The rebirth of Halo?

 

Come to me but a handful of years back and ask me what I think about the current state of Halo and I would stare you blank in the face until you just assume that I died and left the room- but since then I've availed myself of the entire Halo saga short of Infinite- simply because Infinite wouldn't load on my computer for some reason- otherwise I've played them all. And to be honest with you, even lacking the multiplayer experience for these games which are half known for their online community, I can taste the downfall of quality. Genuinely. Those first few games hold up incredibly, I still get the itch to go through Combat Evolved to Reach every now and then- but from the very moment that 343 took the reigns- the games started to stink. And remember- I went in thinking that 343's first game was Guardians- I hated 4 before finding out they worked on it! That ain't bias, that's straight game, baby!

The truth is that ever since Bungie left Halo the franchise has been on a downward trajectory that has coincided rather roughly with the collapse of Microsoft as a super power in the video game space. Super sad, all round. Oh, and now Bungie is currently being fed through a wood chipper by their new Sony bosses- with Marathon as their only saving grace providing it is a slam dunk mega hit... which it actually might be because that Studio is a generally trustworthy sort that can slap together a decent title even when they're on the backfoot. (You know, providing that Sony left enough remaining staff after the layoffs.) Which is to say, there ain't no 'call back the parents' to try and breathe life into Halo once more. Heck, a decent chunk of 343 were Bungie staff branching out to dedicate themselves to the Green man. Didn't turn out too well.

Halo Infinite is where the ball was supremely dropped, however. After game after game of disappointment, usually followed by some sort of broken promise around post launch support (Not that anyone was crying about the lethargy inducing Spartan Ops being quietly downsized)- they decided to put all their eggs into a Live Service focused Halo entry... and then forgot the live part. Seriously, Infinite's Support was glacial ontop of being underwhelming, and it resulted in a confused audience that very much wanted to engage with the solid foundation provided- but with precious few avenues through which to do so. They led with gregarious predictions of years worth of support, earning the name infinite- only to peter out within a few months and drag themselves the rest of way to achieve the bare base requirements to make a complete Halo product. Again, big shame.

And in the face of something like that, knowing that Halo is no longer really worthy of being called Xbox's flagship: honestly, I'd want to change my name too. Then leave the country and take up a new profession serving sweet treats in a mall, before my ever-present self-destructive thirst for excitement wrapped in a veneer of false-greed calls me to a series of petty heists that end up getting my back on the radar of those I was trying to escape from all this time... what was I talking about? Oh right, so 343 literally changed their name to 'Halo Studios'. And it makes sense- there hasn't been a single good Halo game with 343 printed on the box art. I think. (Did 343 manage to get their name on Creative Assembly's Halo Wars 2? I can't confirm.)

Still- that's a little cyncial- wouldn't you say? "New name, new me"? As if! Still, it's heralding a slight change in leadership and a capitulation to the gait of the industry in that Infinite's heavy investment custom made engine (which won't run on my bloody computer) has been scrapped in favour of the single most over pivoted-to engine in Gaming right now. That's right, Halo 6 is going to Unreal Engine! Of course it is- have you seen how many rendering triangles that thing can fit onto a single screen? Witchcraft I say! Automatic LOD? Sign me the heck up! And I'm sure Master Chief will look all nice and pretty with the cutesy new ray tracing bouncing majestically of his dome visor as realities slowest Sci-Fi plot lurches forward another few inches before flopping down and hibernating for the decade. That seems to be the 343 MO, afterall. 

But the game looks so pretty now, doesn't it? I mean- from the sweeping vistas they showed off... well, rock formations and... Combat Evolved locations? They look good, I guess... is this a remake? Nah- there was one Flood locale they showed off- this is new stuff... why does it look so retro then? Is it Chief's Armour? I think it's the armour. regardless- the question is whether or not 'making the game look good' is the end goal of this change up- because there are so many more questions when it comes to what would make a good modern Halo game. What kind of interesting sceanrios can you cook up, how can you make the conflict with the Covenant still feel fresh, will this be the first time in the past 10 years the core narrative takes a significant step in a direction without walking it back? Can we please never see the Prometheans again, pretty please- that faction and all their weapons suck.

In all seriousness- It is nice to see there be some sort of recognition from the former 343 that something has got to give, and making some sort of effort to detail out a then and a now indicates awareness and planning that is, sadly, uncommon admits spiralling game developers. That might because they no longer have an auto-sell evergreen franchise on their hands anymore, they might not even have a Microsoft exclusivity deal anymore if things are going the way they seem to be- Halo Studios may no longer be the face of Xbox- which means these games need to stand on their own merit and to achieve that is going to take some effort. And giving off the bulk of the bitch-work to Unreal Engine whilst you focus on the actual designing- that's a sensible place to start.

Do you trust Microsoft and it's four flop mutli-failure studio?

 How far does the 'benefit of the doubt' stretch?

I actually lack the years of hard won love that a lot of the gaming world has for Bungie's stint on Halo. I may have played all of the games, but years after their first run when Bungie were already long on my 'do not forgive' list for their conduct when marketing Destiny content. (Twice.) Thus I can honestly say that it was purely on the merit of the sheer quality of the products themselves that I came to find 343 as questionable custodians of the legendary shooter franchise. It's not that I don't think they care, I just don't think they've ever had the right team to pull off a successor to Halo like they've been shooting for all this time. To many it seems like the decision makers behind the franchise don't even understand what it was that made Halo special in the first place, and offer ideas entirely contrary to what the audience vie for. And it is a heartbreaking game of tug and war that fans and developer seem destined to be stuck between for the rest of their collective lives.

Not that it is a simple thing to pick up where Bungie left off for their legendary franchise which was once so massive that it frontlined Xbox sales and branding; but one would think that at some point, with about 10 years on the job, the people at 343 would stumble upon something of a winning formula accidentally at the very least! But alas, you end up getting Halo 4, which had some great individual mission ideas that were ruined by the genuinely badly physically and visually designed new faction, Halo 5 which is said to have a legendarily bad storyline, Master Chief Collection which launched in the sorriest state possible and now 'Halo: Infinite'; so named because it was meant to herald the next 10 years of Halo, only to end up losing so much momentum, goodwill and potential that the team have reportedly quietly scrapped all of it's dreamt-of additions in favour of a brand new Halo game built in an entirely different engine.

Now because I absolute despise the several years of gaslighting that we were subjected to by Bungie after the Destiny 'Ten Year plan' debacle, let me be absolutely clear: Halo Infinite was called the start of the next ten years of Halo. The way it was built, with a focus on open world play that shunned constrained linear experiences, was in order to facilitate the next steps of the Master Chief story as integrated chunks of the single player narrative; maybe even expansions on top of that base product. Just as the Master Chief collection is a platform that collects the first 10 years of the Halo journey, Infinite was supposed to fill that gap for a new ten, and any shift on that model marks a distinct change in circumstance whether the team and Microsoft are willing to admit that or not. And a shift in circumstance that no internal party is willing to share or talk about does not typically engender happy and fruitful behind-the-scenes discussions.

