Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

Walking into Halo Reach, I felt that the deck was stacked against the title.  Here you have a new Halo game that is based on a book that pretty much sums up what will happen to Team Noble, your cadre of brothers and sisters that you follow onto the field of battle.  It is like trying to walk into Titanic the movie, hoping you will see that the ship does not sink after all.  However, Bungie again pulls out all the stops with their swan song for the Halo series with a hell of a bang.  It is not a ride of perfection, but it is close enough that you are willing to skip past some of the minor speed bumps during the journey to the end.

In Halo Reach, you follow the newest replacement to Noble Team, Noble Six.  Problem is that the rest of the team seems to have a little animosity towards the replacement, due to their fondness of the prior Noble Six (whose demise we see in the Remember Reach commercial).  Your first mission, which seems to be rather laid back reconnaissance mission, turns into the discovery of an invasion force of Covenant forces on the top secret research facility.  Never a team to back away from the harder missions, Noble Team volunteers for several high priority missions, knowing very well that they may not see the end of the day.  Just another day in the life of a SPARTAN III, if you were to ask anyone from Noble Team.

It was strange walking into this Halo title, as I had read The Fall of Reach novel several years ago, and it is a rather somber tale of what happens to the Reach facility.  I had to wonder how Bungie would try to sugar coat it and sell me something that was akin to revisionist history.  To their credit, they never shy away from what happens to Reach, and the point is nailed home throughout the entire game, as you witness some of the self-sacrifice first hand.  Bungie takes some hard risks, with the story this time around, and all of them pay off rather handsomely for those that want something more consequence when it comes to the Halo franchise.

That said the story itself tends to be a bit throwaway at times.  Sure there are a few levels where you have a change from the normal, like escorting survivors to an extraction site, but most of it does feel a bit cookie cutter from past Halo titles.  However, I think the set pieces from Reach help put a neat little twist on that familiarity, helping take away some of that “been there, done that” feel.

One thing that I did like was Noble Team themselves.  Each character has a unique personality and it really adds a sense of humanity to the Halo universe that is sorely needed.  I mean, Master Chief is cool and all, but he is rather bland when it comes to personality.  And we will just skip over the Rookie from ODST altogether as he had about as much personality as the sweat on my brow.  Noble Team really helped make Reach a far more interesting experience.  Hearing their ambient conversations as they talked about previous missions, teammates and adolescence, it really made me feel like I was part of a military unit.  It did seem as if there was some bias towards some of the characters over others.  Jorge and Kat get a lot of extra time in front of the camera, while other members, including Team Leader Noble One are sprinkled in just to remind you that they are present.

But most people are not walking into Halo Reach, wanting exceptional depth and complex narrative.  For those people, you will find a ton of stuff to love in Halo Reach, starting with a completely revamped AI routine for Covenant troops, along with several new enemy types.  Gone are the days of predictable enemy routines, and in are more haphazard strategies for Covenant troops.  Elites will flank, use power abilities on a regular basis, and for the most part, be a pain in your side whenever you have to deal with them in combat.  And when you run into your first Brute with a Gravity Hammer, you will immediately find your hands full as he drives towards you moving from side to side to move out of the way of your hail of bullets.    Even the lowly Grunts have new tactics that they will use, including new armor abilities that will leave you shocked when you see what it takes to put them down.  Normal starts to feel like a good challenge, and Heroic and Legendary feel a lot more difficult from previous Halo releases.  And for those that want to get that Legendary achievement by teaming up with four people – yeah, the game scales difficulty to the amount of players in the game.  Also, there are two completion achievements for Legendary, one for finishing it, and one for finishing it alone.  Good luck to the completionists out there, you are going to need it.

After you have sunk in the time necessary to finish the campaign (about seven hours here on Normal), you will find yourself wanting to move into the multiplayer, and believe me, the multiplayer has been ramped up on steroids.  When using matchmaking, you will find all kinds of different switches that you can use to narrow down a game that you will want to join.  I joined a game of Firefight, with three other players and used the Quiet and Polite switches and found that the game fit those parameters.  I have to wonder if Bungie might have found the Holy Grail for weeding out the flood of asshats that can ruin a random game of Halo with this new search tool.  Time will tell, but with the games I played over the last few days, it seems to be working as advertised.  Of course, this is with a small sampling of people right now, and this could change when two million plus players hit the scene.  Also available to the host are dozens of switches to create many unique game types.  Maybe you want to turn on Skull variants, or start players with certain weapons.  All of that customization is there, and it should make some creative matches.

For me, my curiosity turned to two of the features that received the most work – Forge and Theater.  Forge, now called ForgeWorld, features some of the most robust map tools in a console map editor.  I went in to toy with some map developments and found myself a little overwhelmed by the amount of options in comparison to what could be done with the original Forge engine back in Halo 3.  The maps have hundreds of switches and variables that can be set and most of the items in a level can be moved, removed and modified.  I can see level creators having a ton of fun with the new environments and tools to create some fantastic new experiences down the line.  Theater also kicked itself into a higher gear, offering up ways to access top rated videos, recently uploaded videos, and filters to find videos that might be of interest.  I could see Theater becoming a new way to learn strategy from pros over time, which would be a benefit to multiplayer chumps like me that only serve to be chum for other players’ weapons.

All is not perfect with the world of Reach.  There were several occasions where I ran into framerate issues with the environment.  Most of these events came up when had a lot of business on the screen, along with environmental effects.  Also, as stated before, most of the missions get lost in a sea of been there done that in the Halo universe.  It feels as if Bungie is still following the same paint by numbers approach that they have used since the first Halo title.  Need a level with a long driving sequence to escape incredible odds – yep, got that.  Need an invasion scene into an enemy vessel – yep, got that too.  Sure, it looks fantastic and it can be fun, but I never want the feeling of I remember doing this in Halo 3 and Halo 2.

Halo Reach does reach that itch that has needed to be scratched since Halo 3, and it does so with a new emphasis on character development and personal involvement.  Bungie knew that this would most likely be their last hurrah in the universe that the created and made popular 10 years ago and it ended up being a fitting ending to that time.  Sure, it is not perfect, but it is highly entertaining and hits on all cylinders from the single player and into the multiplayer.  We may not know where the Halo series goes from here, but Bungie has made sure that they will be remembered for the contributions they have put into the series and it will leave players sitting on cloud nine.  Halo Reach gets 4.5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.
Check out Halo Reach and other Xbox 360 reviews at Test Freaks.