Halo Reach, Bungie’s final shot at a Halo game, came off the massive success of Halo 3 and launched on September 14, 2010. Do you know what else came out that year? Call of Duty Black Ops, one of the greatest CODs to ever grace this earth. Also, Instagram and the iPad launched that same year. What a time to be alive. Halo Reach and Bungie had a lot to live up to and many believe they didn’t. What do you think?
Personally, Halo Reach is probably my favorite Halo to date. Although there’s a lot to nitpick about it, the only thing I’d personally change is the Armor Lock ability. If you never played Reach, it had seven “armor abilities” to choose from. The most hated was Armor Lock. This ability let you become invincible for five seconds. Five seconds is a long time for someone you almost fragged to stall, hoping their team shows up to save them. It negatively impacted the flow of the game.
Bungie also replaced the beloved Battle Rifle with the DMR. I know I’m in the minority on this one but I prefer the DMR over the BR. The DMR added a feature called bloom. The faster you shot, the bigger the reticle got, meaning less accuracy. I really liked this feature because it rewarded you for staying calm in battle. It took four body shots and one headshot after shields were depleted.
A lot of people don’t know Halo in general doesn’t have a standard headshot multiplier. It only takes effect after your opponent’s shields are down. Then weapons like the DMR can kill with one headshot. Even though I really like everything about the DMR, most people didn’t. Bungie replaced the main weapon in the series and completely changed the way the game played. A risk I don’t think paid off for them in the long run.
You can’t discuss Halo Reach without talking about Forge. If you’ve been living under a rock, Forge is Halo’s map editor where you can make your own custom maps and game modes. I can’t tell you how many times I stayed up way too late playing Forge with friends. Spawning ungodly amounts of fusion coils and blowing them up until your FPS dropped to 1.5.
I also made actually playable maps, then played a few Big Team Battle matches to get a bunch of players on my recently played with list. I’d then send them invites to my custom game and we’d play my maps. You had to do what you had to do to get people to play your stuff.
Let’s talk about the campaign. Halo had something its main competitor didn’t. A story people actually cared about. Bungie took a big risk here and didn’t include Master Chief in the game. Yeah, they took the main guy everyone liked and threw him in the trash. Okay not really. Halo Reach was actually a prequel to Halo Combat Evolved. You play as part of a squad of Spartans called Noble Team. You discover a Covenant invasion is starting to take place and you are the last line of defense on a planet called Reach. This is a very dark and gritty Halo game. I won’t spoil it but if you haven’t played this campaign, it’s a must play. Bungie absolutely knocked it out of the park. It’s easily the best single player experience that Halo has to offer..
I still play Reach to this day on the Master Chief Collection. It will forever be my favorite Halo game with Halo 3 being a very close second. It’s usually not a good idea to tinker with a successful formula but they did and it worked.