This is worth bringing up because along with these unconfirmed reports of a new Halo game in the works, 343 just faced a cataclysmic rock of layoffs that took out much of the development force behind Infinite and even some of the executives. Although the real important people just moved from one position to another and people are want to do in high-importance positions. All of Microsoft was hit with these layoffs, of course, but the way that some reporters were discussing 343's casualties made it almost sound like the big M had a vendetta against 343 specifically as an underperforming studio tucked under their corporate wing. Thus it rings slightly odd when Microsoft spokespeople come out to then confirm that not only is Halo alive and healthy, but that it is going to continue on under the purview of 343 entirely unabated by the massacre which just occurred at that studio. It stinks of something rotten and aquatic. Perhaps the fishy remains of a deep untruth.

Some have already taken it upon themselves to read between the lines and question how healthy a franchise actually is if it's caretaker needs to publicly declare how not dead it is. I know there's an art of feeling the public pulse and responding to a feeling before it turns into an unfounded 'fact'; but even having to make that sort of fundamental assurance belies the state of a franchise that absolutely does not speak for itself. And does the current outward facing look of the Halo franchise seem healthy? Well it depends. On one hand Infinite's Forge mode is said to be the best the franchise has ever enjoyed and that has alone boosted the game's player count and the franchise just crossed over to television with it's own TV show last year. On the otherhand the actual singleplayer content of Infinite is said to be dead in the water and the Halo show was largely panned by critical fans and pundits. But none of that implies Halo is dead per se.

But what it does say to me at least is that Halo is missing the oomph that it once had. Which is kind of a basic statement when you think about it. Of course Halo doesn't have the brand appeal of the olden days, one merely needs to look at Xbox's modern, largely Master Chief free, branding to see that. But does that mean Halo is doomed to slowly become more and more irrelevant as 343 is slowly stripped of more personnel and resources for each failure they make? Because I can tell you one thing for free- they're not going to get better at making Halo with less people to actually sit down and make the game, now are they? If you ask me, and no one did; what Halo needs is fresh blood. And I'm not talking about new faces joining 343, I'm talking about new directions for the franchise.

Remember Halo Wars? The lauded RTS game which moved Halo away from Master Chief in order to expand upon the wider war with great gameplay and fresh characters and at least one race-bending cast member? Why doesn't Halo do more of that? Blow out the universe of Halo so it moves past the green giant and explores totally distinct genres to get ahold of more people, similar to what the 'Vampire: The Masquerade' franchise is currently doing with it's shotgun approach to games. Why can't there be a survival horror Halo game about being alone in a world besieged by Flood? Or a character driven narrative adventure following a single isolated contingent of the Sangheili rebels in the wake of Halo 2, trying to come to terms with being cut off from the Covenant that they were raised under and eventually coming around to siding with their former sworn enemies at the UNSC?

Halo as it stands is riding on the top of a small bump of a hill heading towards a dire plunge into unknown territory and it's not hard for the casual fan to imagine things will only become worse from here. Say what they will, 343 did not appear to be up to the task of keeping Halo relevant back before they lost 95 jobs, I can't see that changing anymore now. If Microsoft really do care about this franchise like they keep insisting that they do, then it's time for them to really dedicate some effort into proving that assertion. All of these new studios now under Microsoft's purview and not one of them could make a single small companion title to the Halo franchise as a small experimental project at the least? I call bull on that and I call bull on Microsoft sitting atop the burning rubble of an entire department of 343, sipping a brew made from the ground-down bones of all those they sacked and assuring just themselves that "This is fine."

Is #fire343 an overreaction?

 The climate is changing

I have had my eyes on the turning and changing world of video games for a very long time now, ever since I started noticing some of my favourite franchises not improving from entry to entry, but slowly getting worse, and wondering why that might be. I still remember when I first encountered the concept of a Season Pass and wondering what that was (for me it was in Bioshock Infinite) and of excessive DLC, soon to be coined 'Microtransactions', during the rise of Modern Warfare 3. I don't just remember how I felt in that time, I remember scouring the public sentiment to try and figure out what these terms were and how other people felt about them, to disseminate how much of a concern these issues should be to me, or if this is just how thing have always been. Hindsight of course informs me that videogame fans have been more permissive than they should have been in the past, but even in their most vitriolic and upset I can't say if I ever seen as visceral a fan backlash as the 'Fire343' Hashtag.

When first I heard of this, my gut reaction was very similar to what I've heard a lot of mediators voice; "That seems a bit harsh, doesn't it?" I saw one post in particular who quoted this as a typical case of 'taking things too far' and reiterating that 'firing 343 won't help Halo Infinite'. But then I got to really assessing this movement and considering whether this is just a wild flare up that had sporadically caught on. I mean, no doubt this is a small fire started by one individual that caught on when others saw it; there's no way that everyone had the same 'burn the forest down' plan when it came to handling 343 at the same moment. But extreme actions don't pick up fuel for the sake of them. Usually it's the extreme takes that shake the level-headed out of the lurch and make them go "Yeah I'm pissed, but I'm not that pissed." Somehow this hashtag managed to cross that sense barrier and hit the nerve of the general public. I don't think people are blowing their emotions out of proportion, I think they're finally voicing what they've been feeling for a while. But why do they feel this way?

Well, as I discussed previously, 343 were handed a franchise that was red hot when Bungie left it behind. It's hard to quite picture now, especially for someone who wasn't a Halo fan back in the day, but when I think back I do remember Halo as one of those games that everyone had. Right next to Red Dead Redemption and the GTAs; Halo was just a staple of the gaming consciousness. I even hear some people claim its fame was to the point where even non-gamers had heard of it, but I can't confirm that from personal anecdotes. Still, I wouldn't be surprised. Halo was bigger than big- it was positively massive; and what has become of all that? In the years Halo seems to have shrunk into a, still big, but not outgoing cult game. Halo fans still flock to the franchise, but they're rarely crossing the hands of new players. I wonder how many younger gamers even know who Master Chief is, whereas that would be a ridiculous thought to have in the early 2010's. And some believe 343 is responsible for that drop-off.

Because, well they sort of are responsible! Bad release after bad release that fans don't want to shill for has led to a community shrivelling up and a fanbase not growing like it used to. Halo hasn't totally vanished into the ether or anything, it's still a big title; but nowadays it's not even in the same league as Call of Duty; whereas once it was a genuine contender. The failures of 343 were long and well documented up until the release of Halo Infinite, after which people just hit their boiling point. Maybe it was indignation of having waited upwards of 5 years for a game that launched feeling incomplete in one of it's most core pillars, the multiplayer. Maybe it was the gall of inciting and recycling Bungie's infamous 'Ten year journey' speech in reference to a live service that hasn't managed to impress for a single year. Maybe it's the abrupt cancellation of co-op despite making implicit promises that it would be coming, and the apparent simplicity of such a feature feeling so galling. Maybe it's a little bit of everything, but fans have had enough.

It is a little gauche, to go around calling for someone's blood, or indeed, their job; but I understand the desperate anger of aggrieved fans.  Bare in mind that this isn't just the kneejerk kick off after one failed project that didn't live up to what fans wanted; this is a decade of falling short of promises. A decade of bad decisions, bad direction, bad narratives and bad performances from a game company that is devoted solely to making Halo games. It's kind of galling that it's taken fans this long to turn around and question whether 343 deserve to still be on the job. As many people have pointed out; normal people don't get ten year's worth of leeway under the impression that they have to get it right eventually. Normal people get fired.

