I don't really cover the Halo series on my blog, even though it's undoubtedly unabashed science fiction, mainly because the emphasis is never on the science fiction aspects of the games - the story, characters etc. are generally relegated to second place in favour of fast and furious action geared towards multiplayer, rather than singleplayer.
Halo: Reach is the last of the "Bungie" Halo games - from now on they will be working on other projects for Activision, and the series will be carried forward by 343 Industries (Microsoft's own, internal, Halo team.) and instead of pushing the series onwards with a more traditional sequel - a Halo 4, if you will - they decided to do a prequel to the main series, focusing on the Fall of Reach, predating even Halo 1, and the planet that was the Bastion of Earth's defences and home for the various Spartan super-soldier projects.
Up till now, the Halo games have traditionally followed John-117 - the Master Chief Spartan II, for Halos 1-3 - a veritable one-man army, fighting the alien Covenant. The previous Bungie game (originally designed more as an add-on) was Halo 3: ODST, which had you play a far more 'normal' human: an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, and they were far more experimental with the game design there - instead of charging into combat, you had to be very careful and play far more stealithly, using the cover of night for most of the game. Reach itself kind of straddles both gameplay types - As a Spartan III (and more often than not with one of your squad of 6) you are far more hardy than an ODST, but not quite as gung-ho as the Master Chief (especially on higher difficulty levels).
Initial impressions of the singleplayer are good: a subdued start, with nicely increased detail on the graphics, but massive amounts of motion-blur at times (surely to cover up a very unsteady framerate), your are dropped - after a semi-expositary cut-scene) onto the proverbial planet 'Reach' to investigate why an area has dropped out of contact. the lovely vista you are presented with really is a sight, especially given the rather sombre tones in colour pallette and the added light drizzle which constantly falls. Initially it is suspected that human militants have caused the outage, but the previous team sent to investigate also disappeared into the 'black zone', so it is up to your squad of Spartan III's (and one Spartan II - Jorge) to investigate. It takes precisely 2 buildings, in a surprisingly linear level, before the Covenant announce themselves in an ambush, and you split up to find some surviving soldiers hiding out in the level before evacuation.
This first level displays some of the best and worst attributes of the game - and series: the graphics are nicely detailed and the vistas expansive, however you are generally confined to a very limited area - unless vehicles are in play - and then the graphics suffer a loss of detail because of the different viewpoint assumed, and also necessity of much larger level design - losing a lot of their immediate detail (and your appreciation of it). Bungie also relies far too much on their (admittedly) superb AI to ramp up the challenge - the actual level design is bland in the extreme, despite some nice architecture and the aforementioned locations. seemingly they design basic levels and just drop the AI in and let it go. it works, but barely. It is also to worth noting that on the hardest difficulty (Legendary) they rely on the old trick of enemies being absolute bullet-sponges, whilst you are 3-shot dead. This did have the benefit of making me excellent at headshots to take down most as quickly as possible, though.
This pattern of gameplay repeats throughout the levels over the course of the game - with much the same highs and lows repeated before they must even have run out of inspiration again and just repeated the same levels as earlier - reach singleplayer at least feels rushed (surprisingly) and quite uninspired - repeating levels? that wasn't acceptable during Halo 1's time, let alone now!
There are a few exceptions to the rule: One level starts with you assaulting a beach, which is superb with drop-pods dropping off Elite Covenant enemies, before taking to space(!) in a 'Sabre': here they clearly copied the X-wing model of old - it's quite arcadey, and forgiving, but makes for a lovely diversion and changes things up - especially when you then assault a Covenant Corvette in low-gravity. the Covenant environment is also nicely improved from previous games, and this was among my favourite (although crushingly hard on Legendary) levels of the entire game. You also get levels flying a Helicopter through the ruins of a city - again beautiful, and other driving all manner of ground vehicles. The trouble is still the level design - other than in space, it's all samey-samey; you run through narrow corriors (with different textures) to a more open area, where you have many enemies, you clear it, and then rinse/repeat.
Tellingly the game doesn't really build up to anything - the last level in particular sets up Halo 1 nicely - but we already saw that (and new how Reach would end), but it doesn't do anything to make your actions feel particularly inspired, or that they matter. Your squad are generally more-or-less interchangeable and only come alive in the brief cut-scenes, only one has any real personality: Kat, the female intelligence/tech expert who has a pretty cheap death to say the least. Bungie, by picking up a prequel story feel into the trap of having nothing really matter because the end is already know: humans lose, Reach is glassed, and only the escape of one ship saves the day (more-or-less) in the already-explored future. They could at least have had the deaths of Noble squad really matter (your actual mission where you actually 'make a difference' isn't actually apparent till the end of the penultimate level).
An epilogue level shows you the final fate of your character in a rather cool way (you certainly don't go out like a punk), and is possibly the one bit of inspiration Bungie actually had for the singleplayer, and i expect that to be copied by the Modern Warfare's sooner or later.
It may sound like i am down on the game quite a lot - i'm not: it is great and it has some very enjoyable and rewarding moments - the planet itself is lovely, the space bits are nice, the storyline is quite well-told and the cut-scenes (short though they may be) are all well-done, but for Bungie's swansong i was expecting a whole lot more than some slightly prettier graphics and the exact same thing again. Tellingly the best singleplayer levels are those based off multiplayer maps - usually the firefight arenas - they are easily the best-designed areas in the game, and where the combat really shines, but betrays a lack of interest in the singleplayer.
Then, of course, there's the multiplayer. Familiar to anyone who tried the Beta earlier in the year, not much has changed - it seems that this is where Bungie put all their time and effort, and it really pays off: not only do you have lots of the usual playlists, but also an improved Firefight (read: Gears' horde mode but better), the Invasion mode, and an improved Forge mode where you can create custom maps with improved tools, and 'Forge World' an absolutely massive are which can be customised for different modes and individual maps made and customised even more within it's boundaries. Not only that but there's a wealth of customisation options (though some have to annoyingly be unlocked at high ranks - why can't i have my Halo 3 helmet at the start?!) - although superficial in nature only - really go a long way to making your Spartan/Elite individual. Notably match-making is fast, relatively glitch-free, has host-migration (and it works!), and all the best levels are represented nicely.
The trouble with this is: for me, singleplayer is the 'meat' of games - multiplayer is more like the icing on the cake - it's nice, and extends the life of the game pretty much indefinitely if you wish - but it isn't what initially interests me in the universe. Without a good story and interesting singleplayer, you might as well be playing COD with the other dullards - the setting, science fiction etc. don't mean anything in that context, and that is what is really so disappointing in a way: when you have concept art like this, surely you can do a bit better?
Overall: 8/10 (if i was rating it as a multiplayer-only game it would easily be 9/10)
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