Halo Reach was the first Halo I played so it always has a place in my heart, but I completely understand why long time Halo fans weren't too exited about it. However I still say it had the best armor customization in the series though.
Agreed, only problem is it leaves me torn on mcc between unlocking the armor I actually like but will rarely get to see in reach or just unlock whatever happens to be the current playset. Especially when someone like me doesn't have time to just unlock everything
@@mandogaming1313 i usually farm all the PvE challenges everytime and get aroundd 20 tokens i'd say if you're a low level, you can add me and we could do them together bro. If you want of course.
The customization of the armour while still kinda limited is probably the best meanwhile my first game was halo 3 as in the first video game I played on a console when I was 7 or 8 lol. Like halo reach came out way late in the timeline of me being a halo fan though even though it was different I still think it was a amazing game though noble team was done dirty
Played the absolute shit out of Reach. Easily my favorite Halo. The art style was absolutely magnificent. It perfectly captured the near-future aesthetic, and the campaign really made me feel like I was part of a badass spec-ops unit contributing to a larger-scale operation. I also adored the episodic style, which I think really brought it all together. Weirdly, unlike Halo 5, I never once felt like the absence of Master Chief took anything away from the game. Not to even mention the incredible time I had playing multiplayer and custom games with friends for years. Reach will always be my favorite Halo, and for me, at least, it did everything right.
I agree master chief was fine not being involved. Combined I actually like noble team the best more than I like master chief that’s not saying master chief is bad or anything but I like Emile the best period
@@deleteduser3455 Yeah, I liked the character interaction, even though there wasn’t a huge amount. The scene with Kay trying to convince Carter to use the “nonexistent launch site” for the “nonexistent Sabre program” was pretty great.
@@LuckySevens still a trash game though. Who tf commits to forcing players to use a specific set of weapons in a FPS and then says it's so players have fun? Bungie became full on clowns
The characters in reach die out of a theme of who they are. Act Man put it pretty much perfectly. The characters are fleshed out, it's just subtle. Carter is the leader, so he dies with the ship (pelican), Kat is the brains so she gets shot in the head, Jorge thinks he's saving reach, so he dies thinking he did in a big explosion, Emile likes knives so he dies by energy sword, Six is a Lone Wolf and dies alone. The reason Jun didn't die is the fact he's the sniper, who avoids direct action, so it makes sense for him to be the only one remaining
I wouldn't say that's "fleshed out", more just some really well done irony "Fleshed out" would be if those characters had differing complex motivations and personalities, and if they had actual character development.
It's similar with the deaths of the prophets - Regret dies with no regrets, Mercy was the one vouching most for the Arbiter's punishment and died after being denied any mercy, Truth was the minister of propaganda and died believing a lie. You could argue that perhaps it would've been more fitting for Jun to die in Kat's place as it would've been more ironic for a sniper to get sniped.
I find it hilarious thats how little indepth the characters where built up... they died related to their external characteristics(besides jorge) instead of personalized characteristic. If kat was paranoid all the time and let her guard down and got shot in the head that would of made so much more sense instead she is smart so she got shot in the back of the head. None of their deaths seem to carry the weight halo 1/3 deaths had both the key death where against a hopeless situation to save humanity. The bomb scene seemed to be shoe horned way to have jorge die there was zero critical thinking about protecting the bomb nor providing a scene that made it clear that the bomb did get damaged in the fight instead of shipping. You could of dominated the whole room and still have the bomb break the characters didn't even think of back up nor there wasnt must reasoning to why the bomb wasn't repairable in a universe full super powerful tech there isnt a way to denote the bomb via makeshift clock. The scarab vs carter seem silly since you where doing 99% dodging the scarab with your own mongoose they weren't very threatening. So his sacrifice felt very hallow and dumb in a way. Emile seemed like the most silliest one of the trend but also the most realistic to the scenario his main identification was his knife... he never used... did i mention all halo reach spartans already has 1 knife so a second that he never used in animations nor combat shouldn't sound like it should be his main identification of how he dies right? With your line logic thats just seems flimsy at best. Also jun could of been replaced with kat and it wouldn't of change the meaning at all because you could say "kat was the only one to survive be cause she is smart" But in all seriousness i do think this concept/idea is such a stretch that its inclusion to any argument to why reach's story is poetic or great hurts the assumption that said essay wasn't unfairly bias to its core to come up as surface level argument that overall is to shove your feelings on someone instead of why this is a great story from story mechanics perspective. Personally i am a fan of long form reviews raycevick review stuck out to me that alines mosty with my personal thoughts of the fundamentals of the game and why is a good game at best and not an amazing game
I played all the original Halo games as a kid except Reach. I never played it until the last few days when I beat it with my son. I will say this.. he cried at the end and I almost did too. It was incredible and I’m so glad I finally took the time to play this masterpiece. It’s up there with Halo 1-3 for me easily.
CE is still the Goat. I was a senior in high school and wasn’t really interested in video games by that point when reach was coming out. Finally played it a few months ago on MCC. It’s good, but not as good as the trilogy
just a side note, there's actually a different mechanic than bloom in CE. there's 2 accuracy cones, and for weapons you could hold the trigger on, it would swap to the less accurate cone after the first few rounds, it's why tapping the trigger as fast as possible on the pistol gave significantly more accuracy. Also, zooming in didn't change the accuracy cone, so it looks like it's going outside the reticule when it's just filling anywhere inside the reticule when not zoomed. Not sure exactly how 2 and 3 do it though.
CE's magnum has two modes. Perfect straight shot firing (individual trigger pulls) and then bloom (holding the trigger). H2's BR neither bloom or spread whatsoever. H3's BR has some RNG Spread contained within the reticule. That is, the first round lands right on target, but the last two rounds can land anywhere within the reticule.
One thing that bugged me that isn't talked about was the annoying amount of foreign accents in the game. In Halo 1, 2, and 3 everyone outside of a handful of side characters sounded like Americans.
It wasn't liked at launch but it aged well due to the next Halo game being garbage. I absolutely love Reach but the sandbox, bloom, and the Spartan Abilities sucks (didn't say anything about sprint so don't do it)
I remember grinding for the black glass visor in this game. It took a long time and once I got it… I felt like all my hard work was worth it. A wonderful prequel
Halo reach is the only game I've seen miss the mark on so many things and piss people off to such a level yet still considered beloved masterpieces by those same people
I never understood why people didn't like Halo Reach until I played the campaign with the Halo Reach: Evolved mod that rebalanced all the weapons and removed armor abilities. Being able to use the assault rifle and like, any weapon other than the DMR made me realize "oh wow, yeah, the weapon sandbox sucks ass"
Don't say that cuz reaches has way more loved than any other Halo game which I find annoying but it is what it is the only reason why I don't like it cuz everybody love it story good gameplay but Im not in to the Noble 6 team I like being solo and being alone I grew up with halo 1 didn't have reach
@@_A_T_B_ I hardly noticed it really, I think everyone makes too big a deal out of it. Like wow, it takes the best weapon in the game and makes it slightly worse.
My only real problem with this game is that the environments/levels feel so offensively regular and uninspired compared to the first 3 games. Every level was just rocks with occasional grass, grey skies and metal.
Halo Reach is my favorite Halo and one of my favorite games ever. When it launched it was basically the Halo game I'd always wanted, focusing on the gritty warfare between humans and Covident with invasion being a dream Halo mode for me, bringing the war to Multiplayer. I completely understand the hate/critisicm as a competitive player and lore nerd myself but I can't help but love this game
you bring up that age old argument against halo 4s larger story (the didact plot) that you need to read the books to under stand it specifically the forerunner trilogy but after reading those books i can say with 100% certainty that no you do not in fact they just convolute it with way to much detail such as the fact that there are 2 didacts 1 good and 1 suffering from mega ptsd. all you need to understand halo 4 is to have played halos 1-3 and the terminals which can all be found in game and reward exploring the maps
I agree. I played Halo 4 while having played Halo 1-3 and seeing the terminals and I understood who the Didact was. I did not need to know everything about the UR-didact and the 'new' didact to understand the Didact's motivations or why he was doing what he was doing. The games told me everything I needed to know. The only confusion was the 'Covenenant' faction which they did a bad job of explaining and could have simply stated that it was a fanatical breakaway set who - understandably from an emotional point of view - refused to believe that almost everything about their religion was a lie. They hint at it with the distress beacon of the Covenant where an elite is saying 'Didact! Didact!' over and over in a forlorn way - as they are desperately looking for a purpose.
Doesn't excuse the Didact for being an awful addition. He literally could just crush Chief to death or drop him into a bottomless pit, but would rather brag about how he's superior. He's garbage and he brings down any narrative positives Halo 4 has. If they had grounded him more instead of making him basically a god Halo 4's story probably wouldn't be hated by people like me. I don't give two shits what some book said about "The Mantle of Responsibility" or "The Logic Plague" If that stuff wasn't straight up mentioned by Bungie while they were making THEIR game then it needs to be organically told to the player regardless if you're a lore fanatic or not. I'm really hoping Infinite glosses over most of the stuff that came from 4 and 5 (Which it looks like they're doing since the Created story finished before it could even begin) I want to like the Halo expanded lore, but I don't want it to become required to understand how or why characters exist or do what they do. Without the terminals in Halo 4 the Didact is just a straight up super villain from a bad comic book. It's not that we don't understand Halo 4, it's that Halo 4 doesn't understand Halo as a game series.
@@gabethebabe3337 You mean a villain stewing in his own madness for 100,000 years can be a megalomaniacal, irrational, arrogant jerk? Oh no! Who would have thought it? Also Bungie did mention the mantle of responsibility in Halo 3 in the terminals on the Ark. The terminals in Halo 4 also explain what you need to know about the Mantle of responsibility. And this is all in the game, no extra books required.
@@dewittbourchier7169 Dude I get the terminals have references to that stuff, but I doubt they go into deep enough detail to explain their importance to the player in the isolation of the games. Also none of that justifies the Didact being too stupid to fulfill his plans. He literally had TWO opportunities to just drop Chief into a bottomless pit. I don't care if he is crazy, he's still a lame villain with a poorly defined place in the games. Like I doubt he had to mind control the Covenant into obeying him, yet he feels the need to. That killed any chance of having a named Covenant leader as a secondary antagonist because they were all basically braindead at that point. Halo 4 has so much shit to it's story, but people will ignore it because the ending made them cry. None of it was built up properly and the Didact was a waste of time. I'm so glad Infinite is a soft reboot and leaning more towards the original trilogy so I can just ignore 4 and 5. You can like Halo 4, but at least admit that the game's story was too big in scope to be made in the amount of time it had. I really wanted to like Halo 4, but all the hard references to stuff that isn't properly elaborated on in the games really makes it suck.
@@gabethebabe3337 He did not mind control the Covenant. They saw him and bowed down as they view him as a God of a kind. Also none of the Halo games has ever been particularly deep with lore but they convey enough of what is needed for the player to understand. Halo 4 does the same we understand from them where the Didact started out, how he became more extreme, and why he was locked away, and from these who the Librarian was.
I get hating Halo Reach for bad game mechanics, but honestly, I have no idea why anyone would choose Halo 3's story over Halo Reach. Halo 3's story was littered with bad writing and poorly placed one-liners. Halo reach, on the other hand, was the deepest and most meaty story of any halo game, and possibly of any video game. I watched an entire walkthrough of both games. That "one-liner" in Halo 3 "'Where should they go?' 'To war'" just gives me the idea that the entire Halo 3 story was a bad excuse to push out bad jokes, covered up with equally bad writing. None of the characters are relatable, and they all seemed to only have one "face," or seemingly one-dimensional characters. It feels like the only reason the characters are on the screen is to execute a script. Halo Reach, on the other hand, was well written, had good writing, and was really good at integrating the characters in the story. The characters actually had different personalities that set them apart from the others, and a unique way of getting the player attached to each character, making each of their deaths immeasurably more impactful. Also, master chief not being the player is probably the worst of the valid reasons to hate Halo Reach. (edit): Also, if anyone didn't get attached to the characters by the time they died, that's a skill issue on their part. They were either trying not to get attached, or were completely detached from the story.
Pretty much every complaint I had about the game. It was a dark time to be a comp kid. There was plenty to love about the game but the core combat loop was often more frustrating than fun.
@@LoveSickWorld the Br does not overpower everything in H3. controlling rocket, splazer, vehicles, and other power weapons were a large part of the game. It is a perfect starting weapon though.