The most common sense refute of this has been what I mentioned earlier; the argument that Halo Infinite won't be saved by firing it's developers. But the rebuttal comes just as easily; there is no saving Halo Infinite. 343 have rotated through countless staff, including key personnel, and every iteration of the company over the past ten years has kept one thing common to it; being woefully underprepared for the projects they embark on. Whether that was rebooting the franchise, Halo 5 or trying to turn Infinite into a Live Service; every step along the way has seen a falter and slip up to the point where it's obvious that something fundamental isn't working. This isn't a case of "Oh, they just need a few more years to get used to the franchise" nor is it "Just a bit of reworking will really put the team back on track." This is, "tear out the infrastructure, open up the brand to other developers because we need some new blood up in here!"

The straw that broke the communities back was the moment where one of the 343 team shared the team's renewed focus in extolling the competitive nature of Halo's Multiplayer, like the franchise has always championed. Only, no. The fans, former Bungie devs and anyone with a history in Halo had to scratch their heads at that one, because Halo was designed as a 'party game' to be enjoyed between friends of differing skill levels and experiences in a fun enabling environment before anything else, competitive play was never it's sole heart. It just speaks to an inherent and systemic dissonance between what fans who love Halo think the franchise represents, and what it's current caretakers want to create for it; which is a recipe for friction and disaster as the last decade has proved extensively and repeatedly.  If they don't even know what the franchise they're working on is; how can we trust them to keep it healthy and alive?

Microsoft and 343 are doing their best to roundly ignore this, probably somewhat hurtful, rise of dissent in their consumer base in the hopes that cooler minds will prevail and everyone will forget what they were angry about. And honestly, they probably will. People move on quickly like that. But after people forget, the core issue doesn't get magically solved; and people are just going to get more disillusioned by the game franchise that they used to love the next time it messes up. This is a call to Microsoft to take action to protect a franchise that they themselves supposedly consider the heart of Xbox, and if they're not willing to do it then maybe Halo doesn't deserve it's forever prominent place on all Microsoft marketing for the example and expectation that it sets. Is firing 343 the way to start changing that? I don't know, but letting the public know they recognise the problem would at least be a solid start.

What is up with 343 Industries?

 Wasted potential, mostly.

For many successful and excitement-filled years, Bungie were the custodians of Xbox's most recognisable flagship series; that of Halo. Such was their relationship that one could look as Bungie as just the game development arm of Microsoft proper, an appendage to the Xbox body, a hand guided by the Bill Gates brain. (And funded. Is that how hands work?) But their love affair could only ever last so long, and like two sweethearts leaving for different colleges, Bungie one day had to depart from Xbox and the baby they sired and nurtured together; young Halo, now coming into his teens and frighteningly promising. They had a new future with Destiny, and that's a whole can of worms I don't have the mental fortitude to open right now. But Bungie did not leave Halo rudderless. No. Instead they peeled off a piece of themselves, a contingent of faithful's that would bear the name of the Guilty Spark and adopt the role of 'Halo Custodian'. With their fanatic passion Halo would be on the verge of new horizons that the fans could only dream of; it would be the dawn of a new, golden age. And what the heck happened to that dream, eh?

I dramatized. Obviously. It's what I do, I'm a drama queen. But the basic facts are very much true. Bungie went their own way after the release of Halo Reach and 343 Industries was formed in order to fill that void; however I think that was more a move from Microsoft than Bungie. I can't even say how many of Bungie's staff remained with 343, if any; which is significant when it comes to answering the question: What in the heck happened to Halo? Because something absolutely happened to turn it from what it was, a powerhouse industry contender that helped shape the face of First Person shooting for it's time, to what it is today, a straggler in the pack trying and failing to imitate that which makes the other players of the industry filthy amounts of money and respect. But to hone in on where 343 today I want to take some short steps on the journey; starting with Halo 4.

Halo 4 had a lot to live up to in being the first Halo without Bungie, picking up on a story that was left largely completed with Master Chief floating through space after having defeated the Covenant and destroyed a threat to all life in the galaxy, and developing for a gaming industry that had moved on quite some way. And what did 343 do? Their best... for what little that's worth. Two years after the subtle story of a planet falling to ruin in 'Reach', 343 resurrected Master Chief and tried to erect a brand new narrative starring him that shifted the story away from an action-focused struggle of all humanity against a threat that totally overwhelmed them, to a wholly new, tonally distinct, story about the Chief being the latest in a long line of possible Space Jesus' who has been genetically orchestrated to kill this one big ugly super villain guy whom he eventually defeats by, and I'm not kidding here, punching him in the face and sticking a grenade on him. The entire human race was specifically orchestrated over millennia to birth both a man and the technology to arm that man, so that he could place a grenade on some dude. All in all, there was an attempt to evolve the story, at least.

But at the same time as that scathingly bad narrative set-up, 343 did try something very interesting and new, not just for Halo but for gaming at that time altogether. They tried to set up a live service! I'm not kidding, all the way back in 2012 343 were on that train! I guess some of Bungie rubbed off on the guys! Their idea was pretty cool too, an extra mode called 'Spartan Ops' where you played multiplayer co-op levels with your friends across a series of maps. Each map was predated with a hefty 10 minute cutscene and the needle of the plot slowly moved forward as you completed actions and objectives. And the 'Live' aspect came from the fact that the team would keep adding new levels and expanding the story all the way up until the release of Halo 5 Guardians. The only problem? The levels were trash! Yeah, it's not like you were playing levels that aped the quality of the main campaign, obviously not that would take too much time to develop; but these levels were literally just big arenas with endless waves of enemies attacking you at every objective. There was no nuance, no creativity and no reason to come back to this content week after week. 343 overpromised what the production rate of their studio was and ended up having to rush out low quality content just to meet their own deadlines. Sound familiar?

'Halo 5: Guardians' had none of those machinations as far as I can tell. And that's because the team learnt quickly about their limitations from Halo 4 Spartan Ops. And the fact that Halo 5 didn't need any help being bad. I'm slightly talking out of my arse here as, still, the MCC has not received a Halo 5 update and thus I haven't played the thing; but I did follow the game closely when it first launched; I remember the fan vitriol. I remember them bringing back the god-awful Prometheans and turning them into recurring boss fights. (which I now know to be more boss fights than Halo has ever had in the past.) I know the story was apparently a long process of spinning wheels with characters who don't matter as 343 tried to stretch the one plot point they had over the course of a whole game, and I remember there being some contention about how the multiplayer mode was handling customisation. My account my be sporadic and lacking detail, but by-and-large those are the failures 343 made with Halo 5.

