[Akalabeth Angel]

I liked it.

ODST had better music and was more atmospheric, but an uninteresting story.

I think the story of Reach was not so much about noble team but about the battle itself. Despite being spartans they're just participants in a larger struggle. That said, the narrative wasn't clear enough about what was going on. It's almost as though the game assumed the player had already read the books and whatever other backstory goes along with it. As though it takes for granted that not every player is a rampant fanboy.

There are also too many noble team members and not enough character development.

Overall it had some cool bits but never grabbed me emotionally.

[General Battuta]

I think the story of Reach was not so much about noble team but about the battle itself. Despite being spartans they're just participants in a larger struggle. That said, the narrative wasn't clear enough about what was going on. It's almost as though the game assumed the player had already read the books and whatever other backstory goes along with it. As though it takes for granted that not every player is a rampant fanboy.

Yeah, this was especially weird. It left so much out that it felt it was nodding towards the books, and yet it out-and-out contradicted the books again and again.

[MP-Ryan]

Reading the reviews makes me glad I don't own an Xbox and the only Halo game I ever played was the first one.

[Scotty]

What?  Why?  It's still an entertaining game, the mechanics and gameplay are superb, and the story still exists, flaws or not.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Not sure what any of you guys are talking about with the Elite AI either. Maybe I'm just not paying attention but I never noticed any significant difference in the AI behaviour from Halo 1 to Reach (And I played through all the Halo games in the past three months or so). It could just be the nostalgia talking.

The only thing I really noticed is that they got rid of that annoying Brute charge from Halo 2. Where the Brutes would throw down their guns and charge like an ape and seemingly double their hitpoints in the process. I died a good twenty times in the throne room to that crap.

[Scotty]

What difficulty?  The difference on Legendary between Halo: CE Elites and Halo: Reach Elites is comparable to the difference in lethality of the Magnum between Halo: CE and Halo 2.  God help you if you try Legendary with four people.  Elites will bend you over and rape your entire party if you don't handle them very precisely.

[Akalabeth Angel]

What difficulty?  The difference on Legendary between Halo: CE Elites and Halo: Reach Elites is comparable to the difference in lethality of the Magnum between Halo: CE and Halo 2.  God help you if you try Legendary with four people.  Elites will bend you over and rape your entire party if you don't handle them very precisely.

Probably played on Heroic.

I played through most of 2 and 3 on Legendary, the only elites that gave me trouble were the dual-plasma blaster weilding ones on the space station.

[Snail]

Got Reach. Might play it or might wait till next weekend.


So I played it, I hadn't touched my xbox in months so it took me some getting used to, but once I got the mojo flowing it was pretteh kewl save for a few weird snags here and there.

[MR_T3D]

apparently people online can't handle a simple helicopter with just a machine gun, still plenty vulnerable to sniper rifles, hidden DMR fire, laser, rockets, AND banshees, not to mention face-raping scorpion tank (**** that thing is OP, disregard whatever I've said before, unless there are base laser spawns, a map should NOT have it.
every time my brother and I get a falcon, the enemy team begins quitting out as I fly it around and all over them while he presses RT.
was 1 away from getting him a perfection one time.

[General Battuta]

apparently people online can't handle a simple helicopter with just a machine gun, still plenty vulnerable to sniper rifles, hidden DMR fire, laser, rockets, AND banshees, not to mention face-raping scorpion tank (**** that thing is OP, disregard whatever I've said before, unless there are base laser spawns, a map should NOT have it.
every time my brother and I get a falcon, the enemy team begins quitting out as I fly it around and all over them while he presses RT.
was 1 away from getting him a perfection one time.

I don't think people have realized that four sniper rifle shots will take out the Falcon (or Banshee, or Ghost.) It is an anti-materiel rifle after all.

You can also snipe the driver out of a tank. Tank is horribly OP, though, I got a 33-0 perfection in BTB slayer the other night.

[Scotty]

DMR (or sniper rifle) > vehicles, in almost all cases.  Only exceptions I can think of are the tanks for either side, and then you can just kill the driver instead.  Although, it can be just as effective (or moreso) to bumrush the tank on a Mongoose and SPRINT TO THE FINISH to plant a grenade.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Played some MP yesterday. Reminds me of why I got bored of Unreal Tournament those many years ago. Some games are fun, like 1 in every 4 games, but a lot of them are just pretty tedious.

On FFA, people always chose that boring Infection scenario.

Too many of the scenarios give the player the DMR as a default gun as well. Playing with the same gun every battle is boring.

The only times I had lots of fun were in the Hemorhagh map when there were lots of vehicles. Even if I got my ass run over, it was good times. Makes me think I should pick up Battlefield or some such game where vehicles are more prevalent.

[Ravenholme]

I think the story of Reach was not so much about noble team but about the battle itself. Despite being spartans they're just participants in a larger struggle. That said, the narrative wasn't clear enough about what was going on. It's almost as though the game assumed the player had already read the books and whatever other backstory goes along with it. As though it takes for granted that not every player is a rampant fanboy.

Yeah, this was especially weird. It left so much out that it felt it was nodding towards the books, and yet it out-and-out contradicted the books again and again.