@@funnymcfunfuns1455 I didn't mean it as it overpowered power weapons but it's a weapon you would gladly trade for almost anything especially the starters which isn't really good for Halos sandbox
Competitive lol. God competing is just the most frustrating boring experience and competitive gameplay is unfun due to how repetitive and how competitive games only have one good weapon
There *kinda* isn't anything wrong with Armor lock. If someone used it right and the way in which it works best it doesn't hualt matches at all, you can also it down real quick to counter a vehicle splatter or to negate a hail of grenades about to blow you up. The problem is dumb players just spamming it and holding it as long as possible. Those people usually get harshly punished and die every time, and thankfully usually think it sucks and never use it again. When used the way it should be for maximum effectiveness it really doesn't do much to the gameplay other then piss people off who thought they would get a easy splatter
@@LoveSickWorld Back in competitive Reach it was a plague. It gave players enough time to give callouts and get their team as help. It was EXTREMELY broken at a high level of gameplay. Me and my buddy once tried only using it for shits and gigs, and our rank improved way more than it should have. Edit: In social play it was okay, and it was eventually removed from competitive, but the bad taste was already left in everyone's mouth by then.
@@Whaccd well that makes sense but I wouldn't have known because I don't ever take Halo competitive nor do I think the competitive side should ever dictate how the whole game plays but it should at least live in cohesion with everything else (which is something I feel a lot of people miss, for some it's either casual or competitive and not just both) but Bungie could have had the foresight to know that not just armor lock, but all armor abilities except maybe Sprint wouldn't work well in competitive so they should have omitted them from their respective game modes. I still don't think that all because the competitive community didn't get what they want doesn't mean the game is bad, but they really could have handled that side of the community better
@@LoveSickWorld the game isnt bad, just certain aspects. While i agree that the competitive shouldn't dictate everything, it does highlight things that need tweaking. I think armor lock is an awesome IDEA but the execution wasn't great. I think something that activated more quickly and blocked stuff back more wouldve been better. The repulser is what i think the evilution of armor lock is.
Looking back, this games graphics were really nice for the time. It doesn’t make sense how so many games today struggle with clipping armor issues, buggy ass menus, etc. it’s sad
My main complaint about reach is I feel that the DMR is too strong to the point where it makes almost every other load out weapon like the assault rifle and the needle rifle completely useless. Other than that it’s my favorite campaign, my favorite Forge, my favorite fire fight, and my second most favorite immersive atmosphere.
The way I see it, Halo Reach is hated by a fair amount of fans in the same way a lot of WoW fans hate the Cataclysm expansion. It's viewed as the beginning of the downtrend in the game's popularity. It's where they started down the path to the disaster's of 4 and 5.
@@ADUSN well idk about you, but the only thing i see they did was including campaing vehicles and scenery on forge mode That's pretty dope if you ask me, driving a seraph in forge world it's amazing
I never liked it myself but to be honest it was just stepping away from the master chief that i didnt like. I just didnt care about the reach characters when i played it and never got invested in them even though i played the entire game
You can't get attached to something that's eventually gonna die. A lot of us knew the fate of reach. (Also, it didn't have the same ratio of somberness to light-heartedness like the prior entries, especially odst) One nitpick is that the game was a loose adaptation of the book it was named after. And you know how fans react when creative liberties are taken with source material.
I have always believed whatever happens in the games is it. I am not a lore chaser and I don't care about the books. I care about a good fucking game. Maybe this is why 343 keeps failing hardcore. I may be wrong here because I have no idea but wouldn't have Halo reach the game came out before the book?
1 thing I really like about reach is that it really makes the war with the covenant feel like a war. It’s just a bunch not so known soldiers fighting for their home. There’s something so special about that and some people just don’t understand.
Loved the shit out of reach back in the day but as I grew older I started to see the many flaws and “inferior” gameplay in many aspects. It’s still better than 4 and 5 and it has a good campaign (I liked the story and gloomy atmosphere personally) but the gameplay feels off to me for many reasons and the “halo dance” that works so well in halo CE and halo 3 doesn’t play as big a role in reach’s combat.
@@chrismarple it was either the first month if within the first 3 months but half the playerbase left, the fact remains. why would it be any surprise? it's a game that did a lot of catering to the wider audience instead of the core fans.
that was H4, dumdum. In ~100 days H4 lost over 75% the launch day player peak. Not even ~10 months later the game struggled to pull ~20k player pop and was already out of the top 10 games played on XBL. Even Reach stayed in the top 5 for a full year and top 10 for 2. Halo 3 was in the top 10 for ~2.5 years. And of course games drop a massive amount of players in the first months, lmao. Even H3 lost ~40% of day 1 players in the first 100 days. Reach didn't hold players as well as H3 did, but it still held players pretty well. Well enough that it was the first Halo title to remain more popular than the game to follow it. (took about a year before H4 died off enough for Reach to become the most popular Halo title again) Part of it was people didn't like it as much H3 and another part was that it was later in the 360's lifecycle and it was competing against a stronger Cod (Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops) an emerging Battlefield and a bunch of other decent MP games. When H3 first came out there wasn't really any MP games to play except Gears 1 and CoD4. (Battlefield was terrigood back in 2010-2012 btw. I mainly played H3/Reach, BF:BC2 and L4D2 MP back in 2008-2010 when I first got my 360, but BF3 pretty much got me to quit them all entirely. Fuck me, that game's MP was so damn good I put over 4x as much playtime into that one game than I did H3/Reach combined)
"It almost feels like the reach sandbox was built from the ground up on invasion" Yes it was. That's exactly why reach's weapon sandbox is so bland to me. So many of the covenant weapons where just changed to be covenant equals of UNSC weapons. That's why all the weapons are so similar to each other. They did this to "balance" invasion but in doing so made the sandbox more bland and also not good in other game modes.
Except it wasn't. And they weren't. Outside of the plasma repeater vs AR there's basically nothing worth comparing, and that's being generous because even the repeater's RoF/spread mechanic is more unique than the CE-style (CE-style because no dual-wield) Plasma Rifle that it basically replaced. Unless you want to count the needle rifle, but that doesn't fit your criteria anyways because the Carbine came before the DMR/NR and both were mostly based on the Carbine more than anything else. So that's a UNSC weapon being made more like a Covenant one from prior games. The only other noteworthy comparison would be Beam Rifle vs Focus Rifle. And the Beam Rifle was basically just a reskinned UNSC Sniper ever since it was added to H2. (yes, I'm aware of the faster follow-up shots and the overheat mechanics, it's still a much closer "copy" than the Focus Rifle, of all things) Invasion was a super asymmetrical game mode, to the point that making the factions TOO dissimilar could be seen as a major flaw that deeply affected the overall balance. I played a ton and the best killstreaks were easier to pull off as UNSC since the Focus Rifle and Needle Rifle didn't do enough chip damage to vehicles like the DMR/UNSC sniper. And that would become a real big issue if the UNSC started stealing your Banshee or camping the spawn. About the only things the Covenant had straight off the spawn were the plasma pistol + stickies. Plasma pistol didn't amount to much in the early game though since there was no vehicles and the noob combo doesn't work that well with a Plasma repeater starter loadout. (Needle rifles were pickups and then available as spawn weapons in stage 2) Otherwise the only major advantage the Covenant had (especially in the early stages whether it was Invasion or Invasion Slayer) was Evade. There was full health regen for Elites too, but I don't think that ever really amounted to much. If they didn't put health packs right next to the objectives/spawns then it might've amounted to more. Otherwise you had matchups like: Plasma Cannon/Fuel Rod vs Rocket Launcher/Splaser. Both Covenant weapons were ill-equipped to deal with stolen Banshees, but were OK against Scorpions/Warthogs. Grenade Launcher vs Concussion Rifle. Shotgun vs Needler Frags vs Stickies Magnum vs plasma pistol Warthog vs Ghost Wraith vs Scorpion Banshee vs Falcon Out of that group the only truly new weapons added to the sandbox (Concussion Rifle was a Brute shot reskin, doesn't count) were the Plasma Cannon and Grenade Launcher. And both weapons really weren't anything like their closest UNSC equivalents. The Pro Pipe was anything but bland too, that was a sign that Bungie could still come up with fun and unique weapons.
In halo 3, the sandbox entirely comprised of the BR and then the power weapons. No other gun, not the spiker, the mauler, the magnum, the needler, the smg, or the plasma rifle, was a viable choice to use against the BR. Reach on the other hand had a precision weapon for close range (Magnum), an AR that could outshoot a magnum at medium range, and two precision weapons that were viable choices in the meta (needler and the DMR) not just one. Further more, we saw the addition of the pro pipe, and the plasma grenade launcher, in addition to keeping all the other power weapons from halo 3. So idk what you are talking about tbh, the sandbox was an improvement in almost any way. The only trouble reach had was implementing bloom in a bad way and also the class system was kind of wack
@@jaywelker5566 Finally someone gets it. I personally believe halo 3 has the optimal gameplay formula, it plays the most smoothly and it's combat is the most satisfying. But Reach was superior in a lot of other ways. It's sandbox simply was better, Forge world spawned an entire era of wild custom games, assassination were a blast, armor customization was undeniably the best in the series.... there were annoying things about the game, like armor lock, bad AI in the campaign, and bloom was implemented in a bad way, I kind of wish I could fly a falcon without blown out of the sky instantly.... but it still was a masterpiece.
ive always loved reach for my own reasons but I agree it seemed to become a recent trend to love it as much as it is now. back in the day you'd get crucified for saying reach was the best halo lol
@@CoolDrifty totally agree. I loved reach for its forge world, invasion, look and feel, and got explosions the best. But understood how the competitive side was completely nutured due to bloom, beginning of the end for playable elites, floating/heavy responsiveness and sluggish gameplay loop, ghosting, and the whole armour lock/concept of loadouts debate. That said, it did still do loads right that even modern halos are struggling to master. Like shipping a complete product for one.
@@CoolDrifty Different context due to different times. Back in the day, Reach could arguably be the "worst" Halo game. Now that the community has collectively experienced 343 games, however, Reach is an absolute masterpiece by comparison.
This video is fantastic and really manages to convey why I dislike Reach's multiplayer. Reach is a great game at it's core, but I don't think it was as perfect as a lot of Halo fans want you to think. Halo 3 really was Bungie's Magnum Opus
I don't agree that "The games' stories shouldn't be constrained by the books." If Halo is meant to have one continuous narrative, (and it is) then the books and games *must* stay consistent with each other, otherwise the stories lose some of their impact. (We've seen this with the Star Wars sequels. If the next book/movie/game can just overwrite whatever came before, then our investment takes a hit because nothing can be known for sure anymore, not to mention that fans of those books will be upset that you essentially deleted something they treasured.) 343 messed this up by over-relying on their external media, but there is a middle ground where the games are not reliant on books or shows but rather the world the games create is expanded by them. It's definitely not right to mock people for being concerned with "canon" either. Halo's story is important to many people, and waving away parts of it being re-written or deleted because it didn't matter to you is rude. That having been said, this is a pretty great video! I grew up playing Halo, but really the one I remember best as a kid was Reach, because that's the one I was old enough to really appreciate. I do get all your points, and Reach wasn't as good as I wish it could have been.
Short answer: Spawning with the DMR. If the game had been like the Beta and had you spawn with the pistol it would have been way more fun but the DMR is just too oppressive.
Reach is and always has been my favorite of the games. I love them all and I'll admit I hated the idea of it when it first came out but I've spent so many hours in it and its amazing. And one of my favorite campaigns.
I don't hate it. I thought the story was wildly boring but I had a blast with split screen custom games when my friends and I weren't working on the weekends. Have some beers and play some Halo. Those were good times for sure. My default rules for every game were no armor abilities, about 5% increase in movement speed, I think the same for jump height and a very slight increase in weapon damage. Because I always thought the time to kill was always just a tiny bit too long.
Reach is a great game on it's own buuut... It really is at its best when you strip out all of the redundant weapons, all of the armor abilities except for sprint, and removal of weapon bloom. So, pretty much: you bring it as close to Halo 3 gameplay-wise as possible and retain sprint because of the increased map size. (Forge maps that is)
Thank you for this video because I too think *the combination of retical bloom, lack of shield bleed-through, and armor abilities made the game so horribly frustrating to play, taking so long to kill, and it slowed down combat with a game-series that already was slow compared to CoD.* I think the combination of these made sprint hated, otherwise, personally I’m in the minority in that I didn’t have a problem with sprint had these other issues been fixed. Those who loved Halo 3 multiplayer tended to hate Reach yet for the newcomers they liked it. This was the first video that I’ve seen that accurately calls out the worst of Reach. The bloom honestly was 70% of the problem. Also, you forgot to mention this: considering how frustrating this game was to play, if you rage quit occasionally, they banned you from playing a certain amount of time. Made me never come back. Hated it so much.
You've done well with this. I hated the game for the irreconcilable conflicts with the book. But, after thinking it over years after the game came out, I decided to look at the campaign as though I hadn't read the book. I was then able to admit that it was actually quite good, and now I enjoy it. I still like the book's version of events better, however I admit that the game's story is good, and I play through it every now and again.
@@TallestCascade I mean considering where Halo went after that, i don't particularly care what's supposed to be canon anyway. Besides, Bungie weren't particularly incredible writers, they were just entirely full of themselves and didn't want anyone else's influence on their perfect genius ideas.
@@ZeroKitsune I thought Bungie did a great job with the games writing. Halo reach made you love all the characters and then slowly takes them away. Makes you feel very human. Halo 3 odst pulls the heart strings as well.