And now we come to Infinite. Halo Infinite has received oodles of praise for its single player which proved to be 343's best yet. (You know, after they exorcized all the story elements and new faction enemies they added and returned to Bungie's framework franchise from 2010.) Infinite is said to have not taken any real risks with it's main story, and been somewhat lacking in terms of significant narrative progression; but the game is fun to screw about in and that's saying something after their last two outings. So where do the issues come in? Well it seems that 343 grew a little too big for the britches again when it came to providing for the other key pillar of Halo; the multiplayer. I'm not a big multiplayer guy so hearing all of these tribulations and discussions was essentially like overhearing your parent's arguing from the front porch. You don't know what it's about and you sort of don't want to. But eventually you'll find out that Halo just isn't what it once was for a lot of people, and is trying to be something more despite that.

Live service! It always comes back to live services for this team, doesn't it? This time they're much less 'ahead of the ball' however, but just as unprepared for the commitments of this style of content delivery. The base multiplayer package suffered from considerable progression problems that made 'challenges' the sole way to improve your rank instead of just playing the game how you wanted. And since then 343 have meandered at a snail's pace to try and update that multiplayer mode with such things as: a free-for-all mode trickled in bizarre placed production value in it's introduction belying a much more grandiose release of this content that had to be scaled back as their deadlines started rushing them. Several months are going by with absolutely no content at all; and players are falling off into MCC or just off Halo entirely as attention is siphoned off to much more regularly maintained competition. Which is everywhere, by the way. Halo may not be rudderless, but it's sure feeling like 343 is.

So what is going on with 343 I ask? Mismanagement and overpromising that has led to disappointment after disappointment. They have a nose for ambition shoved far further than their grasp for achievement and it's hurting consumer trust every time they reach short of implied potential. And it has gotten to a point where fans are growing sick of them and their failures. Halo has only shrunk in prestige since they've taken the helm, and though the name is loud enough to score a bad TV adaptation, it's not enough to earn a serious place in the 'actively played games' list anymore. Perhaps 343 was never truly up to the job of handling such a large franchise, and expecting otherwise was unrealistic of Microsoft, them, and us. But does that mean it's time for them to reassess their talents and direction, or time to make a change altogether? That, we will soon find out. 

Halo 4: Review

 Promise me you'll figure out which one of us is the machine.

And so do we reach the end of our long journey into the depths of Halo gaming; at least until 343 manage to squirrel off enough free time to start porting 'Halo 5: Guardians.' And by that time I'll probably have run out of excuses not to just go ahead and play 'Halo Infinite' and after that I might just be up to date with the franchise! Wow have I come a long way. In the space of around seventeen days I've played through the entire Halo series and become very intimate with Master Chief's journey, his triumphs, his near failures and now, finally, I've touched on his dark period. Or rather, Halo as a whole's dark period. I'll be honest; I knew going into this that there was considerable general disdain towards Halo 5 and so part of me was glad the games in this Master Chief Collection wouldn't stretch that far just yet. What I didn't know, but would soon find out first hand, is that many of those issues stemmed from the very first Halo to be manned solely by 343 Industries; Halo 4. As such, I want in with high hopes for a fresh take on the series; and what I got was definitely fresh... from a certain point of view.

I like to try and form my own opinions when I come across a game, which is why I can look past things like the ingrained general dislike towards Death Stranding to find a genuinely special experience that I resonated with there, or through the unconditional love for the original Halo games to conclude that Halo 3 didn't quite live up to it's direct predecessor in my opinion. I intentionally avoided reading opinions and pieces about Halo 4 and assumed it was just going to be a more modern take on the franchise that would push things one step further than Reach did, given that this was a newer game. So in that sense I hope you can understand that what you're seeing here actually is my own opinion and not words implanted in my mouth from diehards of the franchise. I'm not a diehard, I'm hardly 3 weeks into my own discovery of these games. Take that to heart as you read through my review, and bare in mind I won't hold back on spoilers because they are important to discussing a lot of my feelings on this entry in particular, and jump to the summary if you don't want details but still wish to know my overall take on the game and grade.

Gameplay

The clear and obvious pursuit of 'modernisation' lies at the heart of many of the design decisions that went into Halo 4, and whilst they may have been criticised over the years as 'attempts to copy Call of Duty', I think a desire to be as accessible-as-the-competitor-shooters was the real driving intention here. For one, this is a game that smothers you in waypoints the way any other shooter would, distinctly different to the way that Halo has, up until now, been a series with notably few waypoints which instead relied on it's general level design to point you where to go unless the objective is really out of the way. (Which has lead to the occasional moment of being utterly lost on some more sprawling levels in the past.) Also new are 'gameplay cinematics' in which something special will happen when you press a Quick Time Event button. There aren't too many of these in Halo 4, but in the places they do appear, it's just as lacking in impact as this practise has often been criticised for. (The final boss is three QTE's away from death; talk about anti-climatic) And then there is the sprinting.

Fans of the Halo games will tear each other's throats out over opinions regarding whether sprinting should be in the series; or rather whether it should be as accessible as it is here. In Halo Reach you could pick up a sprinting power-up, but that would lock you off from the other potential powerups the game had to offer, making it a toss up. And that implementation sort of made sense when you consider the fact that you're piloting a heavy Spartan suit of armour, the light-jog movement of typical Halo play conveys a little bit of that weight. In Halo 4 you can just sprint, whenever you want and with whatever other powerup you want, and I'm fine with it. It brings the movement suite of this FPS in line with other modern FPS', and whilst there is the matter of narrative inconsistencies it's mere presence raises, I don't think it ruins the feeling of the game at all. If anything it added an extra movement tool for dealing with more deadly enemies such as Hunters. Others may disagree that the franchise was free without running, but I don't think the spirit of the series was disgraced in anyway. Topic resolved? Good, let's move onto the weapons.

Halo 4 introduced a whole suite of new weapons, including reworks to all the existing ones, but it's here where some of my problems start. First of all, there's a big continuity error in that these new models of USMC guns appear in the first level despite that mission being set in The Forward Unto Dawn ship-half which has been floating abandoned in space for the past four years; it shouldn't have these new models stocked. Secondly, 343 went out and recorded real gun sounds to try and change up the suite of weapon noises in the game, and in doing so made every single gun sound weaker. Let this be a lesson that realism doesn't equal quality; because so many weapons have had their 'punch' totally yanked out of the all-important sound design that it feels a bit criminal, too many classic weapons flounder whilst lacking that all important satisfaction factor. (There's nothing wrong with sprucing up sounds in the editing bay, come on guys!) At least the new SAW sounds good and the shotgun actually works as something worth a damn again. I haven't liked the shotgun this much since 'Combat Evolved'.

And now we come to the elephant in the room, the one thing we have to talk about when mentioning Halo 4's gameplay; the enemies. The Covenant return, for a reason hardly even mentioned in the entire main campaign, which is welcome even if they didn't bring their Brutes. This Covenant are lighter dressed than the old guard, which might explain why they're generally so much easier to take down, and the Sniper Jackals now sport a helpful red glow to their rangefinders so you can spot them when they're bearing down on you. Grunts still can't survive a headshot (Reach's Grunts are laughing somewhere) and Elites felt much rarer and didn't appear to ever show up in groups like they once did. But the Covenant are such a diverse and fun enemy, it's never not-fun to go up against them, so even when they're not exactly at their toughest I still like stomping their face in. Oh, and their new guns are alright additions, nothing crazy. (I much prefer the new Human gun; the SAW.) But those aren't the enemies we need to talk about. No, it's the Prometheans.

