have changed, before firing the weapon, one would be mistaken for thinking there are only cosmetic changes but the recoil system changes the way they work drastically after playing for a while.
There are also armor abilities, which replace the deployables from Halo 3 and add some strategy, jetpacks, armor lock, which makes you invincible for a short period of time and unable to move, the blast from it running out acts as a very short range emp. The bubble shield has been preserved as an armor ability and doesn't run out, there is a sprint, invincibility and a deceiving hologram of you which runs to a position and disperses when shot at.
There is now falling damage, one of the worst parts of this game in my opinion, Halo 3 and 2 benefited from the removal of this a whole lot, allowing for more creative ambush tactics, with the removal of this comes the removal of a great amount of strategic options in this field.
Multiplayer has changed considerably, it now had loadouts which are sets of weapons and armor abilities you can choose from the start of the game, preventing a bit of weapon griefing. It is also much less predictable thanks to the new physics, you never know what is going to happen.
New modes have been modes have been added but the only worth noting is invasion, 6 vs 6 with three tiers. The attackers have to move forward by taking one of two capture points, then once they have move forward and do it once more, at which point they need to deliver a core back to another point. They need to do this before the time runs out, the defenders have to delay the attackers until time runs out. Right now there are only 3 maps for invasion and it can get quite boring, this is going to change later though.
The forge tools have been revamped to allow many more objects, different controls and the ability to suspend objects in the air and make them phase through objects and the ground. There is now a massive outdoor editing canvas called forge world which has too much to talk about here. Overall making maps is easier and better than ever with more tools to make sure you don't throw your controller.
Game modes can be editing in so many ways it is unbelievable. There are so many different combinations of maps and modes than one can comprehend. There is something for everyone and if it isn't there, you can create. This game is the most flexible console game out there, rivaled by none.
Halo: Reach is a brilliant game, it shys away from perfect 10 due to some imperfect design choices. It gets a solid 9.5/10 and any Xbox Live user won't be able to put the game down.