@@TallestCascade The book literally predated the games themselves. It should objectively be taken as canon. If a book literally begins the story, and predates the games that follow, the games better make sure to not contradict the book. Halo Reach did this for no other reason than Bungie's ego/incompetence. And, Reach's story itself wasn't even that good. I love to rip on 343i's bad story telling but Bungie has their fair share of issues too.
I just didn't like it because I found the novel adaption of the Battle of Reach superior with more familiar characters who were better written than Noble Team was. That and Bungie so casually denouncing a superior story because they didn't make it. The events of the novel would have been incredible to play through.
I agree whole heartedly with the various criticisms. Reach is fun, but I don’t like it nearly as much as the other Bungie games. Based on the dumpster fire that is Destiny I am very glad that Bungie isn’t making more Halo games, and won’t return. I think the reason why the weapon sandbox is so awful in campaign is purely because of Invasion since they had to balance all the weapons, and abilities around it. Blume is definitely the worst thing in Reach, right next to Armor Lock. Whoever thought Armor Lock was a good idea NEEDS to be publicly castrated with a weedwacker (can you imagine how horrible of an experience that would be😂). The addition of the Skirmishers was awesome (unfortunately this caused them to nerf the normal Jackals from how they were in 2/3 so that they could stand out). The new Elite ai was really cool. However their shields being resistant to plasma grenades, Spartan Lasers, and other power weapons has a truly awful idea. The Brutes were the worst they’ve been in Halo; and you’d think they couldn’t get much worse than being bootleg Elites in 3/ODST (I love 3, but the Brutes were a let down. Luckily this doesn’t really take away from the overall experience. It just makes them less distinct). I like the Grunts new armor. For sprint I think it would be perfectly fine in campaign, and certain custom games. But for competitive play it just doesn’t work. It perplexes me how sprint is in Infinite with all the nerfs. It should make you fast, while keeping the nerfs like not being able to shoot or regenerate shields.
About sprint, I think infinite actually does it best, because it's not just a flat out speed boost. In infinite, sprint is a tool that allows you to use slide. The reason sprint in Halo 4/5 sucked ass is because of how it affected map design, and how it changed the combat from "whoever has the best aim wins" to "whoever stops sprinting first wins", which is why you can immediately shoot out of sprint
No halo infinite is about classic gameplay in classic maps that aren artificially stretched out to accommodate a fast sprint The sprint there is good it’s a slight speed increase at the cost of popping up on the radar and allows you to slide. Buffing the speed would break the existing maps as they are aren’t made to accommodate everyone moving around at Mach 5. Tho I will say sprint in halo infinite does feel like something that could be removed from the game along with the slide and nothing would really change.
shields were resistant to plasma grenades in every halo game except CE because CE had an EMP blast along with the explosion (similar to getting hit by a charged plasma pistol) that stripped shields. No other halo game had that unfortunately so plasma grenades were just sticky frags
Reach will always be my all time favourite halo game/ game, sucks people don't like it but to me I have so many fun memories with the game, although halo 3 was my first halo game I played, halo reach made me a halo fan
I loved halo reach. The reason I stopped playing reach on the MC collection was because I stopped playing halo in general. Halo reach in my opinion was amazing, I really loved the game. Had a lot of fun times in the campaign as well as multiplayer.
>be me 11yo going to midnight release in Blacktown, Sydney. >getting home and playing the game for the next 2 days >”wow, I can’t wait to find out where my team goes after Reach” >my heart breaks with each death and at the end I cry after seeing my Spartans death. Spartans don’t die, they just go MIA….
Time has been kind to halo reach because more older fans have moved away from gaming than younger fans resulting in a paradigm shift. Reach was VERY controversial when it came out due to gameplay changes that made it more similar to other game franchises coming out at the time. Same with Halo 4.
I played the entire halo franchise start to finish in mid 2021 out of sheer boredom. (Was always a Sony kid) I liked single player but man the multiplayer for reach sucked ass compared to halo 3. Bloom, map design and spawns killed it for me. Halo 3 is the best multiplayer experience for halo.
I feel like its mostly just the fans that have an ego and dont wanna imply that Spartans, or what they want to be, is anything short of a super hero avenger that cant die, and able to fight of hordes of enemies without breaking a sweat whom are equal too or stronger than them because otherwise that would not be stroking their ego. They want a power fantasy, not a dramatic story of struggle and sometimes pointless loss as real world war often is pointless loss, either because the enemy was far greater then we had anticipated as with george, thinking he died saving the world when all he did was anger a hornet nest. And kat, who simply died because an enemy got the drop on her.
It's funny, almost all the major gripes I rather enjoyed. The reticule bloom, the armour abilities (even armour lock-when it was patched to no longer give invulnerability to just added health), vehicle vulnerability lack of bleed through. I especially loved the campaign, the team members really felt distinct. I also love the first 3 halo games, but master chief wasn't the highlight. It was the sandbox and 'world story'.
it puzzles me why people felt connected to most of Reach's characters. In comparison to ODST which was a masterclass in character development, Reach does a mostly bad job. Reach campaign also wasn't as much fun and I've played it likely more than a good 20 or more playthroughs. As pointed out Elites were buffed and as a result annoying half the time
Less people play ODST and dont like that it doesnt have Spartans. Characters were still much better even if ODSTs story isnt the best. Also the atmosphere is incredible, those Rookie sections at night are even more iconic that the Lone Wolf mission.
I would be fine with buffed enemies if they and you weren't so clunky and slow. I also dont really like Reach because it has idk how to explain it but it gives me Halo 4 and 5 vibes and I dont really like that
I like people who really analyze stuff and take the time to explain their points , and you did exactly that ! however the only thing i don't agree with that you said here and also multiple times in your other videos , is "halo 4 is just call of duty " that's some pure bullshit . While its clear that 343 were desperate to steal the cod kids , and while the loadouts and kill streaks did definitely mess things up a little bit , the average gun fight in halo 4 still plays out the same as a normal halo game , the armor abilities are much shittier this time around which makes them more balanced and less of an issue and while the sandbox is very redundant , its not like halo 5 where you can laser people with assault rifles or shit , really the sandbox ( at least in the current updated version ) is mostly balanced , its just that the guns from the different factions feel the same
it has the gameplay but the way rounds start do not make it halo. It sounds like a purist statement but it is true we dont need loudouts in halo mp cause it contradicts what halo is known for which is a sandbox game. The reason halo 4 is called the cod copy is because it does take some aspects of cod except the Aim down sights part. perks, killstreaks, loudouts. The problem is 343 halo lacked some uniqueness.
Halo 4 is more call of duty like than other halos but isn’t even close to call of duty also unironically loadouts as a option for regular games that you can pick in say a playlist is really fun
Well as Halo fan and reader of many halo books, i really hate reach. It fucks over so much story and worldbuilding already established, it litteraly started to kill the franchise. In the Books Spartans are described as almost nonhuman people with almost no visible emotions. they are even feared by most common soldiers, for their speed efficency and lack of human like behavior. Normal soldiers were also not able to distinguish one spartan from another because their armor was always the same. The Mjolnir armor was so good that there is no need for "customizing" it. the only other Suit in the fight against the covenants was the EVA suit for the Spartan III programm which was made for trained war orphans to serve as a disposable suicide mission stealth unit. No one "modded" their armor there is no need for "cool" edgy skulls scratched into your helmet. then there was "HALO REACH" where spartans suddendly are super emotional teenagers that are super horny for fashion and color. Then the story in Halo reach was also super contradicting to the books. And the multiplayer sucked for me personaly, because of the Special abilities, they are just bloated nonsense that halo didnt need. Only positive thing that REACH had was the collectors box, there was so much high quality fan service in that box its undiscribable, if you like halo and can get one of those do it. The game it self was trash.
Halo reach no jode la historia ni la construcción de mundo, solo la complementar. Tampoco comenzó acabar con la franquicia. Los libros están sobrevalorados, solo son fanfic glorificado y son basura. Todo los que dicen y muestran son ridiculeces y son exagerado, a los spartans solo los super héroes siendo casi unos cary stu. Son puro violencia, acción y core explícito, con mala escritura y pura fantasía. Y no inventes cosa los spartans en halo reach no son cachondo ni adolescentes y nada de lo que dices.
I think having no bleedthrough made perfect sense since in Reach the health bar was shown and you can now track it. Adding bleedthrough would confuse a newcomer and to them the shield was effectively your health. So they would naturally disregard their health and not pick-up health packs anymore because what would be the point if you will get killed if you had low shields anyway? Game design is interesting.
Overall, Reach is a great game, and even a great Halo game. You're 100% correct about the flaws in the core multiplayer mechanics, and I personally think that Reach has the weakest base MP gameplay of the Bungie Halo games besides maybe Combat Evolved. That said, it has so many other things going for it that it balances out to be a really good game - forge, custom games, Firefight, theatre, Invasion and other Elite vs Spartan modes, Player Customisation etc are all great! It just depends what you're looking for - if it's one of those things listed, like really fun custom games on forged maps, Reach is the best Halo. If however, you're looking for really balanced competitive PVP shooting, it might be the worst Bungie Halo game - as it needs half of its features disabled (bloom, armor abilities etc) to even be as viable and balanced as the Halo CE magnum-fest. I personally still really like Reach, even the vanilla multiplayer (so long as DMRs aren't spawn weapons - seriously, it's basically a power-weapon!!) is fun for me when played casually, and I think Invasion and other Elite vs Spartan game modes had the potential to be the most fun in Halo's history! I think people who 'hate Reach' just don't like the flaws in the base MP mechanics, which is fine - I'm not a huge fan myself. However, I also think they're unfairly ignoring all of the other great aspects of the game, many of which are being brought forward to Infinite and are being received positively... go figure...
Halo Reach is an example of the scientific principle of experimentation that you never change more than 1 controllable variable between experiments. So much was added, swapped, or overhauled that anything good was countered by something negative, and overall came out neutral, hence the average performance in sales and player count over time compared to other titles.
THANK YOU for mentioning the “gray” levels that plagued Reach’s MP. Everyone loves to praise forge world (which they should) but seem to forget that the byproduct of that meant almost 2/3 MP levels you play on were gray forge world maps!! That and the armor effects got soooo old really fast for me
I dont think ive ever met anyone that didnt hold this game in high regards. I do feel that the multiplayer was lacking in comparison to 3. But the campaign is absolutely the best. The art style, firefight, customization, and driveable forklifts are just perfection. And the elites are terrifying jn this game. In a good way
I will note some things on your comment on the note of lore and canon. The first being that Halo has a far, far larger lore fanbase than most games and although yes, games should take precedent, canon should still be considered. The second is that you heavily imply that because games take precedent over canon, people should not be offended at the fact that Halo Reach contradicted canon. As well as state that you are not. The issue I (and most lore fans) have with Halo Reach is not that it changes canon, it's that it makes many, many, COMPLETELY UNECICARY CHANGES that are severely damaging to existing lore that would have been trivially easy to avoid. Simply changing Noble Team to Spartan IIs would solve a ungodly amount of lore contradictions. Or if for some reason you desperately need them to be spartan IIIs (which there really was no reason to do) make them ALL Spartan IIIs and remove Halsey from the story. That would, again, be a VERY VERY easy thing to do and would negate a vast amount of lore problems. There are so many TINY little details that would never be missed from the games story and add absolutely nothing, that they put in anyway to an effect so devastating to Halo Canon you can STILL feel the effects if it in books that come out today OVER 10 YEARS LATER. In fact, those small things make so unbelievably little sense in the lore, that most Halo Book material that comes out today prefers to ignore the fact that the game exists. I know almost no examples (Outside of Jun in New Blood) of anything from the GAME actually being talked about in halo books. Simply because it is so hard to navigate the lore surrounding it that most material prefers to avoid it. The issue is not that the game Simply breaks lore to tell its story, it's that the game makes decisions highly detrimental to the expanded Halo Universe that would have been trivially easy to avoid and added absolutely nothing to the story of the game. Games SHOULD take precedent I agree, but games should not spit all over existing lore for no reason.
I think where Reach really shined was it's custom games format. It was comparatively easy to build custom maps compared to 3. Matchmaking was a great way to have instant-action, but postgame you get to bring those that you matched with into custom games and play goofy minigames, custom Invasion maps, various infection scenarios or epic 8v8 CTF matches across all of Forge World. Some of my favorite memories was being invited into Custom Games with recently played with gamers and seeing what they had made or found on the file share browser.
The biggest reason for me was noticing that it was incredibly difficult to win fights outnumbered in close quarters, whereas in previous titles I could get Exterminations on a regular basis. Why? Because Sprint exists, so the opposing team's instinct whenever they outnumbered one guy in close quarters was to immediately sprint forward, and each melee you once. It was incredibly difficult to counter, except with Armor Lock. If you tried to backpedal and shoot them or use grenades, it wouldn't work because they would reach you faster than you could kill them. If you tried to run, they get free shots on you. In previous games, they couldn't move faster forwards than you could move backwards, so it was easy to kite and punish people who over-committed.
