Game Review: Halo Reach

Halo: Reach is the latest installment in the Halo universe. You probably already know all about it. You shoot stuff that moves. It dies. Woohoo.

I'm not a big fan of vanilla shoot-em-up games. I kinda feel like the "run around and shoot everything" gameplay has be done countless times over again. Unfortunately, I seem to be in the minority with this opinion, as the game studios just keep making games where you're someone who runs around and shoots everything. Even the hardware vendors are in on it; the controllers themselves have triggers for each hand that really best suit being in a game where you use some device with a trigger to interact with everything. And so, naturally, most games choose guns.

Despite my boredom with this gameplay mechanic, I still bought Halo: Reach and I'll still buy a handful of other shooters for the same reason: compelling story. As I've mentioned, a good story is really why I play most games. Bungie has a reputation for great story telling, and even though I found their last game to have a pretty short campaign, it was interesting and well-told.

But this time around, they've collapsed in on themselves like a dying star. It makes me wonder if the "last hurrah" of the development company wasn't really them just going "really, microsoft? Another one of these? Fine, here's something quick but that's the last time, we're done, you're on your own".

The concept isn't half as bad as its execution. You're not the lone hero defeating an alien armada, you're the noob to an elite fighting squad who have to play defense as the aliens kick our ass. Everything sounds heroic and looks shiny, but this has to be the worst writing since Too Human. Each of the characters belt out their particular goals or problems, with all-too-authentic military dialog. Which simply means that unless you're a Halo fanboy or actually in the military, most of what they say is complete gibberish.

And that's just the cutscenes. The in-game storytelling is substantially worse, because everyone who's talking to you is in a barely-moving armored suit. Admittedly, Red vs Blue built its whole web series out of that, but they had the benefits of better writing and being able to direct the camera to show which armored suit the voice was coming from. I shouldn't need full surround sound just to figure out who's talking to me. And that what they're saying is completely incomprehensible.

What it all amounts to is a series of cutscenes (and in-game dialog) where something happens, but I don't know what. Then we have a mission to go somewhere, but I'm not sure where until the HUD pops up and tells me "Over here, 400m away". Or, if the HUD doesn't help, just running towards whatever packs of enemies are still alive.


Needless to say I was incredibly frustrated, unsatisfied, and generally disappointed at the campaign's conclusion. The multiplayer made me feel a bit less bad about buying the game, but most of the fun had there was because I was playing with my brother, and we had some pretty epic battles (only me & him vs 4 other people winning handily 50-26? BOOYA!). But just because multiplayer was fun doesn't take away from the poor job of the single-player experience.

Despite all this, there were glowing points. Being in space was awesome, if a bit long. The new helicopter is cool, if a bit awkward to handle. The story reasons behind how I got into space and why I'm in a helicopter are preposterous, but the gameplay was new and fun. I can only hope Bungie's next adventure has more of this aspect to it than the run-of-the-mill tried-and-true shooter genre.