A brand new race added to the lore for this game, or rather an expansion upon the Forerunner guardians that 343 liked to deploy in the original trilogy; the Prometheans are a synthetic race with their own new design and arsenal of weapons, taking on the 'third species' slot from the, presumably-now-extinct, Flood. They are awful. In every way. Their visual design sports this shard-like cobbled together look that is indictive of other 'vaguely advanced alien races' in fiction, and it doesn't look good. It makes shape edges indistinct and ensures that enemies, weapons and the environment (all of which sport this design theme to some degree) meld into one gloop. Their 'white with glowing orange' colour scheme doesn't excite the palette of the game at all, and each level sporting their architecture made me want to fall to sleep just from looking at the uniform chaos of their form. But it gets worse.

The enemies themselves are a nightmare and nowhere near as fun to fight as the Covenant, or even Halo 3's Flood. (I consider Halo 3's Flood the most frustrating out of their iterations. CE's were my favourite to fight.) The dog-like crawlers shoot endlessly out of their head-turrets, climb walls and come in packs of 8 of more. Their heads are instakills, but their bodies are bullet sponges, meaning that whenever you lack a precision weapon you're in for the fight of the week. Knights are beetle like forts that act totally unreactive to any form of player interaction aside from when their shields breaking and the moment they die. They eat bullets like no-one's business, teleport when they're in trouble (and can hang around in non-spawn space just to screw with your rhythm) and can create a drone robot which will respawn them if you don't break them too. And they immediately disintegrate on death, meaning you can't even have fun in piling corpses on the floor.

But at least you get their weapons! Only they all suck too. They have that shard design thing going on making them all indistinct, they sound weak when shooting, don't appear to have anything new in function to introduce to the franchise and for some inane reason a few of them have this really long 'forming' animation every time you pick them up. I assume it's meant for the first time you find them to show how 'new' and 'different' they are, but for certain weapons the animation plays everytime and gets old pretty-much instantaneously. All and all, I hated fighting these annoying, ugly designed, and boring enemies and their prominence in Halo 4, to the point where they even fight alongside the Covenant a lot of the time, makes me actually not want to play through a single mission of Halo 4 again. So that's not a good start considering I haven't even touched on the narrative yet.

Narrative

This part is the kicker, because I had no idea what this game's story held for me and so was just as caught off guard as most fans likely were when this sequel took the Master Chief trilogy and veered far off-course. So far, it fact, that it felt like the writers wanted to make their own franchise and got lumped with a Halo sequel, and so they decided to just try and morph Halo into the Science Fantasy story they wanted to write instead. All of it puts me in this strange position where, by itself, the story that I experienced was a fairly competent tale that neatly introduced a new (admittedly rather lame) enemy with a new style of threat and resolved it, but when placed against the frame of the series it's a part of, it all comes across as an intensely short-sighted and ill-fitting story that fights in poorly with it's integer peers. Even for someone who didn't spend hours reading the volumes of, now pretty much essential, reading material that plagues this franchise; I could tell something was plainly wrong with Halo 4.

The problems really start with the Forerunners coming into the story, this time in the flesh through this enigmatic megalomaniac called the Didact who is trying to- what again? He wants to... umm... use the Composer to turn humanity into Promethean robot constructs in order to... oppose the Flood? Which is, by all intents and purposes, currently deceased? But- that can't be right, he seems to just want to microwave humans in revenge for the accidental war they were involved in 10,000 years ago. Wait, 10,000 years? I thought this game was set in 2500... dammit, did they bring out another book of essential lore? Seems it doesn't matter who's running the show, Bungie or 343, basic storytelling techniques elude them. (Okay, to be fair they do actually give a tiny rundown, but it was so barren that I had to look up a book synopsis online to learn that there was a species of space-faring proto-humans 10,000 years ago who were forcibly devolved by the Forerunners in retaliation for the war.)

All this comes to muddy a fairly straightforward premise that the game already had; Cortana has been in service too long and is undergoing a degenerative AI process known as 'Rampancy', so you need to find your way back to humanity in order to have a chance to save her. Throw in an inexplicable new breed of Covenant in the way and you have a basic kicking off point for a story. But then this Didact gets involved and suddenly the fate of the universe is in the balance and we just sort of forget about the Cortana thing until it becomes too bad to help. I'm not opposed to this style of story, where new stakes slide in to trump the initial ones, but it always creates this uneven feeling to the narrative progression which brings me back to the waviness of Combat Evolved at times. But the biggest issue with the narrative is pretty obvious; it's the Librarian.

Not long after the game settles into it's real plot are we treated to some quick series-changing exposition being shoved down our throat by a godlike Forerunner digital-echo-thing called 'The Librarian', during which we are given a decidedly questionable revelation. This Composer has power over all people except for Master Chief- why? Because the Librarian, presumably when humanity was sent to the stone age, imbued genetic markers in humans to guide the evolutionary process through multiple reiterations until he would be born. Yes, 343 turned Master Chief into the chosen one. Ew. Yes, they would try and argue it's a 'deconstruction' of the chosen one trope, because there were more than one 'chosen one's throughout the history of this plan, but a deconstruction typically demands exploration, and even if there were some sort of clever insight here, none of that distracts from the obvious fact: this doesn't really fit in a Halo game.

Now let me just say that I have no problem with the 'Chosen One' trope, nor tropes in general; I think they become repeated because they are cool ideas and building upon them allows new people with new ideas to glean new shades from them. But they belong in a certain type of story. Science Fantasy stories. Your Dune, your Star Wars, series' of that ilk. Halo tried to give us a Science Fiction lite world, with military dogmatism and interstellar warfare, throwing a messianic prophet-figure in there (even though it thankfully hasn't been too heavy headed on the symbolism so far) suddenly reframes everything the series has done up until now and trivialises it. Think- really think about the events that have led up to Halo 4; do they matter now that Chief has been destined to this? 343 bent over backwards to assure us that "of course they do, this isn't a prophecy!", but it is oh-so hard to have your cake and eat it. The mere introduction of determinism in this hazy god-like framing device cuts through all the excuses and faux-deconstructionism the writers have erected in defence, and turns this story into something it wasn't before; a universe where the everything revolves around Master Chief.

Now the Chief has always been important, a symbol of the strength, perseverance, and of course 'luck', of humanity; but this revelations alters that. Instead of being a person made special because of the lengths he goes to, the actions he does and the achievements he earns, now he's special just because of who he is. Because some space goddess ten thousands years ago rolled some dice and said "This one- this is the saviour!" In fact, our Librarian even implies that the technological tools that you take advantage of, your armour and the AI Cortana, were also preplanned by these Forerunners, so suddenly all of human knowledge no longer belongs to it. In a way, it's almost worse that the series wasn't brave enough to commit fully to this concept, because if they did then perhaps there would be space to explore shades of the concept of 'fate' and 'free will', and explore if all the trials of Humanity, the wars, the suffering, the Covenant, were necessary evils too. You know, do the stuff a 'deconstruction' would actually do. But instead we have this limp half-hearted jab at the idea, aimed to try and take ahold of the series narrative, and not really amounting to much of anything. I mean, what does Chief really do with his 'destiny' in this game? He jams a grenade in some dude's chest in a bad quick-time-event and watches him fall off a bridge; truly the sort of stuff that needed several thousands of years of genetic guiding to achieve!