I was there at the beginning with Halo: CE on the original XBOX when I was eight in 2001. For some reason, not only did I not notice these issues with Reach, but Reach for a long time was my favorite in the series. In retrospect, it's right up there with CE for me.
Yeah, I was the same. I really liked CE, and 2 is easily one of my favourite games of all time - but contrary to seemingly everyone else on the planet, I can't stand 3's multiplayer outside of forge and custom games. Then, Reach rolls around and I love it just as much as Halo 2, and still do.
@@GrimViridian neither are guns by that logic. You don’t have to use the halo 2 battle rifle. You can just melee people instead of using a core mechanic the game was designed around....
gotta say what you say makes sense. never played much of halo multi or single and i am recently getting around to playing the campaigns with friends. The reach campaign was good imo but like you said the characters needed more time to develop before well you know. I alos noticed the increased health you mentioned after almost completing CE before heading into reach the health difference made the combat campaign wise way slower, and with that id say made you feel less of a supersoldier alongside it. Interesting video might look at some more
For me, the biggest reason I can understand on whether or not a classic Halo fan likes Halo Reach mostly comes down to whether or not they could accept it was a spinoff or not. Obviously that's a bit of a generalization, but still, when looking at it, Reach is still mostly a Halo game. It has the general Halo feel. That said, it did undeniably go in more experiemental ways that at times breaks the flow of the game. But I feel experimentation and something that plays a little different is fine fo ra spinoff game to do. Halo Wars for example is a whole different genre even. In ODST, you don't even play as a Spartan. Like I said, I understand this is NOT all of what people have an issue with, but I do feel this is a large issue people have, even more so with Reach being the final Halo game we got. We didn't end it off with a mainline game that was pure Halo, we ended on a spinoff (the third spinoff in a row even) that tried to do things specifically different than a Halo game does. The lead Halo writer didn't even write for that game. ODST was his final game.
Comprehensive review. Very fair, objective and intelligent viewpoints. I'm an original CE & H2 player who was disappointed with H3.. I skipped Reach, H4 & H5.. Returned to Series X Infinite. - Just trying to figure out how Halo fell from grace.. (coked out executives)
@@CoolJamz887 "The weird 20 and 30 year olds complaining about it tho." Yeah, those same 20 and 30 year olds are the ones who have been playing since the early years. Halo was originally directed toward a adult fanbase. The weirdos are all the children like you who can't wrap their minds around other people having legitimate opinions about games that you so happen to blindly worship. You're such a buffoon bro, lmao.
Armor lock breaks the game so much, I understand why they added it to give players a uno reverse card for ramming vehicle, but on infantry only map its the worst. You trade DMR shots, loose your shield, enemy locks, his friend come along and takes you out.
It really doesn’t tho and also DMR is a pain to deal with tbh it’s part of the trashy precision meta where battle rifles DMRs and to a lesser extent covenant carbines even tho the later is my absolute favourite gun in halo. Make automatic weapons completely worthless because precision weapons out DPS them up close which is just not how it should work
@@deleteduser3455 I pray infinite doesn't allow this boring repetitive precision meta to take foot again The ideal halo multilayer is where precision auto power weapons all beat each other Like what the heck in halo 3 I still get killed easily despite using a sniper against some guy who snipes me with a boring br
It's very strange. When it first came out, I did not like it's multiplayer very much, I had been playing Halo since 2003 and it just didn't feel very good to me. After they patched a few things it got better, but I never really loved the game. Then it came out on PC with MCC in 2019. Except this time around, I FREAKING LOVE THIS GAME. I don't know what happened, but I appreciate the game so much more now than I did in 2010. I never thought I would say this, but I actually like the multiplayer better than Halo 2. It's still not as good as Halo 3, but it's really good.
I had never heard, known, or even cared that some didn’t like reach. I personally loved this game. The thousand plus hours I played I enjoyed deeply. Got every achievement. Earned everything in multiplayer through grinding and loved my armor effect.
i played the crap out of this game during my parents divorce, soooo many hours on swat, infected, grifball credit farming, invasion, i was so obsessed with getting gungnir and inclement weather that i literally played for 24 hours straight during the summers... heck i would skip school just to play this game. this game will always be in my heart.
Halo reach had by far the best mp gameplay out of all of them. Also CS does have random spread. In fact, no gun in CS is 100% accurate. Inaccuracy in CS builds as your spray and then has a reset time. CS1.6 also had a dynamic crosshair.
I'm sure theres a lot of different opinions on this game but I think we can all appreciate what bungie did with reach as their last halo game. Custom armor, firefight, and forge were all huge improvements that made the halo series more unique and custom :)
On a side note, custom games actually died in the first few months of the game because of how the maps and game types worked. It didn’t return to much later after people understood the system. Competitive just flat out died in the first month. The only mode i tried to play competitively was SWAT. Reach was by far the easiest multiplayer halo i ever played. All the changes eventually ruined the enjoyment of the sandbox. It’s basically pointless to use vehicles when the sniper rifle or DMR could basically destroy it before it could make a difference. Reach also split the community into pieces. That fallout is one of the other reasons i no longer like reach.
Do you know how the vehicle health is treated from game to game? I'm trying to get a better understanding of how the player's health affects the vehicle's health (seems like they are separate in Halo: Reach).
In halo 2 and 3, the vehicle wouldnt get destroyed normally without the player inside dying first. It's a bit frustrating in reach cause if your vehicle is almost destroyed, you'll still die from it blowing when you still have plenty of health.
Reach was bad. Not going to go crazy and say any 343 game is better, but Reach isn't good. I'll at least lay out the positives first >Forge Easily Reach's best feature. It was the best map maker for a console shooter and only got outdone by Halo 5's. Granted no one realized that version of Forge existed. Problem is that the only worthwhile forge space was Forge World so every map became a homogenized mess of Green and Gray. Why one of the DLC maps wasn't a new forge space, I'll never know. >Custom Games Some of the most varied options in game types for a multiplayer game. Easy to navigate and set up with plenty of unique options never seen again. Definitely helped the game's longevity. >Art Direction/Cinematography Honeslty it's the best Halo's ever looked. UNSC looks gritty but stylistic enough to not get too muddy and the Covenant looks nearly at its best with a few failures like the Brutes. >Music No shit it's good. It's Marty's work. Doesn't reach ODST levels of eargasm but it gets close >Campaign Gameplay Easily the most consistent Campaign experiences in Halo. Not a single dud level thanks to its focus on the Covenant and lack of flood. However it also has no true highlight levels that stand out. It ends up getting stale far quicker as a result. Now for the bad >Multiplayer I don't know how but Bungie made a halo game that is slower and more methodical than Halo 3 despite adding a sprint feature. The armor abilities all halt combat by either creating short instances of invulnerability or short instances of escape. The reticle bloom once again slows the pace of combat. The game's focus on long range combat also turns matches into boring pop and shot scuffles between campers. >Weapons Easily Halo's worst arsenal. Instead of utilizing fun and effective staples to the halo sandbox bungie decided they wanted more creative concepts and none of them work. The needle rifle, focus rifle, grenade launch, plasma repeater, and plasma launcher are all terrible weapons and make one long for the Beam rifle and Carbine. >Maps The reuse of campaign spaces in unforgivable. It not only cheapens the Multiplayer experience and it cheapens the campaign. The spaces themselves are lack luster and no where near fun to fight in as previous games. The only fun maps came from Forge World and even then constantly fighting on halo got boring within minutes. >Campaign Narrative Personally its just as bad as anything 343 has written. Forced emotional trama with characters that aren't developed enough to even care about. The game doesn't have a main objective until the second to last mission and even then its to sloppily tie the game with the original trilogy. The game can't even succeed at telling a story of abject failure because Noble team sees more successes than losses in game.
It's ironic really... Bungie was done with halo and had no real interest in continuing it and wanted out but there games had good reception.Meanwhile people hate 343 who arguably has people who wants to make these games in the company.....There games had bad or mixed reception wether the game is actually good or not.
Regarding the story I was pretty disappointed at the time because it retconned a lot of the book. However my biggest disappointment was the loadouts/armor abilities. I liked that bungie experimented, but ultimately it fell short for me, and I considered it the worst halo game at the time.
"OH WOW DUDE, SHREDDEDNERD UPLOADED A 30 MIN VIDEO"
*two soy wojaks pointing*
I'm not even on a DMC video and still, I'm haunted by smiling Vergil
"Everywhere I go, I see his face"
sussy
What in the fuck is a soy wojack? Lmao 😂
Jesus Christ loves you
Once I find the perfect Jack to depict you, your life is completely over
Halo Reach was the first Halo I played so it always has a place in my heart, but I completely understand why long time Halo fans weren't too exited about it. However I still say it had the best armor customization in the series though.
Agreed, only problem is it leaves me torn on mcc between unlocking the armor I actually like but will rarely get to see in reach or just unlock whatever happens to be the current playset. Especially when someone like me doesn't have time to just unlock everything
@@mandogaming1313 i usually farm all the PvE challenges everytime and get aroundd 20 tokens i'd say if you're a low level, you can add me and we could do them together bro. If you want of course.
Same
I am exactly agreed
The customization of the armour while still kinda limited is probably the best meanwhile my first game was halo 3 as in the first video game I played on a console when I was 7 or 8 lol. Like halo reach came out way late in the timeline of me being a halo fan though even though it was different I still think it was a amazing game though noble team was done dirty
Played the absolute shit out of Reach. Easily my favorite Halo. The art style was absolutely magnificent. It perfectly captured the near-future aesthetic, and the campaign really made me feel like I was part of a badass spec-ops unit contributing to a larger-scale operation. I also adored the episodic style, which I think really brought it all together. Weirdly, unlike Halo 5, I never once felt like the absence of Master Chief took anything away from the game.
Not to even mention the incredible time I had playing multiplayer and custom games with friends for years. Reach will always be my favorite Halo, and for me, at least, it did everything right.
I agree master chief was fine not being involved. Combined I actually like noble team the best more than I like master chief that’s not saying master chief is bad or anything but I like Emile the best period
@@deleteduser3455 Yeah, I liked the character interaction, even though there wasn’t a huge amount. The scene with Kay trying to convince Carter to use the “nonexistent launch site” for the “nonexistent Sabre program” was pretty great.
The pinnacle of halo
And the best custom games
100% agree
Bungie: doesn't like making sequels
Also Bungie: Destiny 2!
@@ADUSN yeah it’s more an iteration of what bungie wanted destiny 1 to be from the start
@@naught_ so a sequel
@@naught_ well now maybe it is. at launch it was even worse than Destiny 1
Activision forced them. Hence why there is no sign of a Destiny 3 coming now that they aren't with Activision anymore.
@@LuckySevens still a trash game though. Who tf commits to forcing players to use a specific set of weapons in a FPS and then says it's so players have fun? Bungie became full on clowns
The characters in reach die out of a theme of who they are. Act Man put it pretty much perfectly. The characters are fleshed out, it's just subtle. Carter is the leader, so he dies with the ship (pelican), Kat is the brains so she gets shot in the head, Jorge thinks he's saving reach, so he dies thinking he did in a big explosion, Emile likes knives so he dies by energy sword, Six is a Lone Wolf and dies alone.
The reason Jun didn't die is the fact he's the sniper, who avoids direct action, so it makes sense for him to be the only one remaining
I wouldn't say that's "fleshed out", more just some really well done irony
"Fleshed out" would be if those characters had differing complex motivations and personalities, and if they had actual character development.
@@Gtx-ij9ff Well done irony for video games.
It's similar with the deaths of the prophets - Regret dies with no regrets, Mercy was the one vouching most for the Arbiter's punishment and died after being denied any mercy, Truth was the minister of propaganda and died believing a lie.
You could argue that perhaps it would've been more fitting for Jun to die in Kat's place as it would've been more ironic for a sniper to get sniped.
I find it hilarious thats how little indepth the characters where built up... they died related to their external characteristics(besides jorge) instead of personalized characteristic. If kat was paranoid all the time and let her guard down and got shot in the head that would of made so much more sense instead she is smart so she got shot in the back of the head. None of their deaths seem to carry the weight halo 1/3 deaths had both the key death where against a hopeless situation to save humanity. The bomb scene seemed to be shoe horned way to have jorge die there was zero critical thinking about protecting the bomb nor providing a scene that made it clear that the bomb did get damaged in the fight instead of shipping. You could of dominated the whole room and still have the bomb break the characters didn't even think of back up nor there wasnt must reasoning to why the bomb wasn't repairable in a universe full super powerful tech there isnt a way to denote the bomb via makeshift clock. The scarab vs carter seem silly since you where doing 99% dodging the scarab with your own mongoose they weren't very threatening. So his sacrifice felt very hallow and dumb in a way. Emile seemed like the most silliest one of the trend but also the most realistic to the scenario his main identification was his knife... he never used... did i mention all halo reach spartans already has 1 knife so a second that he never used in animations nor combat shouldn't sound like it should be his main identification of how he dies right? With your line logic thats just seems flimsy at best. Also jun could of been replaced with kat and it wouldn't of change the meaning at all because you could say "kat was the only one to survive be cause she is smart"
But in all seriousness i do think this concept/idea is such a stretch that its inclusion to any argument to why reach's story is poetic or great hurts the assumption that said essay wasn't unfairly bias to its core to come up as surface level argument that overall is to shove your feelings on someone instead of why this is a great story from story mechanics perspective. Personally i am a fan of long form reviews raycevick review stuck out to me that alines mosty with my personal thoughts of the fundamentals of the game and why is a good game at best and not an amazing game
Fleshed out lol. Nice joke. We know nothing about these characters so how are they fleshed out???
