It had a few moments where it all came together and one point where it really moved me, but all in all Halo: Reach was a just-barely-less-than-bitter disappointment.
Bear in mind all of this is coming from a huge Halo fan.
The soundtrack was subpar. There was one good, catchy theme and it never managed to kick into full throttle. The rest was either forgettable or jarring.
Of the game's nine main levels, I'd say that on four of them - recon with Jun, Falcon ride in New Alexandria, Tip of the Spear, and maybe Sword Base - I did not fully understand why I was there, what I was supposed to be doing or why I should care for most of the level. The narrative was choppy and fragmented.
On that note, things seemed to just sort of happen offscreen when they should've happened onscreen. The Covenant are on Reach? Well that's interesting, why didn't I hear about the massive fleet overhead? Oh there is no massive fleet, there's just a cloaked (I presume they mean some kind of advanced active camo) carrier conducting teleportation (well there's a new one, makes you wonder why they bother with so many things) to the surface. Fascinating. Shame I stumbled through the first half of the game assuming there was already a fleet in orbit.
The storytelling was mediocre, in part because it was so choppy and in part because most of the characters never really got to breathe. The two who were most interesting died first. Po-faced Carter was a dreary and uncharismatic leader in the recent Nolan North-esque mold, though less expressive. It was ironic that I ended up looking forward to the deaths because I figured they'd be some of the cooler, more impressive things the characters would do.
The only time the campaign really moved me was at one point during the level Exodus, but in the end it just highlighted the problems with the story - there was no driving thrust through the whole campaign, no sense of the overall military action on Reach, just a series of somewhat modular engagements without place or context, even when there were big maps trying to give us context. It was choppy and ultimately sort of cheap; Noble Team never got its own story, just an ancillary part in the Master Chief's saga (no matter the end monologue's healthy attempts to make us feel better). In that sense I suppose it fits the expendable S-3s.
The last level, post-credits, was arguably the best in the game in terms of achieving Reach's promise, though that end monologue cheapened it a bit. Leave it unsaid, Halsey, leave it unsaid. Shame the emotion of the level before it was ruined by a fairly bog-standard level and a lot of dull dialogue.
Really I think the greatest failure, storytelling-wise, was Bungie's final inability to tell a story without resorting to Forerunner artifacts. We all wanted Reach to be what Halo 2 and then Halo 3 were advertised as: a desperate military struggle in defense of a world. I appreciate their dedication to the overarching mythos, but it was time to step away from the plot coupons. Make your characters and their actions important on their own; don't give them things to carry that make them meaningful. And no I don't care that First Strike established the Forerunner artifacts on Reach - they were baggage.
But my biggest problem of all with the single player story was the gameplay.
The Elites were fantastic. Straight up excellent. Other than that...this was a Halo 3 mod. It might have felt even less fresh than ODST. We got the same enemies with the same behaviors in every respect save the Elites, they brought back the damn Drones in two places (two too many), the vehicle sections were plodding and predictable because they were all things we'd done before (space combat was a Hornet level, at length), and worst of all, Halo's cherished 30 seconds of infantry fun, carefully balanced on the golden tripod of guns/grenades/melee, felt...boring. Poke poke poke with the DMR felt no different than rattling away with a BR back in '07. The armor abilities, though key in multiplayer, were mostly unremarkable in campaign.
So little work went into bringing this gameplay up to the bar set by Valve and others in recent years. My Noble teammates are just plain...invincible, yet as ineffective as normal marines? I can't trade weapons with them or interact meaningfully in any way - reviving downed teammates or anything? I get a squad roster yet no use of the several free D-pad slots? The dialogue is repetitive and insensitive to context? (Valve pulls off Alyx and we get Halo 1 level Marine banter, but less entertaining?)
They talked a big game about the AI upgrades, but I never saw any significantly larger vehicle engagements than in Halo 3. Nor did I see a particularly larger number of enemies in one area. The levels were more open, yet never as memorable or well-used as Halo 1's open levels. They did not reclaim the magic.
They dropped three Scarabs into the final level and didn't let us fight one of them? Why even bring that asset into Reach, Bungie? The hell?
Where did the awesome detonations of exploding Phantoms go? Why is it just an underwhelming poof now?
Bungie has made it quite explicit this is their biggest, best game. But it did very little new, succeeded in few of its design objectives, and markedly underperformed in the modern shooter market. This is the first time I've really felt let down by their work (yes, I think ODST was significantly more successful for what it set it to do, and arguably looked better to boot).
Off for Firefight and multi now. I hope they didn't ruin the awesome Beta multiplayer by overpolishing it into humdrum hokum. I could play that beta all year and forget about this mess of a campaign.