Ultimately, it feels wrong, short sighted, and fangless of a narrative turn. As a result, what was an alright campaign with a villain that was boring, but at least new; becomes overshadowed with this ugly time-bomb of a plot point, ticking away in the back of your head to infect just about everything else about the series. Oh I want to play ODST, but the Chief isn't in it and now that this universe revolves around him, I guess that game's whole narrative isn't really important anymore. Noble Team died on Reach, but their sacrifice is nowhere near as important as Master Chief's life, so I guess it's weird to care about them anymore. It's a frighteningly obvious consequence for this sort of story twist, but one which Halo 4's writers I guess didn't see or just didn't care about. The more I pondered it, the more crappy this little twist felt, and considering my only relief from thinking about the story was going up against those bloody Prometheans; it's fair to say I didn't have the best time whilst playing Halo 4.

Characters

Finally, a section that I can mark as a genuine bright spot; because in character I actually found Master Chief and Cortana to be at their best yet. Both have considerably more lines than they did in previous games, and both get to become a little more fleshed out because of it; even if the whole 'love story' aspect between the two of them does veer dangerously close to a doomed romance at some points. (Which felt like something this series was not going to do previously. Made me a tad uncomfortable.) Cortana's decent into rampancy is startling, and hearing genuine fear come out the vocal synthesisers of our typically cocky AI co-pilot, rings with a vulnerability I didn't even feel when rescuing her from The Gravemind and whatever he was doing to her. (Seriously, did the Gravemind take a coding course? How could that organic fungal growth mess with the mind of an AI?) The Chief has a harder edge to him as well, dedicating everything to protecting his partner, even going so far as to stand up to a superior officer, thus clearly marking the line between morality and duty which had never even been tested before. I genuinely think this might be our protagonists' best characterisation yet. Oh and Cortana apparently dies for the second time in this franchise, but I've read the box description for Infinite, so it's safe to say it had absolutely no impact on me. (The consequence of reviving the dead in future entries; you ruin your previous emotional highlights.)

We also meet the crew of the Infinity as secondary characters, which gives us Sarah Palmer, another Spartan for the first time in forever, but she isn't around too much, Captain Del Rio, who's a typical cranky 'superior officer' trope that exists to be a wall for the heroes to butt up against and Lasky, the plucky young fellow who has our back when nobody else does. Kinda. They were mostly generic and under explored, I literally had to look up the kids name because I forgot him so badly. Then we have our villain, The Didact, and I honestly don't even know what he wanted. I mean I know he wanted the Composer so that he could use it on Humanity- but why? I know he considered Humanity a threat and didn't want the 'mantle' of protecting the universe to be passed onto them- but why use the Composer to turn them into dust? The Flood aren't a problem, so this can't be about transforming Humanity to fight that virus. Why not just set off a Halo? Surely a Forerunner can do that, right? Maybe there's some 5-part book series that goes heavy into every single last note of Mr Didact's goals; but I needed to know them during the game, because he's dead now so I don't care anymore.  

Level Design

As far as raw level design goes, divorcing the god awful Prometheans who show up in a lot of them, I think the levels were very fun and diverse, ranging in both visuals and objective just like I want from my Halo games. But I didn't quite feel the spark of creative diversity from each level like I did from Reach. Even in their raw design, all the Promethean levels just felt the same. (Except for the special Gondola ride section of course! Halo 2 called: it wants it's level back.) Still I found highlights in the level 'Reclaimer' (that Mammoth section is a literal dream set-up for me, I adore the moving-base-of-operations idea and wanted more.) The Broadsword battle section of Midnight was wild and I simply loved all of it's hectic chaos. And pretty much any fight against the Covenant was okay. Just okay. No miniboss fights to speak of, but then Halo Reach didn't have any either so I'm not exactly running thirsty here; I'm used to Halo 2 and 3 being the exceptions.

But then there are the Promethean levels; and you can likely already tell that I hate them. Numerous sections of enemy spam, aesthetically bland locales and typically no substantial variation in environment. They hardly even played around with verticality at all for those sections. (Unless you count the way the Crawler-dogs would jump on the wall just to be annoying.) Even Covenant filled-Promethean levels felt more annoying to fight through, just by merit of the wide-open bland-but-busy platforms they were all hanging around on, doing nothing on. If I could exorcise all Promethean content from this Halo game, we might have a 'Halo 3 level' contender on our hands here- as it exists now though- the chaff brings the whole package down.

A little bit on Spartan Ops

Yes, this game has a secondary campaign in the co-op focused Spartan Ops mode which 343 had big intentions for! These little mission packs were released in episodes and chapters, with each episode being fronted by a meaty well-made animated movie starring characters like Sarah Palmer, Lasky and even Dr Halsey! (Remember her from the introduction? She's important again!) Whatsmore, this mode actually explained who these new Covenant are and where they came from; doing the main game's job for it. If only the gameplay had any effort put into it. It's just a shooting arena where the game throws stupid amounts of enemies at you with no fail state. If you die, you just respawn. Honestly, this might make a decent shooting gallery mode, if it wasn't for the fact that the damned Prometheans infect this mode with their stink too. I couldn't bring myself to stick it out, nor watch the hour worth of professional-grade cutscenes supplied with the package. 343 discontinued the mode after season 1 and scrapped a reported year's worth of content and lead-in footage to Halo 5. Wise move in my eyes; this package was not the mode they wanted it to be. (Cool idea for a semi-live service system though. I hope they don't scrap that concept forever more.)

Summary

Mechanically Halo 4 is on par with the best of the series yet, and it's character writing honestly surpasses previous games soundly and there's a couple of stand-out missions. Too bad everything else is a bit of a mess. The substance of the story veers from decent to awful, the new third faction of 'The Prometheans' are designed terribly, not fun to fight, and take up far too much of the attention for this game and the main villain is pretty boring. I came into this game wanting, and somewhat expecting, it to be the roaring embarkment of a brand new Halo journey, and what I got was sort of a disappointment after all the serious powerhouse games I just played through. Were it just about one of these problems I mentioned, or maybe even two, I would be able to look past it; but all three and I seriously don't know if I want to ever play this game again. (At least not by myself.) I want to give it a passing grade because the shooting is good, but when even the Covenant feel lacklustre because more effort went into the Prometheans, that effort into nailing the shooting doesn't really have a purpose, does it? The range of problems on display, offset by the competence behind a lot of the backbone of the systems leaves me in the peculiar position where I'm giving this game a C- Grade, which the game just ekes out because I liked the character work, even if the wider story it happened in was poor. Honestly, I can't really recommend this as a Halo game, unless you have friends to play with an simply don't care about the story whatsoever. I did not enjoy myself and if people are saying that 'Halo 5: Guardians' is worse than this- than maybe it's a good thing that 343 are dragging their heels about adapting that one for the Master Chief Collection.