I played all the original Halo games as a kid except Reach. I never played it until the last few days when I beat it with my son. I will say this.. he cried at the end and I almost did too. It was incredible and I’m so glad I finally took the time to play this masterpiece. It’s up there with Halo 1-3 for me easily.
Halo Reach ending is so badass. And in the end I love how they show the Pillar of Autumn ship from the original halo game
@@wattsnottaken1 Me too! And I also enjoyed that moment where you can look to the right and see the Master Chief and get an achievement for it.
CE is still the Goat. I was a senior in high school and wasn’t really interested in video games by that point when reach was coming out. Finally played it a few months ago on MCC. It’s good, but not as good as the trilogy
@@marksheen4873 Halo 1-3 will always be my favourite.
just a side note, there's actually a different mechanic than bloom in CE. there's 2 accuracy cones, and for weapons you could hold the trigger on, it would swap to the less accurate cone after the first few rounds, it's why tapping the trigger as fast as possible on the pistol gave significantly more accuracy. Also, zooming in didn't change the accuracy cone, so it looks like it's going outside the reticule when it's just filling anywhere inside the reticule when not zoomed.
Not sure exactly how 2 and 3 do it though.
CE's magnum has two modes. Perfect straight shot firing (individual trigger pulls) and then bloom (holding the trigger).
H2's BR neither bloom or spread whatsoever.
H3's BR has some RNG Spread contained within the reticule. That is, the first round lands right on target, but the last two rounds can land anywhere within the reticule.
One thing that bugged me that isn't talked about was the annoying amount of foreign accents in the game. In Halo 1, 2, and 3 everyone outside of a handful of side characters sounded like Americans.
@@ragnarlothbrok4281 are you in the wrong comment section?
I have never heard ANYONE say they hated it. All the homies played THE FUCK OUTTA IT.
Go on old halo 4 comments on youtube
People hated it so much when it came out but overtime it got loved. I think it's a great game.
well im someone i guess. I hate reach, its without a doubt bungies worst halo.
I played the fuck out of it but still HATED bloom and AA.
It wasn't liked at launch but it aged well due to the next Halo game being garbage. I absolutely love Reach but the sandbox, bloom, and the Spartan Abilities sucks (didn't say anything about sprint so don't do it)
I remember grinding for the black glass visor in this game. It took a long time and once I got it… I felt like all my hard work was worth it. A wonderful prequel
Halo reach is the only game I've seen miss the mark on so many things and piss people off to such a level yet still considered beloved masterpieces by those same people
Not the same people tbh mostly newer fans put reach on a pedestal
@@KnucklesWTD It is a pretty good game. I personally don't play it at all anymore, but it is a decent agme.
@@9ghtknight389 it’s not
@@Whiplashxyz wanna explain why?
@@aidancloke4398 it was the start of the downfall of halo that’s why
I never understood why people didn't like Halo Reach until I played the campaign with the Halo Reach: Evolved mod that rebalanced all the weapons and removed armor abilities.
Being able to use the assault rifle and like, any weapon other than the DMR made me realize "oh wow, yeah, the weapon sandbox sucks ass"
That's not the reason why Reach sucks, try playing Halo 2 only using the dual SMGs and see how far you get.
Don't say that cuz reaches has way more loved than any other Halo game which I find annoying but it is what it is the only reason why I don't like it cuz everybody love it story good gameplay but Im not in to the Noble 6 team I like being solo and being alone I grew up with halo 1 didn't have reach
@@deathtrooper2048Tbh that’s more viable then using the AR in reach and yes I am talking about playing on Legendary.
one word my friend: bloom.
@@_A_T_B_ I hardly noticed it really, I think everyone makes too big a deal out of it. Like wow, it takes the best weapon in the game and makes it slightly worse.
My only real problem with this game is that the environments/levels feel so offensively regular and uninspired compared to the first 3 games. Every level was just rocks with occasional grass, grey skies and metal.
Halo Reach is my favorite Halo and one of my favorite games ever. When it launched it was basically the Halo game I'd always wanted, focusing on the gritty warfare between humans and Covident with invasion being a dream Halo mode for me, bringing the war to Multiplayer. I completely understand the hate/critisicm as a competitive player and lore nerd myself but I can't help but love this game
you bring up that age old argument against halo 4s larger story (the didact plot) that you need to read the books to under stand it specifically the forerunner trilogy but after reading those books i can say with 100% certainty that no you do not in fact they just convolute it with way to much detail such as the fact that there are 2 didacts 1 good and 1 suffering from mega ptsd. all you need to understand halo 4 is to have played halos 1-3 and the terminals which can all be found in game and reward exploring the maps
I agree. I played Halo 4 while having played Halo 1-3 and seeing the terminals and I understood who the Didact was. I did not need to know everything about the UR-didact and the 'new' didact to understand the Didact's motivations or why he was doing what he was doing. The games told me everything I needed to know. The only confusion was the 'Covenenant' faction which they did a bad job of explaining and could have simply stated that it was a fanatical breakaway set who - understandably from an emotional point of view - refused to believe that almost everything about their religion was a lie. They hint at it with the distress beacon of the Covenant where an elite is saying 'Didact! Didact!' over and over in a forlorn way - as they are desperately looking for a purpose.
Doesn't excuse the Didact for being an awful addition. He literally could just crush Chief to death or drop him into a bottomless pit, but would rather brag about how he's superior. He's garbage and he brings down any narrative positives Halo 4 has. If they had grounded him more instead of making him basically a god Halo 4's story probably wouldn't be hated by people like me. I don't give two shits what some book said about "The Mantle of Responsibility" or "The Logic Plague" If that stuff wasn't straight up mentioned by Bungie while they were making THEIR game then it needs to be organically told to the player regardless if you're a lore fanatic or not. I'm really hoping Infinite glosses over most of the stuff that came from 4 and 5 (Which it looks like they're doing since the Created story finished before it could even begin) I want to like the Halo expanded lore, but I don't want it to become required to understand how or why characters exist or do what they do. Without the terminals in Halo 4 the Didact is just a straight up super villain from a bad comic book. It's not that we don't understand Halo 4, it's that Halo 4 doesn't understand Halo as a game series.
@@gabethebabe3337 You mean a villain stewing in his own madness for 100,000 years can be a megalomaniacal, irrational, arrogant jerk? Oh no! Who would have thought it? Also Bungie did mention the mantle of responsibility in Halo 3 in the terminals on the Ark. The terminals in Halo 4 also explain what you need to know about the Mantle of responsibility. And this is all in the game, no extra books required.
@@dewittbourchier7169 Dude I get the terminals have references to that stuff, but I doubt they go into deep enough detail to explain their importance to the player in the isolation of the games. Also none of that justifies the Didact being too stupid to fulfill his plans. He literally had TWO opportunities to just drop Chief into a bottomless pit.
I don't care if he is crazy, he's still a lame villain with a poorly defined place in the games. Like I doubt he had to mind control the Covenant into obeying him, yet he feels the need to. That killed any chance of having a named Covenant leader as a secondary antagonist because they were all basically braindead at that point.
Halo 4 has so much shit to it's story, but people will ignore it because the ending made them cry. None of it was built up properly and the Didact was a waste of time. I'm so glad Infinite is a soft reboot and leaning more towards the original trilogy so I can just ignore 4 and 5.
You can like Halo 4, but at least admit that the game's story was too big in scope to be made in the amount of time it had. I really wanted to like Halo 4, but all the hard references to stuff that isn't properly elaborated on in the games really makes it suck.
@@gabethebabe3337 He did not mind control the Covenant. They saw him and bowed down as they view him as a God of a kind. Also none of the Halo games has ever been particularly deep with lore but they convey enough of what is needed for the player to understand. Halo 4 does the same we understand from them where the Didact started out, how he became more extreme, and why he was locked away, and from these who the Librarian was.
anyone else notice he played against Mint Blitz at 10:58
i saw it too i thought i was the only one lmao
WTF is a mintblitz
@@Procyon14 an absolute legend
its rogue mint. idk if it is mint blitz alt
is it true:o
@@sal_ad An aimbot user*
I get hating Halo Reach for bad game mechanics, but honestly, I have no idea why anyone would choose Halo 3's story over Halo Reach. Halo 3's story was littered with bad writing and poorly placed one-liners. Halo reach, on the other hand, was the deepest and most meaty story of any halo game, and possibly of any video game.
I watched an entire walkthrough of both games. That "one-liner" in Halo 3 "'Where should they go?' 'To war'" just gives me the idea that the entire Halo 3 story was a bad excuse to push out bad jokes, covered up with equally bad writing. None of the characters are relatable, and they all seemed to only have one "face," or seemingly one-dimensional characters. It feels like the only reason the characters are on the screen is to execute a script.
Halo Reach, on the other hand, was well written, had good writing, and was really good at integrating the characters in the story. The characters actually had different personalities that set them apart from the others, and a unique way of getting the player attached to each character, making each of their deaths immeasurably more impactful.
Also, master chief not being the player is probably the worst of the valid reasons to hate Halo Reach.
(edit): Also, if anyone didn't get attached to the characters by the time they died, that's a skill issue on their part. They were either trying not to get attached, or were completely detached from the story.
Pretty much every complaint I had about the game. It was a dark time to be a comp kid. There was plenty to love about the game but the core combat loop was often more frustrating than fun.
Yes I too want to go back to the days of pressing BXR and having the BR overpower nearly every other weapon, those where good days to be competitive
@@LoveSickWorld the Br does not overpower everything in H3. controlling rocket, splazer, vehicles, and other power weapons were a large part of the game. It is a perfect starting weapon though.
@@funnymcfunfuns1455 I didn't mean it as it overpowered power weapons but it's a weapon you would gladly trade for almost anything especially the starters which isn't really good for Halos sandbox
Storywise its meh
This guys review covered it well: ua-cam.com/video/IUbrRQWdIQU/v-deo.html
Competitive lol. God competing is just the most frustrating boring experience and competitive gameplay is unfun due to how repetitive and how competitive games only have one good weapon
Halo never should have adopted market trends. Halo's identity has been confused ever since.
That one guy from a comment section: "Yeah, there was no problem with the armor lock. You just needed to get good. TU ruined it."
There's always a contrarian.
There *kinda* isn't anything wrong with Armor lock. If someone used it right and the way in which it works best it doesn't hualt matches at all, you can also it down real quick to counter a vehicle splatter or to negate a hail of grenades about to blow you up. The problem is dumb players just spamming it and holding it as long as possible. Those people usually get harshly punished and die every time, and thankfully usually think it sucks and never use it again. When used the way it should be for maximum effectiveness it really doesn't do much to the gameplay other then piss people off who thought they would get a easy splatter
@@LoveSickWorld Back in competitive Reach it was a plague. It gave players enough time to give callouts and get their team as help. It was EXTREMELY broken at a high level of gameplay. Me and my buddy once tried only using it for shits and gigs, and our rank improved way more than it should have.
Edit: In social play it was okay, and it was eventually removed from competitive, but the bad taste was already left in everyone's mouth by then.
@@Whaccd well that makes sense but I wouldn't have known because I don't ever take Halo competitive nor do I think the competitive side should ever dictate how the whole game plays but it should at least live in cohesion with everything else (which is something I feel a lot of people miss, for some it's either casual or competitive and not just both) but Bungie could have had the foresight to know that not just armor lock, but all armor abilities except maybe Sprint wouldn't work well in competitive so they should have omitted them from their respective game modes. I still don't think that all because the competitive community didn't get what they want doesn't mean the game is bad, but they really could have handled that side of the community better
@@LoveSickWorld the game isnt bad, just certain aspects. While i agree that the competitive shouldn't dictate everything, it does highlight things that need tweaking. I think armor lock is an awesome IDEA but the execution wasn't great. I think something that activated more quickly and blocked stuff back more wouldve been better. The repulser is what i think the evilution of armor lock is.
Looking back, this games graphics were really nice for the time. It doesn’t make sense how so many games today struggle with clipping armor issues, buggy ass menus, etc. it’s sad
My main complaint about reach is I feel that the DMR is too strong to the point where it makes almost every other load out weapon like the assault rifle and the needle rifle completely useless. Other than that it’s my favorite campaign, my favorite Forge, my favorite fire fight, and my second most favorite immersive atmosphere.
