Also available on Xbox One and Windows Halo: Reach is the second prequel in the series with its release the year after Halo Wars. This, however, is a prequel much closer to the 2001 original that all Halo fans know and love. Whereas Halo Wars took place 21 years before the events of Combat Evolve, Reach takes place immediately before. Immediate as in the final cut scene of Halo: Reach is literally the start of the first cut scene in Halo: Combat Evolved. It also told a story that a lot of Halo fans wanted to know - how did the human colony on planet Reach fall to the Covenant? If you're read the Halo novels, then you may know what happened to Reach even before playing this game. Or at least, you used to. Halo: Fall of Reach is a novel that told the story of the destruction of humanity's colony on planet Reach. Published in 2001, nine years before the release of Halo: Reach, this was an established story....until the game retconned the whole thing. The major parts of the story remain the same - the Covenant launch an unexpected attack on Reach and destroy the planet, leaving Master Chief John-117 as the sole surviving member of the Spartan-II super soldier program as he and the crew of the UNSC Pillar of Autumn narrowly escape the carnage of Reach. The specifics, especially where Master Chief is involved, is what change. I won't spoil that in case you haven't played Reach but may want to, but what you get is the story of six other Spartans as they discover the Covenant incursion and fight tooth and nail to try to save the capital world of the UNSC inner colonies. Halo Reach, visually, is a little bit better than Halo 3 but largely on par. That said, the system you play on does make a difference; the original Xbox 360 release runs at 720p at 30 frames per second, but if you play on Xbox One through the Master Chief Collection, that gets bumped to 1080p at 60 frames per second. It's not a full remaster like the first two games got with their anniversary remasters, but it's definitely a nice bit of polish. As with all of the older Halo games, the controls are quite different from what you'd expect from an FPS game. Left trigger throws grenades, right bumper reloads, and clicking the left stick zooms in for aiming, for example. Halo Infinite may have adopted pretty standard FPS controls, but don't expect that going into Reach. Still, though, once you get a feel for the controls, they feel perfectly functional. Halo: Reach is an exceptional game, but I do have a couple of gripes with it. From a lore perspective, I can't help but be a bit bugged by the fact that we already had a book explaining what happened to Reach that was outright retconned. In the book, Master Chief was deployed on a mission in orbit while most of the Spartans were fighting on the surface; this game was a perfect opportunity to tell the story of those Spartans on Reach while still keeping the book canon. The characters also weren't fleshed out as well as they could have been; Jorge and Emile are somewhat memorable, but for the most part, the Spartans of Noble Team just didn't impact me the way that Cortana, Captain Keyes, or Sergeant Johnson did. Still, though, those are subjective complaints, and there are lots of Halo fans who disagree with me on those points. The story overall is fantastic as is the gameplay. If you're a fan of Halo, Reach should be considered just as integral a part of the series' story as the original trilogy. My Rating - B |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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