Be that as it may, this marks the end of my Halo journey for the immediate; maybe to be picked up again if Halo 5 ever becomes playable on the PC. And I must say that despite the disappointing latest entry, I found this to be an absolute blast of a franchise to play my way through and totally fell in love with the core pieces of these games. The Covenant might go down as some of my favourite FPS enemies ever, for their variety and personality, and I'm just itching to go mod some of those cool traditional Halo weapons into one of my mainstay games like Fallout, and go shoot up the Commonwealth. I was surprised by the sparse nature of one of gaming's longest lasting love stories, but I suppose when Cortana and Master Chief are two figures you've watched grow together across the space of over two decades, the mind crosses the emotional shortcomings in the storytelling all by itself. It's fair to say that this collection has scored the series a new fan, and I'm actually so invested I might go to pick up Halo Wars someday and see what those strategy games are about. Or maybe... maybe it's about time I break my fast and see what Destiny 2 is up to; see the series that Bungie iced the Chief for... Hmm, we'll have to see if I'm anywhere close to forgiving Bungie yet, and currently I'm not so sure... thank you for reading along with my little journey and I hope my reviews have helped guide you on your own journey to discovering this classic gaming franchise. See you again for this Halo review series in maybe never, depending on that PC port.

Halo: Reach Review

 Make it count.

And so, by my own perspective, do we finally come full circle all the way around with Halo: Reach; the story at the end and the beginning. For Bungie, this would mark the very last Halo game they would make before the company would move on from the series altogether in order to pursue Destiny, which they're still trucking away at to this day. 343 were created after Halo 3, the original end of the series, in order to make other Halo projects such as the 'Halo: Legends' anime, whilst Bungie finished up their tenure with the series with two stellar spin-off games, 'Halo: ODST' and 'Halo: Reach'. As this was the last go around, I can only guess it made sense within the studio to go back to where it all started; neatly bookending the narrative into a cyclical nature and leading right into the beginning act of 'Halo: Combat Evolved'. Few can deny the poetic nature of such a sentiment.

For me, coming around to play this game again was something of a nostalgic twist to this journey into previously untested waters. I mean I had played ODST before, but so briefly that there wasn't a single shade of the game I remembered on the second go-around. Reach, however, was my entire Halo world before this adventure. The only Halo game I ever owned, and the only one that I would go onto complete. My history started with the canonical first entry in the series and it would eventually end with the first entry in the series. Well, actually I fully intend on playing Halo 4, but that's kind of like a new separate branch of the franchise, original Halo dies here. And with that added layer of nostalgia and a little better understanding of the significance of this entry, (most of the overt lead-ins were fairly obvious even for a newbie back in the day) I come to this spoiler laden review here today. Those who don't wish to spoil things can congregate in the summary at the bottom of this post.

Gameplay

Halo Reach has always served as something of the gold standard for what Halo games should play like for the longest time in my head. Which is why when I was praising the gunplay all the way back in Combat Evolved when I commented on it's similarities to Reach. Now I'm here, I can honestly say that in raw content things feel as responsive and satisfying as Halo 2 Anniversary Edition; which is to say they're pretty much peerless. The feel of the weapons, the sounds, the impact; everything sings with a smoothness that makes you just want to keep playing for hours, and that satisfying 'pop' of kicking down the enemies shields is magical. I didn't even realise that was something I was missing from fighting exclusively Brute-led Covenant for so long now, but I was. Sure, Brutes had shields too in Halo 3 and ODST; but it just doesn't feel quite the same. There's not that special moment where the clouds clear and you go "ping, the next one is going in your skull", you know? 

Speaking of; wow, does it feel nostalgic to enter the battlefield with Elites again! I didn't realise how separated we'd been until the achievement popped up for slaying 1000 Elites and I suddenly realised how I'd received the equivalent Jackal, Grunt and Brute achievements beforehand. Only this time marks the first time in the series they share the battlefield with Brutes, and that marks one the many reasons why I consider Reach to be one of the most challenging Halo's I've played (Probably mixed with the bullet-sponge half of Halo 2) and a lot of that comes down to great enemy variety empowered by noticeably tough AI. Enemies seem to know to press the advantage on me once they've knocked my shields down and have sought cover, use splash damage with their explosives in order to ward me away from a shooting position, and even put headshot-foiling helmets on their Grunts. Wait- someone cared enough about Grunts to give them protection? And it only happens in the Prequel game? Who did the Grunt race piss off so badly that they got their life saving protection withdrawn for the entire rest of the war?

These enemy combinations, married with the glorious selection of weapons that harken back to the first Halo titles (such as the single-shot DMR and original Magnum pistol) made moment-to-moment combat both engaging and so rewarding. Bonus points goes to the whole 'health bar under the shields that needs to be maintained with health packs' gimmick that the team bought back with Reach which hasn't been with their series since Combat Evolved. (And it makes canonical sense too; because this is an earlier generation of Spartan armour to the one introduced at the beginning of Halo 2. Geez, the amount of lore I just had to shift through to confirm that one fact is ungodly.) I say this with a little bit of bias but also a lot of confidence, but I think that this is the best feeling Halo in the entire series so far. Just as smooth as 2's remaster, but with a more satisfying spread of aliens to shoot. The best of all worlds.

Narrative

Even if you've never picked up a Halo book or comic or anime in your life, having played through the series in order up to this point it's impossible not to have heard of Reach. It's the planet that The Pillar of Autumn just escaped from at the beginning of Halo CE, the invasion that Earth's is compared to during 2 (pointedly commenting how that huge attack is nothing compared to what happened on Reach), and appears to be something of a dog whistle rallying cry for civilians across the universe as ODST features several 'Remember Reach' graffiti scrawls across the ruined streets of New Mombasa. It's clear that Reach is important, just as it's clear that it was once the sight of a great defeat for humanity. Meaning that in choosing to tell this story, Bungie not just picked up the idea of telling the origin story of the Halo games, but of telling a story that's has a predetermined 'loss' built into it that audience is very likely to be expecting going in. So how did they do in balancing that and still delivering a satisfying narrative?

I actually think they did a bang up job. From it's heart, the doom driven plot of Reach conveys the desperation of a people slowly coming to terms with the fact that everyone here is going to die, and Reach helps wrap the player up in this thinking with the use of Noble Squad. For the first time in a Halo game, you are enrolled in a squad of Spartans that you stick with for the majority of the game, Noble Squad, and your every operation is conducted with them at your side. (Carter even mentions how this posting will be different to the Lone Wolf antics you'd apparently performed before meeting them, subtly acknowledging the solitude hero of the main Halo games.) Noble are your backbone, your strong arm and a symbol of your unity as you start to investigate the new Covenant attacks popping up all across Reach. Thus, when the attacks start to build up into the biggest invasion that humanity has ever faced and sorties slip from dire to deadly, it makes sense that members of Noble start being picked off one by one, representing how battered and bruised the whole of Reach is becoming and the slow break of humanities frontline. It's supremely well pulled off.