I think that halo reach is still a good game
Same
Same
Yea, without a doubt my favourite halo game.
*just not a good halo game
I think it is the best game ever
I hope those Pandemic Studio employees still work at 343i despite the hate
Yeah :/
Pandemic made some of my favorite games, really sad how they got screwed.
Fairly solid video on Halo Reach. Thanks for making this.
The way I see it, Halo Reach is hated by a fair amount of fans in the same way a lot of WoW fans hate the Cataclysm expansion. It's viewed as the beginning of the downtrend in the game's popularity. It's where they started down the path to the disaster's of 4 and 5.
I have a lot of issues with how bland the art style is, the only game I actually hate the look of my Spartan and can't find a single look I want
@@ADUSN how so? Cause the only thing I know they did was fix the bloom which made the multiplayer near unplayable
@@ADUSN well idk about you, but the only thing i see they did was including campaing vehicles and scenery on forge mode
That's pretty dope if you ask me, driving a seraph in forge world it's amazing
I never liked it myself but to be honest it was just stepping away from the master chief that i didnt like. I just didnt care about the reach characters when i played it and never got invested in them even though i played the entire game
Funny enough they both came out in 2010
You can't get attached to something that's eventually gonna die.
A lot of us knew the fate of reach. (Also, it didn't have the same ratio of somberness to light-heartedness like the prior entries, especially odst)
One nitpick is that the game was a loose adaptation of the book it was named after. And you know how fans react when creative liberties are taken with source material.
@@EggEnjoyer Exactly
@@EggEnjoyer Yeah that kinda actually tells me a lot about why Bungie completely failed and fell apart as a company.
I have always believed whatever happens in the games is it. I am not a lore chaser and I don't care about the books. I care about a good fucking game. Maybe this is why 343 keeps failing hardcore. I may be wrong here because I have no idea but wouldn't have Halo reach the game came out before the book?
@@rm25088no, halo reach was 10 years after
@@spartanjohn-1176 oh ok. Thanks for the clarification.
1 thing I really like about reach is that it really makes the war with the covenant feel like a war. It’s just a bunch not so known soldiers fighting for their home. There’s something so special about that and some people just don’t understand.
I still prefer the story from the book.
@@Agustin_Leal I’ve sadly never read the book
Ironic. None of the Spartan 3's are from reach. Nor is Jorge
@@eskil5306 Jorge was born on reach
@@AbinadiWhite49 ah you mean the non existant Spartan 2?
Loved the shit out of reach back in the day but as I grew older I started to see the many flaws and “inferior” gameplay in many aspects. It’s still better than 4 and 5 and it has a good campaign (I liked the story and gloomy atmosphere personally) but the gameplay feels off to me for many reasons and the “halo dance” that works so well in halo CE and halo 3 doesn’t play as big a role in reach’s combat.
reach was so good half the community left after the first month
You’re wrong
@@chrismarple it was either the first month if within the first 3 months but half the playerbase left, the fact remains. why would it be any surprise? it's a game that did a lot of catering to the wider audience instead of the core fans.
that was H4, dumdum. In ~100 days H4 lost over 75% the launch day player peak. Not even ~10 months later the game struggled to pull ~20k player pop and was already out of the top 10 games played on XBL. Even Reach stayed in the top 5 for a full year and top 10 for 2. Halo 3 was in the top 10 for ~2.5 years.
And of course games drop a massive amount of players in the first months, lmao. Even H3 lost ~40% of day 1 players in the first 100 days. Reach didn't hold players as well as H3 did, but it still held players pretty well. Well enough that it was the first Halo title to remain more popular than the game to follow it. (took about a year before H4 died off enough for Reach to become the most popular Halo title again)
Part of it was people didn't like it as much H3 and another part was that it was later in the 360's lifecycle and it was competing against a stronger Cod (Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops) an emerging Battlefield and a bunch of other decent MP games. When H3 first came out there wasn't really any MP games to play except Gears 1 and CoD4. (Battlefield was terrigood back in 2010-2012 btw. I mainly played H3/Reach, BF:BC2 and L4D2 MP back in 2008-2010 when I first got my 360, but BF3 pretty much got me to quit them all entirely. Fuck me, that game's MP was so damn good I put over 4x as much playtime into that one game than I did H3/Reach combined)
Halo reach got more players after halo 4 came out, halo reached aged very well. It overtook halo 3 eventually after 2012
@@abointedtoyblingofmatsthat's a fact. I didn't hate Reach but my friends all went to Black Ops and Gears 2
"It almost feels like the reach sandbox was built from the ground up on invasion"
Yes it was. That's exactly why reach's weapon sandbox is so bland to me. So many of the covenant weapons where just changed to be covenant equals of UNSC weapons. That's why all the weapons are so similar to each other. They did this to "balance" invasion but in doing so made the sandbox more bland and also not good in other game modes.
imo reach has one of the best halo sandboxes
Except it wasn't. And they weren't.
Outside of the plasma repeater vs AR there's basically nothing worth comparing, and that's being generous because even the repeater's RoF/spread mechanic is more unique than the CE-style (CE-style because no dual-wield) Plasma Rifle that it basically replaced. Unless you want to count the needle rifle, but that doesn't fit your criteria anyways because the Carbine came before the DMR/NR and both were mostly based on the Carbine more than anything else. So that's a UNSC weapon being made more like a Covenant one from prior games.
The only other noteworthy comparison would be Beam Rifle vs Focus Rifle. And the Beam Rifle was basically just a reskinned UNSC Sniper ever since it was added to H2. (yes, I'm aware of the faster follow-up shots and the overheat mechanics, it's still a much closer "copy" than the Focus Rifle, of all things)
Invasion was a super asymmetrical game mode, to the point that making the factions TOO dissimilar could be seen as a major flaw that deeply affected the overall balance. I played a ton and the best killstreaks were easier to pull off as UNSC since the Focus Rifle and Needle Rifle didn't do enough chip damage to vehicles like the DMR/UNSC sniper. And that would become a real big issue if the UNSC started stealing your Banshee or camping the spawn. About the only things the Covenant had straight off the spawn were the plasma pistol + stickies. Plasma pistol didn't amount to much in the early game though since there was no vehicles and the noob combo doesn't work that well with a Plasma repeater starter loadout. (Needle rifles were pickups and then available as spawn weapons in stage 2)
Otherwise the only major advantage the Covenant had (especially in the early stages whether it was Invasion or Invasion Slayer) was Evade. There was full health regen for Elites too, but I don't think that ever really amounted to much. If they didn't put health packs right next to the objectives/spawns then it might've amounted to more.
Otherwise you had matchups like:
Plasma Cannon/Fuel Rod vs Rocket Launcher/Splaser. Both Covenant weapons were ill-equipped to deal with stolen Banshees, but were OK against Scorpions/Warthogs.
Grenade Launcher vs Concussion Rifle.
Shotgun vs Needler
Frags vs Stickies
Magnum vs plasma pistol
Warthog vs Ghost
Wraith vs Scorpion
Banshee vs Falcon
Out of that group the only truly new weapons added to the sandbox (Concussion Rifle was a Brute shot reskin, doesn't count) were the Plasma Cannon and Grenade Launcher. And both weapons really weren't anything like their closest UNSC equivalents. The Pro Pipe was anything but bland too, that was a sign that Bungie could still come up with fun and unique weapons.
@@jaywelker5566 found the halo 3 fanboy
In halo 3, the sandbox entirely comprised of the BR and then the power weapons. No other gun, not the spiker, the mauler, the magnum, the needler, the smg, or the plasma rifle, was a viable choice to use against the BR.
Reach on the other hand had a precision weapon for close range (Magnum), an AR that could outshoot a magnum at medium range, and two precision weapons that were viable choices in the meta (needler and the DMR) not just one.
Further more, we saw the addition of the pro pipe, and the plasma grenade launcher, in addition to keeping all the other power weapons from halo 3.
So idk what you are talking about tbh, the sandbox was an improvement in almost any way. The only trouble reach had was implementing bloom in a bad way and also the class system was kind of wack
@@jaywelker5566 Finally someone gets it. I personally believe halo 3 has the optimal gameplay formula, it plays the most smoothly and it's combat is the most satisfying. But Reach was superior in a lot of other ways. It's sandbox simply was better, Forge world spawned an entire era of wild custom games, assassination were a blast, armor customization was undeniably the best in the series.... there were annoying things about the game, like armor lock, bad AI in the campaign, and bloom was implemented in a bad way, I kind of wish I could fly a falcon without blown out of the sky instantly.... but it still was a masterpiece.
You need way more subs. Your videos are very well made
Finally! A halo critic video that doesn't suffer with rose tinted glasses for every game accept the latest entry.
ive always loved reach for my own reasons but I agree it seemed to become a recent trend to love it as much as it is now. back in the day you'd get crucified for saying reach was the best halo lol
Reach was the beginning of the end for me. I’m sure for a lot of folks it’s to them what h3 is to me.
@@CoolDrifty totally agree. I loved reach for its forge world, invasion, look and feel, and got explosions the best. But understood how the competitive side was completely nutured due to bloom, beginning of the end for playable elites, floating/heavy responsiveness and sluggish gameplay loop, ghosting, and the whole armour lock/concept of loadouts debate. That said, it did still do loads right that even modern halos are struggling to master. Like shipping a complete product for one.
@@CoolDrifty Different context due to different times. Back in the day, Reach could arguably be the "worst" Halo game.
Now that the community has collectively experienced 343 games, however, Reach is an absolute masterpiece by comparison.
@@recycledwaste8737reach is garbage, and always will be
This video is fantastic and really manages to convey why I dislike Reach's multiplayer. Reach is a great game at it's core, but I don't think it was as perfect as a lot of Halo fans want you to think. Halo 3 really was Bungie's Magnum Opus
I don't agree that "The games' stories shouldn't be constrained by the books." If Halo is meant to have one continuous narrative, (and it is) then the books and games *must* stay consistent with each other, otherwise the stories lose some of their impact. (We've seen this with the Star Wars sequels. If the next book/movie/game can just overwrite whatever came before, then our investment takes a hit because nothing can be known for sure anymore, not to mention that fans of those books will be upset that you essentially deleted something they treasured.) 343 messed this up by over-relying on their external media, but there is a middle ground where the games are not reliant on books or shows but rather the world the games create is expanded by them.
It's definitely not right to mock people for being concerned with "canon" either. Halo's story is important to many people, and waving away parts of it being re-written or deleted because it didn't matter to you is rude.
That having been said, this is a pretty great video! I grew up playing Halo, but really the one I remember best as a kid was Reach, because that's the one I was old enough to really appreciate. I do get all your points, and Reach wasn't as good as I wish it could have been.
I only have memory of me and my friend playing the campaign on my couch so I could never hate the gamr
The campaign is the best aspect of reach
@@KBergs most important at that
Short answer: Spawning with the DMR. If the game had been like the Beta and had you spawn with the pistol it would have been way more fun but the DMR is just too oppressive.
The DMR was just busted
Even then, the settings could reflect halo 3. I even tested walking and jumping over a warthog to get the movement right for my forge maps.
Reach is and always has been my favorite of the games. I love them all and I'll admit I hated the idea of it when it first came out but I've spent so many hours in it and its amazing. And one of my favorite campaigns.
I don't hate it. I thought the story was wildly boring but I had a blast with split screen custom games when my friends and I weren't working on the weekends. Have some beers and play some Halo. Those were good times for sure. My default rules for every game were no armor abilities, about 5% increase in movement speed, I think the same for jump height and a very slight increase in weapon damage. Because I always thought the time to kill was always just a tiny bit too long.
Disagree with the story being boring, but everyone has an opinion and I respect that.
Reach is a great game on it's own buuut...
It really is at its best when you strip out all of the redundant weapons, all of the armor abilities except for sprint, and removal of weapon bloom.
So, pretty much: you bring it as close to Halo 3 gameplay-wise as possible and retain sprint because of the increased map size. (Forge maps that is)
Thank you for this video because I too think *the combination of retical bloom, lack of shield bleed-through, and armor abilities made the game so horribly frustrating to play, taking so long to kill, and it slowed down combat with a game-series that already was slow compared to CoD.* I think the combination of these made sprint hated, otherwise, personally I’m in the minority in that I didn’t have a problem with sprint had these other issues been fixed. Those who loved Halo 3 multiplayer tended to hate Reach yet for the newcomers they liked it. This was the first video that I’ve seen that accurately calls out the worst of Reach. The bloom honestly was 70% of the problem.
Also, you forgot to mention this: considering how frustrating this game was to play, if you rage quit occasionally, they banned you from playing a certain amount of time. Made me never come back. Hated it so much.
You've done well with this. I hated the game for the irreconcilable conflicts with the book. But, after thinking it over years after the game came out, I decided to look at the campaign as though I hadn't read the book. I was then able to admit that it was actually quite good, and now I enjoy it. I still like the book's version of events better, however I admit that the game's story is good, and I play through it every now and again.
The book should never be taken as canon compared to the literal game.