This is pretty much why I gave up on Halo, the devs have no respect for their own continuity or plot, and some of their plot (which isn't particularly great or original anyways) contains some of the most laughable aspects ever.

I can't remember the aspect about Reach that a friend of mine brought up, but I do remember that it had us chuckling at how ludicrous it was.

[Hades]

Halo 1 is best Halo.

[Mongoose]

I was never even all that impressed with the original Halo, to be honest.  It was a solid game, and the overall storyline/setting was fun (fantastic soundtrack too), but there were some glaring problem areas.  While the singleplayer campaign had ten levels, they comprised only five legitimately-unique locations, and most of those had a massive amount of architectural repetition within them. (Dear lord, that assault on the control station...)  The combat tended to evolve into a very repetitive pattern of strafe-from-cover, fire-a-few-shots, and duck-into-cover-to-recharge-shields, and the relatively-few enemy types didn't mix things up all that much.  I only played multiplayer a few times, but the whole thing felt very slow and ponderous gameplay-wise, and I usually wound up getting picked off by snipers from halfway across the map before I made any real headway.  I started out as a Descent player, so I guess I was just much more used to Descent 3's fast-paced 6DOF style; I guess the equivalent FPS would be something like TF2 or UT.

[StarSlayer]

Wrapped up the Campaign last night, here are my thoughts.

Spoiler:

I agree with Battuta that it seemed pretty disjointed.  Not that I particularly feel the need for missions to be driving plot progression, for example I liked the mission about securing the civilians' escape, but for the most part it seemed like I was doing random crap that wasn't important at all.  There was no context for what I was doing nor what was going on in the larger scope of the battle.  After trying something new in ODST it seemed like a step back in mission design and storytelling. 
Regular Halo generally played out that there was a big SNAFU and Master Chief generally found himself alone behind enemy lines.  It worked because the story and plot supported it.  Reach finally had the promise of making a Halo game that involved being a part of larger operations acting in a team.  Instead it just teased about doing that, "Oh yeah big armored cav charge!" heh no, just kidding you and Kat can do some peripheral mission by yourselves.  Instead I generally found myself playing similar missions to the original three Halo games, only the objectives where completely muddled and pointless.  I still would love to have something with elements of Rainbow Six/Ghost Recon/Call of Duty set in Halo but Reach certainly wasn't it.  The other Spartans were pretty much useless, no different then regular Marines only they didn't die five minutes into the engagement.  The only two I actually liked where Jorge and Emille, and I liked Emille because he was an unlikable prick.

Not that it wasn't without some nice moments, the hall fight after you where ambushed at the relay post, the scene in the mission after you wipe out the AA gun and a couple frigates show up and start pounding the **** out of everything was pretty cool.  It was fun tangoing with the Hunters in the casino dance floor, I was in the zone for that one it was a thing of beauty.  Sneaking up to make a beach assault with ODSTs at Sword Base.

Oh and why the hell was the forerunners in there?  I don't recall Cortana ever mentioning "Hey Chief guess what?  I've got the entire Forerunner DB on file."

Don't get me wrong, I still liked it, just that I was hoping for a lot more.

[NGTM-1R]

This is pretty much why I gave up on Halo, the devs have no respect for their own continuity or plot, and some of their plot (which isn't particularly great or original anyways) contains some of the most laughable aspects ever.

Actually that's what really scares me about Reach. Bungie is usually fanatic about continuity, and the Halo novels tied in perfectly well with the games right up until Reach where they threw sanity out the window for the lulz of it.

It's like it's not even a Bungie project anymore.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Wrapped up the Campaign last night, here are my thoughts.

Spoiler:

The only two I actually liked where Jorge and Emille, and I liked Emille because he was an unlikable prick.

Dunno if this a spoiler but whatever

Spoiler:

I didn't get Emile's character quite frankly. His helmet and apparent preference for knives makes him out to be a stone cold
psycho. But he's really just a smooth talking token black guy.

All the team members are a bit hard to distinguish except for the token female. Had the same problem with ODST. When you can't see their faces and their armour's more/less the same it's hard to know and consequently care about who anyone is. Especially when you have to keep track of both names and number designations.

Reminds me of a predator. The guy who told the awful, hammed-in jokes was supposed to wear a red beret but he thought "who's going to wear a red beret in the jungle? That's stupid". Consequently, its hard to distinguish him from one of the other guys.

When you throw the audience into a group situation they need to be able to read the characters better. For me at least, Reach failed for the most part.

[achtung]

I have started Reach.

Dialogue is not as good as it could be, voice acting seems average at best.

More later.

[MR_T3D]

Campaign thoughts:
Space level was ****ing awesome.
I mean, I want a game based on that.
****ING GIVE ME SABRE MULTIPLAYER OR GIVE ME DEATH.
squad was meh, did like machine gun dude jorge though, he was a bro.
immediately after the space mission, however, we're boarding the covenant corvette, and it would have been very awesome if it were more open ended, and/or when you initially go through the sheild on top, you could hear and have normal gravity instead of seeming still-vacuum until a random hallway.
they have freaking energy shields for keeping air in in other places