Behind the chaos is the narrative delving into what Reach's secret military research was exploring, an inevitable story branch designed to further justify this story as a prequel to everything to come in Halo; even more than the setting already does. No matter in what direction you approach it, there would be something unescapably dour about playing a game which is destined to end in total failure for the protagonists throughout the story progression, so Bungie tied in this secondary goal to show how the actions of Noble Team, and specifically you, lead to the torch that Master Chief would pick up to eventually defeat the Covenant. It's a little bit contrived, but the emotionally correct choice to make in order to frame this story neatly into the wider narrative. Honestly, I think that even after my play around the whole series, Halo Reach might remain my favourite narrative in the series with some of the best stand-out set-piece moments colouring the story in. The cinematic drop from just beyond the orbit, the fall chaotic of New Alexandria, that iconic final post-epilogue last stand- it's all tonally on-point for a story about being on the losing side, but not suffering total, unrecoverable, defeat. 

Characters

With the characters of Noble team I think Bungie wanted to give another shot at doing the ODST group mechanic but with a better swing at more memorable people. Not only are their personalities certainly distinct and a little bit more nuanced, but their designs carry the instantly recognisable colour scheme and silhouette you need in order to create a cover-worthy team. Carter strikes a more serious leader of the team then Bungie's last attempt, neatly selling the act of a man carrying the responsibility of a team coming against insurmountable threats with a believable heft. Kat marks the intelligent second-in-command with the reliable tactician pluck, and knack for out-of-the-box solutions which the team needs to rely on in a fight so helpless. Jun is the quiet sniper type, characterised by stoicism and the occasional thoughtful observation. Emile is the shotgun wielding edgelord with the aggressive combat-lust you'd expect, and require, from the assault specialist. And Jorge is the large humanitarian with a heart swollen with empathy and a permanent role as mother of the group. Honestly, I liked all of them and appreciate the fact that the game gives us the chance to spend time with each of them one-on-one before the end (Except Carter) and fight alongside the whole squad as a unit for a couple missions.

They make up a great team with just enough intricacies and character to them for you to become attached. Even Noble Six, the protagonist, feels like they have a purpose to their intentionally neutral lines that you can feel in their delivery. Now none of these characters are hugely fleshed out, of course, this is still a Halo game where the focus is less on character driven drama and more the action- but for what bonding time we did have with the team, I think Bungie spent each second very well for building that all important rapport that made each's death ring with appropriate sadness. You won't bawl your eyes out about any of them, but that hollowness as another body hits the floor always hits home. (Oh, and Kat's death was especially clever with it's shocking, intentionally non-cinematic abruptness; ensuring the audience is just as emotionally battered by the war as the team are.)

The only other major characters from this game would be Colonel Holland, whom is more of the floating voice on the end of the radio, and Doctor Halsey; an eminently important character in Halo lore that is only showing up in person now. Halsey doesn't get much screentime, but still she does a great job in establishing that hard-shelled and emotionally dim edifice of a woman who orchestrated some truly messed up operations during her career in order to get results. It's never explored explicitly in this game, but you can pick up on the morally-dubious-scientist vibe coming off her from the very first encounter, and I love the ability to exude personality like that. I found her mere aura enthralling. Cameo shout-outs go to Captain Keyes, glad to see his small appearance and not-at-all surprised to see him fly down in an active war zone, in person, just to make a drop-off; and Cortana, who says literally nothing. (Her only voice line is recycled words from the beginning of Halo Combat Evolved.) At least we get to see an example of why she, in Halo 3's ponderous introduction scene, said the defining factor for the Spartan she picked is 'luck'; cool way to call back to that line by making the player character of Reach the unlucky last Spartan who had to stay behind.

Level Design

Reach's levels are designed to a standard just above what was established in Halo ODST and 3, which is to say that they are grand with at least one set-piece moment or iconic battle for all of them often with a little extra spice. Some missions have a lot more verticality in their design to them then we're typically used to, 'Oni: Sword Base' in particular, and some levels capture that sprawling wide-open, almost free-form, design we haven't seen too much of in this series since Combat Evolved. (Like both levels set in 'New Alexandria'.) There's even a series-first thrown in there where we get to blast off from the confines of terrestrial gravity and have a duel in space! Followed by your prototypical Covenant-ship assault mission- but with boarding and execution happening in space! It's another adventure with twists and turns at every moment to keep us hooked and never bored.

Whatsmore, the enemy spread throughout these levels are some of the toughest I think the series has ever put together, which I think was probably due both to conscious effort from the team to represent the fall of Reach alongside a genuine side-effect of improved enemy AI and design. The slight buff to Grunts alone really shakes up the balance of the battle just enough to make you more susceptible to Elites and their flanking strategies, Jackals simply slay with their roaming packs of sniper killers baring down on you with deadly efficiency, Hunters have taken a bunch of painkillers before deployment because they are absolutely hell to take down with typical methods (shotgun to the back is no longer a one-shot) and Brutes- actually the Brutes were a total push over in Reach. Maybe that was the tradeoff for everything else the game was throwing at us, they made Brutes the teddy bears of the Covenant army.

And of course, I can hardly talk about Reach without mentioning that iconic swan song of a final level. Where Noble Six, last of his team on Reach, finds themselves in a Spartan graveyard where they are forced to fight until the endless waves of Covenant forces overwhelms them. It's a great way to portray a player character death, putting the power in the hands of the player, and an opportunity to go down fighting. The mission is tiny in actuality, but as one long set-piece it sells it's dramatism flawlessly- particularly with the damage received finally cracking the helmet of the hero and distorting the HUD, showing wear and tear, until a stray explosive finally takes you down and the final cutscene of the last stand plays. As far as cinematic gameplay goes in AAA games- this is the way to pull it off and make the player and the story synchronise for one glorious moment. Truly a series-highlight moment.

Music

Reach marks the return of the series to the grander scores of Halo mainline entries, and whilst I enjoyed the oddball musical cues of ODST, Reach brings back the power-house scores that I remembered from Halo CE Anniversary Edition. Soaring scores at the beginning of the game which give way to quieter, but no-less noticeable, pieces during more ponderous moments during the fall of Reach. It's undoubtedly a different musical language to what Halo 2 was attempting, but one which sells the world of this game just as well in my opinion. Maybe Halo 2's best scores will stay with me for longer, but Reach still gave me chills in it's best moments, just from playing the right tracks at the right time. Definitely better then the slightly too bombastic lean of Halo 3. 

Summary

Halo Reach is Bungie's last Halo game, and in my opinion it soars as one of their best. Painting one of the most important and formative moments in Halo lore was always going to be a tall ask, and I think Bungie took that task as seriously as they could to make a game that would stand the test of time. Characters, Music and gameplay reach that level of mastery which Bungie had been eking at for so long and I have trouble deciding at the greater experience between this game and the stellar Halo 2: Anniversary Edition. This was my second playthrough, and I'd loved to play through again someday, because this is the sort of title I would return to time and time again to relive those lingering gameplay heights and echoing story lows. As such it's hard to give a game like this any less than an A Grade, with an easy recommendation to anyone, not just fans of Halo or FPS heads. Reach serves as a perfect in-road to the Halo franchise, just as it was for me, as well as a satisfying bookend to the Halo narrative. Having not made another Halo since, it's gratifying that Bungie went out on such a clear high. But it doesn't end here and next, for the rounding out of the Master Chief collection, I move onto the great waking of the big green man himself in Halo 4. So fingers crossed for 343's first Halo game. (Reach is going to be a tough act to follow.)