@@TallestCascade I mean considering where Halo went after that, i don't particularly care what's supposed to be canon anyway. Besides, Bungie weren't particularly incredible writers, they were just entirely full of themselves and didn't want anyone else's influence on their perfect genius ideas.
@@ZeroKitsune I thought Bungie did a great job with the games writing. Halo reach made you love all the characters and then slowly takes them away. Makes you feel very human. Halo 3 odst pulls the heart strings as well.
@@ZeroKitsuneehh lore wise only reach and a few h3 terminals are charlie foxtrots
@@TallestCascade The book literally predated the games themselves. It should objectively be taken as canon.
If a book literally begins the story, and predates the games that follow, the games better make sure to not contradict the book. Halo Reach did this for no other reason than Bungie's ego/incompetence. And, Reach's story itself wasn't even that good.
I love to rip on 343i's bad story telling but Bungie has their fair share of issues too.
Brought back some damn good memories seeing all these maps
I just didn't like it because I found the novel adaption of the Battle of Reach superior with more familiar characters who were better written than Noble Team was. That and Bungie so casually denouncing a superior story because they didn't make it. The events of the novel would have been incredible to play through.
I agree whole heartedly with the various criticisms. Reach is fun, but I don’t like it nearly as much as the other Bungie games. Based on the dumpster fire that is Destiny I am very glad that Bungie isn’t making more Halo games, and won’t return.
I think the reason why the weapon sandbox is so awful in campaign is purely because of Invasion since they had to balance all the weapons, and abilities around it. Blume is definitely the worst thing in Reach, right next to Armor Lock. Whoever thought Armor Lock was a good idea NEEDS to be publicly castrated with a weedwacker (can you imagine how horrible of an experience that would be😂).
The addition of the Skirmishers was awesome (unfortunately this caused them to nerf the normal Jackals from how they were in 2/3 so that they could stand out). The new Elite ai was really cool. However their shields being resistant to plasma grenades, Spartan Lasers, and other power weapons has a truly awful idea. The Brutes were the worst they’ve been in Halo; and you’d think they couldn’t get much worse than being bootleg Elites in 3/ODST (I love 3, but the Brutes were a let down. Luckily this doesn’t really take away from the overall experience. It just makes them less distinct). I like the Grunts new armor.
For sprint I think it would be perfectly fine in campaign, and certain custom games. But for competitive play it just doesn’t work. It perplexes me how sprint is in Infinite with all the nerfs. It should make you fast, while keeping the nerfs like not being able to shoot or regenerate shields.
About sprint, I think infinite actually does it best, because it's not just a flat out speed boost. In infinite, sprint is a tool that allows you to use slide. The reason sprint in Halo 4/5 sucked ass is because of how it affected map design, and how it changed the combat from "whoever has the best aim wins" to "whoever stops sprinting first wins", which is why you can immediately shoot out of sprint
No halo infinite is about classic gameplay in classic maps that aren artificially stretched out to accommodate a fast sprint
The sprint there is good it’s a slight speed increase at the cost of popping up on the radar and allows you to slide. Buffing the speed would break the existing maps as they are aren’t made to accommodate everyone moving around at Mach 5.
Tho I will say sprint in halo infinite does feel like something that could be removed from the game along with the slide and nothing would really change.
The brutes were the worst in halo 2
Best game to ever grace this dreadful earth
shields were resistant to plasma grenades in every halo game except CE because CE had an EMP blast along with the explosion (similar to getting hit by a charged plasma pistol) that stripped shields. No other halo game had that unfortunately so plasma grenades were just sticky frags
Reach will always be my all time favourite halo game/ game, sucks people don't like it but to me I have so many fun memories with the game, although halo 3 was my first halo game I played, halo reach made me a halo fan
I loved halo reach. The reason I stopped playing reach on the MC collection was because I stopped playing halo in general. Halo reach in my opinion was amazing, I really loved the game. Had a lot of fun times in the campaign as well as multiplayer.
>be me 11yo going to midnight release in Blacktown, Sydney.
>getting home and playing the game for the next 2 days
>”wow, I can’t wait to find out where my team goes after Reach”
>my heart breaks with each death and at the end I cry after seeing my Spartans death.
Spartans don’t die, they just go MIA….
Lol btown braaaahhhhh watch ur pockets lad
They say they didn't want to make new halo games after CE but left the game on a cliffhanger instead of closing out the story 🤔
Time has been kind to halo reach because more older fans have moved away from gaming than younger fans resulting in a paradigm shift. Reach was VERY controversial when it came out due to gameplay changes that made it more similar to other game franchises coming out at the time. Same with Halo 4.
Halo 4 is hated. Reach overrated.
I’m pretty much a campaign only player. Reach has slowly but surely grown on me over time.
If reach didn’t have its forge it would have died on launch
i dont blame people who hate halo reach. i have reasons not to like it ethier.
I played the entire halo franchise start to finish in mid 2021 out of sheer boredom. (Was always a Sony kid) I liked single player but man the multiplayer for reach sucked ass compared to halo 3. Bloom, map design and spawns killed it for me. Halo 3 is the best multiplayer experience for halo.
Halo 3 is the best multiplayer no doubt, but Reach’s campaign was the best in the series and I’ll die on that hill
Still, it's better than most sony online experiences lol.
Thats how i feel too. Hate the mutiplayer love the campaign.
@@jonasa.3091 As a PlayStation player
Sony multiplayer experiences? Where?
Thank You! Nobody ever talked about vehicles being way too squishy outside of my friend circle
I feel like its mostly just the fans that have an ego and dont wanna imply that Spartans, or what they want to be, is anything short of a super hero avenger that cant die, and able to fight of hordes of enemies without breaking a sweat whom are equal too or stronger than them because otherwise that would not be stroking their ego. They want a power fantasy, not a dramatic story of struggle and sometimes pointless loss as real world war often is pointless loss, either because the enemy was far greater then we had anticipated as with george, thinking he died saving the world when all he did was anger a hornet nest. And kat, who simply died because an enemy got the drop on her.
It's funny, almost all the major gripes I rather enjoyed. The reticule bloom, the armour abilities (even armour lock-when it was patched to no longer give invulnerability to just added health), vehicle vulnerability lack of bleed through. I especially loved the campaign, the team members really felt distinct.
I also love the first 3 halo games, but master chief wasn't the highlight. It was the sandbox and 'world story'.
it puzzles me why people felt connected to most of Reach's characters. In comparison to ODST which was a masterclass in character development, Reach does a mostly bad job. Reach campaign also wasn't as much fun and I've played it likely more than a good 20 or more playthroughs. As pointed out Elites were buffed and as a result annoying half the time
Less people play ODST and dont like that it doesnt have Spartans. Characters were still much better even if ODSTs story isnt the best. Also the atmosphere is incredible, those Rookie sections at night are even more iconic that the Lone Wolf mission.
I would be fine with buffed enemies if they and you weren't so clunky and slow. I also dont really like Reach because it has idk how to explain it but it gives me Halo 4 and 5 vibes and I dont really like that
“People are so concerned about the canon. As if were the Catholic Church or something” 🤣🤣
I like people who really analyze stuff and take the time to explain their points , and you did exactly that ! however the only thing i don't agree with that you said here and also multiple times in your other videos , is "halo 4 is just call of duty " that's some pure bullshit . While its clear that 343 were desperate to steal the cod kids , and while the loadouts and kill streaks did definitely mess things up a little bit , the average gun fight in halo 4 still plays out the same as a normal halo game , the armor abilities are much shittier this time around which makes them more balanced and less of an issue and while the sandbox is very redundant , its not like halo 5 where you can laser people with assault rifles or shit , really the sandbox ( at least in the current updated version ) is mostly balanced , its just that the guns from the different factions feel the same
it has the gameplay but the way rounds start do not make it halo. It sounds like a purist statement but it is true we dont need loudouts in halo mp cause it contradicts what halo is known for which is a sandbox game.
The reason halo 4 is called the cod copy is because it does take some aspects of cod except the Aim down sights part. perks, killstreaks, loudouts. The problem is 343 halo lacked some uniqueness.
Halo 4 is more call of duty like than other halos but isn’t even close to call of duty also unironically loadouts as a option for regular games that you can pick in say a playlist is really fun
This guy right here yes this guy he has a brain.
13:55 We’ll you were Screwed from the start, Mint Blitz was right there LOL
Well as Halo fan and reader of many halo books, i really hate reach. It fucks over so much story and worldbuilding already established, it litteraly started to kill the franchise.
In the Books Spartans are described as almost nonhuman people with almost no visible emotions. they are even feared by most common soldiers, for their speed efficency and lack of human like behavior. Normal soldiers were also not able to distinguish one spartan from another because their armor was always the same. The Mjolnir armor was so good that there is no need for "customizing" it. the only other Suit in the fight against the covenants was the EVA suit for the Spartan III programm which was made for trained war orphans to serve as a disposable suicide mission stealth unit. No one "modded" their armor there is no need for "cool" edgy skulls scratched into your helmet.
then there was "HALO REACH" where spartans suddendly are super emotional teenagers that are super horny for fashion and color. Then the story in Halo reach was also super contradicting to the books. And the multiplayer sucked for me personaly, because of the Special abilities, they are just bloated nonsense that halo didnt need.
Only positive thing that REACH had was the collectors box, there was so much high quality fan service in that box its undiscribable, if you like halo and can get one of those do it. The game it self was trash.
SPI not EVA.
But other than that yeah.
@@ulty1472 ok i see :)
Halo reach no jode la historia ni la construcción de mundo, solo la complementar. Tampoco comenzó acabar con la franquicia.
Los libros están sobrevalorados, solo son fanfic glorificado y son basura. Todo los que dicen y muestran son ridiculeces y son exagerado, a los spartans solo los super héroes siendo casi unos cary stu. Son puro violencia, acción y core explícito, con mala escritura y pura fantasía.
Y no inventes cosa los spartans en halo reach no son cachondo ni adolescentes y nada de lo que dices.
"The games industry don't get Halo" These days I'd argue much of the games industry don't get games either
I've played and beat every halo to date and beat almost all on legendary and I love reach.
I think having no bleedthrough made perfect sense since in Reach the health bar was shown and you can now track it. Adding bleedthrough would confuse a newcomer and to them the shield was effectively your health. So they would naturally disregard their health and not pick-up health packs anymore because what would be the point if you will get killed if you had low shields anyway? Game design is interesting.
Overall, Reach is a great game, and even a great Halo game. You're 100% correct about the flaws in the core multiplayer mechanics, and I personally think that Reach has the weakest base MP gameplay of the Bungie Halo games besides maybe Combat Evolved.
That said, it has so many other things going for it that it balances out to be a really good game - forge, custom games, Firefight, theatre, Invasion and other Elite vs Spartan modes, Player Customisation etc are all great!
It just depends what you're looking for - if it's one of those things listed, like really fun custom games on forged maps, Reach is the best Halo. If however, you're looking for really balanced competitive PVP shooting, it might be the worst Bungie Halo game - as it needs half of its features disabled (bloom, armor abilities etc) to even be as viable and balanced as the Halo CE magnum-fest.
I personally still really like Reach, even the vanilla multiplayer (so long as DMRs aren't spawn weapons - seriously, it's basically a power-weapon!!) is fun for me when played casually, and I think Invasion and other Elite vs Spartan game modes had the potential to be the most fun in Halo's history!
I think people who 'hate Reach' just don't like the flaws in the base MP mechanics, which is fine - I'm not a huge fan myself. However, I also think they're unfairly ignoring all of the other great aspects of the game, many of which are being brought forward to Infinite and are being received positively... go figure...
This is a perfect summary dude!
Halo Reach is an example of the scientific principle of experimentation that you never change more than 1 controllable variable between experiments. So much was added, swapped, or overhauled that anything good was countered by something negative, and overall came out neutral, hence the average performance in sales and player count over time compared to other titles.
THANK YOU for mentioning the “gray” levels that plagued Reach’s MP. Everyone loves to praise forge world (which they should) but seem to forget that the byproduct of that meant almost 2/3 MP levels you play on were gray forge world maps!! That and the armor effects got soooo old really fast for me
Bitching bout the armor effects bet you woulda been rocking a flaming helmet in 3 if you had one
@@NobleVagabond2552 just my opinion - doesn’t mean I’m right
I dont think ive ever met anyone that didnt hold this game in high regards.
I do feel that the multiplayer was lacking in comparison to 3. But the campaign is absolutely the best. The art style, firefight, customization, and driveable forklifts are just perfection.
And the elites are terrifying jn this game. In a good way
I will note some things on your comment on the note of lore and canon. The first being that Halo has a far, far larger lore fanbase than most games and although yes, games should take precedent, canon should still be considered.
