If only Halo 3 hadn't come out first
Bungie didn't need an overhaul of the game to produce something brilliant. They needed some kind of empathy with the characters and their situation. The game is set during the fall of the planet Reach, essentially the main world for the UNSC save Earth. The fight for this planet is desperate, it cannot fall to the Covenant, yet the overwhelming odds mean that many Spartans are lost along with the planet itself.
And yet when you play the game all of your missions are brilliantly victorious and at no point outside of a cutscene do you feel on the back foot. That is what this game lacks, its all well and good defeating everyone in the game when you play Master Chief, thats what he does, but I thought the point of this game was to show how other Spartans are not as lucky and were willing to sacrifice themselves for the mission. Ignoring the cutscenes this atmosphere is totally missing from the game, the deaths of Noble team in the cutscenes seems almost wasteful considering you have no oppurtunity to try and save them.
SPOILERS The deaths of the first two Spartans, Jorge and Kat, I thought were good. Jorge was an early death and died for a noble cause and the sudden departure of Kat was the quick shock that could have set a dark tone for the rest of the game, but the gameplay continued as if nothing had happend. Perhaps if the other members of noble were actually useful in the game then their loss would be more obvious but it isn't.
This is the same for ODST, if you weren't powerful enough to take on a brute with some concern then the whole game would have been more tense but I didn't notice you being any less powerful than a spartan.
Same as with the flood, if the parts of the game with them in were like a horror game, no an action FPS, then the mix of covenant and flood would've worked really well.
As for the other new features in Reach they're no improvement over Halo 3 when it comes to gameplay. I'm bored of the online play because it is too similar to Halo 3, just because it is re-released for Reach doesn't make it new. Forge is good, even if you've only got the one map to work in. And armour abilities are the same as equipment in H3.
In summary; as good as halo 3, probably a little better, but campaign was lacking and the multiplayer was nothing new. I shant be buying any of the maps packs, unless there is something completely unexpected and spectacular, will wait 'till they're free
UPDATE: I like the challenges, they give you a haul of experience whilst setting the occasional entertaining task