The second is that you heavily imply that because games take precedent over canon, people should not be offended at the fact that Halo Reach contradicted canon. As well as state that you are not. The issue I (and most lore fans) have with Halo Reach is not that it changes canon, it's that it makes many, many, COMPLETELY UNECICARY CHANGES that are severely damaging to existing lore that would have been trivially easy to avoid. Simply changing Noble Team to Spartan IIs would solve a ungodly amount of lore contradictions. Or if for some reason you desperately need them to be spartan IIIs (which there really was no reason to do) make them ALL Spartan IIIs and remove Halsey from the story. That would, again, be a VERY VERY easy thing to do and would negate a vast amount of lore problems.
There are so many TINY little details that would never be missed from the games story and add absolutely nothing, that they put in anyway to an effect so devastating to Halo Canon you can STILL feel the effects if it in books that come out today OVER 10 YEARS LATER. In fact, those small things make so unbelievably little sense in the lore, that most Halo Book material that comes out today prefers to ignore the fact that the game exists. I know almost no examples (Outside of Jun in New Blood) of anything from the GAME actually being talked about in halo books. Simply because it is so hard to navigate the lore surrounding it that most material prefers to avoid it.
The issue is not that the game Simply breaks lore to tell its story, it's that the game makes decisions highly detrimental to the expanded Halo Universe that would have been trivially easy to avoid and added absolutely nothing to the story of the game. Games SHOULD take precedent I agree, but games should not spit all over existing lore for no reason.
Ehh making them all IIs wouldnt work unless theyre rehabed washouts
I think where Reach really shined was it's custom games format. It was comparatively easy to build custom maps compared to 3. Matchmaking was a great way to have instant-action, but postgame you get to bring those that you matched with into custom games and play goofy minigames, custom Invasion maps, various infection scenarios or epic 8v8 CTF matches across all of Forge World.
Some of my favorite memories was being invited into Custom Games with recently played with gamers and seeing what they had made or found on the file share browser.
The biggest reason for me was noticing that it was incredibly difficult to win fights outnumbered in close quarters, whereas in previous titles I could get Exterminations on a regular basis. Why? Because Sprint exists, so the opposing team's instinct whenever they outnumbered one guy in close quarters was to immediately sprint forward, and each melee you once. It was incredibly difficult to counter, except with Armor Lock. If you tried to backpedal and shoot them or use grenades, it wouldn't work because they would reach you faster than you could kill them. If you tried to run, they get free shots on you.
In previous games, they couldn't move faster forwards than you could move backwards, so it was easy to kite and punish people who over-committed.
If you think sprint is the reason a game is bad you can’t except change in games
@@lemonke1709sometimes changes are bad
I was there at the beginning with Halo: CE on the original XBOX when I was eight in 2001. For some reason, not only did I not notice these issues with Reach, but Reach for a long time was my favorite in the series. In retrospect, it's right up there with CE for me.
Yeah, I was the same. I really liked CE, and 2 is easily one of my favourite games of all time - but contrary to seemingly everyone else on the planet, I can't stand 3's multiplayer outside of forge and custom games. Then, Reach rolls around and I love it just as much as Halo 2, and still do.
At least on Reach players had the 'option' whether or not to use sprint; it wasn't forced on the player.
It's never forced on you lol it's a button you don't have to press, sprint in reach is ass anyway
@@GrimViridian neither are guns by that logic. You don’t have to use the halo 2 battle rifle. You can just melee people instead of using a core mechanic the game was designed around....
Yeah also I think the gameplay was still fast enough without it. It’s the only way sprint can make sense in halo as a sort of speed boost
Joshua Howell no it’s literally the best sprint you are objectively wrong lol
Joshua Howell because halo 4 was built around sprint the movement speed of sprint is the same as halo 3 regular movement
gotta say what you say makes sense. never played much of halo multi or single and i am recently getting around to playing the campaigns with friends. The reach campaign was good imo but like you said the characters needed more time to develop before well you know. I alos noticed the increased health you mentioned after almost completing CE before heading into reach the health difference made the combat campaign wise way slower, and with that id say made you feel less of a supersoldier alongside it. Interesting video might look at some more
2 things
>armor lock
>making the Fall of Reach uncanon
For me, the biggest reason I can understand on whether or not a classic Halo fan likes Halo Reach mostly comes down to whether or not they could accept it was a spinoff or not. Obviously that's a bit of a generalization, but still, when looking at it, Reach is still mostly a Halo game. It has the general Halo feel. That said, it did undeniably go in more experiemental ways that at times breaks the flow of the game. But I feel experimentation and something that plays a little different is fine fo ra spinoff game to do. Halo Wars for example is a whole different genre even. In ODST, you don't even play as a Spartan. Like I said, I understand this is NOT all of what people have an issue with, but I do feel this is a large issue people have, even more so with Reach being the final Halo game we got. We didn't end it off with a mainline game that was pure Halo, we ended on a spinoff (the third spinoff in a row even) that tried to do things specifically different than a Halo game does. The lead Halo writer didn't even write for that game. ODST was his final game.
Halo Reach killed Halo.
Halo 4 is spelt funny here
@@unknownwill4th549 4 just continued what Reach started.
ogs know
Comprehensive review. Very fair, objective and intelligent viewpoints.
I'm an original CE & H2 player who was disappointed with H3.. I skipped Reach, H4 & H5.. Returned to Series X Infinite.
- Just trying to figure out how Halo fell from grace.. (coked out executives)
I never even noticed bloom in Reach until I started hearing people complain about it. 🤷♂️
Exactly but it's all the weird 20 and 30 year olds complaining about it tho don't worry there's still hope for reach "remember reach"
Bloom isn't a bad thing
Those same players tell me I should get good with my perfectly fine aim
Get good with the decreased accuracy then
@@CoolJamz887 "The weird 20 and 30 year olds complaining about it tho." Yeah, those same 20 and 30 year olds are the ones who have been playing since the early years. Halo was originally directed toward a adult fanbase. The weirdos are all the children like you who can't wrap their minds around other people having legitimate opinions about games that you so happen to blindly worship. You're such a buffoon bro, lmao.
@@CoolJamz887 Sorry you had yet to exist when CE released, lol.
Also, to the original comment, did you ever attempt to play competitively? Because if you had you would have noticed the bloom immediately.
It has sprint, anathema among the Halo fanboys. Also, it features a grimmer color palette and levels thata ren't empty/copy pasted. There.
Armor lock breaks the game so much, I understand why they added it to give players a uno reverse card for ramming vehicle, but on infantry only map its the worst. You trade DMR shots, loose your shield, enemy locks, his friend come along and takes you out.
It really doesn’t tho and also DMR is a pain to deal with tbh it’s part of the trashy precision meta where battle rifles DMRs and to a lesser extent covenant carbines even tho the later is my absolute favourite gun in halo. Make automatic weapons completely worthless because precision weapons out DPS them up close which is just not how it should work
@@deleteduser3455 I pray infinite doesn't allow this boring repetitive precision meta to take foot again
The ideal halo multilayer is where precision auto power weapons all beat each other
Like what the heck in halo 3 I still get killed easily despite using a sniper against some guy who snipes me with a boring br
It's very strange. When it first came out, I did not like it's multiplayer very much, I had been playing Halo since 2003 and it just didn't feel very good to me. After they patched a few things it got better, but I never really loved the game.
Then it came out on PC with MCC in 2019. Except this time around, I FREAKING LOVE THIS GAME. I don't know what happened, but I appreciate the game so much more now than I did in 2010. I never thought I would say this, but I actually like the multiplayer better than Halo 2. It's still not as good as Halo 3, but it's really good.
I had never heard, known, or even cared that some didn’t like reach. I personally loved this game. The thousand plus hours I played I enjoyed deeply. Got every achievement. Earned everything in multiplayer through grinding and loved my armor effect.
Low-key my least favorite halo can’t lie…I still love it for what it is and the memories though.
This guy gets it. Reach, for me, didn’t capture the magic H3 did. It had some great elements, but the overall package fell short.
i played the crap out of this game during my parents divorce, soooo many hours on swat, infected, grifball credit farming, invasion, i was so obsessed with getting gungnir and inclement weather that i literally played for 24 hours straight during the summers... heck i would skip school just to play this game. this game will always be in my heart.
don't skip school. convince your principle to play video games at school
Personally, I absolutely love Halo: Reach, I think it is the absolute best game in the Halo Series
Halo 3 is absolutely the best game in the halo series that being said halo reach is second best imo tho I haven’t played much of 2
Definitely had the best campaign mechanics, I can understand people’s frustration with multiplayer though
Halo reach had by far the best mp gameplay out of all of them.
Also CS does have random spread. In fact, no gun in CS is 100% accurate. Inaccuracy in CS builds as your spray and then has a reset time. CS1.6 also had a dynamic crosshair.
I'm sure theres a lot of different opinions on this game but I think we can all appreciate what bungie did with reach as their last halo game. Custom armor, firefight, and forge were all huge improvements that made the halo series more unique and custom :)
Finally a good comment
I mean sure but Firefight and Forge weren't started in Reach...
Uhh you ever see Halo 3 forge?
Still a net negative on the franchise. Not sure how I can appreciate that.
On a side note, custom games actually died in the first few months of the game because of how the maps and game types worked. It didn’t return to much later after people understood the system. Competitive just flat out died in the first month. The only mode i tried to play competitively was SWAT. Reach was by far the easiest multiplayer halo i ever played. All the changes eventually ruined the enjoyment of the sandbox. It’s basically pointless to use vehicles when the sniper rifle or DMR could basically destroy it before it could make a difference. Reach also split the community into pieces. That fallout is one of the other reasons i no longer like reach.
Do you know how the vehicle health is treated from game to game? I'm trying to get a better understanding of how the player's health affects the vehicle's health (seems like they are separate in Halo: Reach).
In halo 2 and 3, the vehicle wouldnt get destroyed normally without the player inside dying first. It's a bit frustrating in reach cause if your vehicle is almost destroyed, you'll still die from it blowing when you still have plenty of health.
Reach was bad. Not going to go crazy and say any 343 game is better, but Reach isn't good.
I'll at least lay out the positives first
>Forge
Easily Reach's best feature. It was the best map maker for a console shooter and only got outdone by Halo 5's. Granted no one realized that version of Forge existed. Problem is that the only worthwhile forge space was Forge World so every map became a homogenized mess of Green and Gray. Why one of the DLC maps wasn't a new forge space, I'll never know.
>Custom Games
Some of the most varied options in game types for a multiplayer game. Easy to navigate and set up with plenty of unique options never seen again. Definitely helped the game's longevity.
>Art Direction/Cinematography
Honeslty it's the best Halo's ever looked. UNSC looks gritty but stylistic enough to not get too muddy and the Covenant looks nearly at its best with a few failures like the Brutes.
>Music
No shit it's good. It's Marty's work. Doesn't reach ODST levels of eargasm but it gets close
>Campaign Gameplay
Easily the most consistent Campaign experiences in Halo. Not a single dud level thanks to its focus on the Covenant and lack of flood. However it also has no true highlight levels that stand out. It ends up getting stale far quicker as a result.
Now for the bad
>Multiplayer
I don't know how but Bungie made a halo game that is slower and more methodical than Halo 3 despite adding a sprint feature. The armor abilities all halt combat by either creating short instances of invulnerability or short instances of escape. The reticle bloom once again slows the pace of combat. The game's focus on long range combat also turns matches into boring pop and shot scuffles between campers.
>Weapons
Easily Halo's worst arsenal. Instead of utilizing fun and effective staples to the halo sandbox bungie decided they wanted more creative concepts and none of them work. The needle rifle, focus rifle, grenade launch, plasma repeater, and plasma launcher are all terrible weapons and make one long for the Beam rifle and Carbine.
>Maps
The reuse of campaign spaces in unforgivable. It not only cheapens the Multiplayer experience and it cheapens the campaign. The spaces themselves are lack luster and no where near fun to fight in as previous games. The only fun maps came from Forge World and even then constantly fighting on halo got boring within minutes.
>Campaign Narrative
Personally its just as bad as anything 343 has written. Forced emotional trama with characters that aren't developed enough to even care about. The game doesn't have a main objective until the second to last mission and even then its to sloppily tie the game with the original trilogy. The game can't even succeed at telling a story of abject failure because Noble team sees more successes than losses in game.
The halo reach story is dogshit. The novel is so much better.
Reach's story is decent, in my opinion, but I agree that the novel was way better.
It's ironic really... Bungie was done with halo and had no real interest in continuing it and wanted out but there games had good reception.Meanwhile people hate 343 who arguably has people who wants to make these games in the company.....There games had bad or mixed reception wether the game is actually good or not.
Reach is personally my favorite halo game. By far the best campaign out of all the Halo games
Best comment ever
Hi, just to say that I love your content and I mostly agree with you. It's too that people only read the title before dropping a dislike.
The best halo game. I don’t care what the sweat lords say
Years late but... Most of the things that people dont like about post Bungie Halo... got started with Reach.
Regarding the story I was pretty disappointed at the time because it retconned a lot of the book. However my biggest disappointment was the loadouts/armor abilities. I liked that bungie experimented, but ultimately it fell short for me, and I considered it the worst halo game at the time.
i just now realized that regret chants the halo theme on that hologram thing in halo 2... lol