Halo: Reach boost a ton of amazing content that should keep gamers busy for a long time
As soon as you boot up Halo: Reach you'll start by creating your Spartan, you'll be able to choose if you want to be male or female. This will determine what your Spartan's physique is like, and what their default voice is. From there you'll be able to customize every aspect of your Spartan's armor with a set of points that is given from you from the start. From there you'll be able to take your Spartan into any mode, including Campaign. You can also create an Elite, but you can't bring them into the campaign.
In the campaign you'll play as your Spartan who's known as Noble 6, a replacement for a lost Spartan in a Spartan squad called Noble Team. Noble Team is sent out to investigate a relay station that went offline on Reach. You'll quickly discover that the Covenant are invading Reach. From there your first objective is to just fight off the Covenant.
Even thou the fate of Reach is obvious for those familiar with the series, the story for this campaign is one of the best Bungie has crafted. Instead of focusing on the events of Reach, it focuses on what happens to Noble Team during the events of Reach. Some characters are better than others, but for the most part the characters are really good. The story of the game manages to tie-in well with the other Halo games. The story in Halo: Reach is easily one of the more satisfying stories of the Halo games
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As far as campaigns go, Halo: Reach's campaign is the most varied of all the Halo campaigns. The missions vary from sneaking through the dark while sniping covenant, to shooting down banshees while flying in space. Some variety is also in the form of armor abilities. Armor abilities have replaced equipment from Halo 3. Armor abilities are pickups, but instead of one use they are basically special abilities that are rechargeable. These are things like sprint and jet packs, which do obvious things. But then there are things like armor lock up and hologram, which take more strategy to use right. The environments are also more varied than previous Halo games. You'll be going through a desert, a city, to a snowy cave. The varied gameplay and environments keep things fresh all the way through the campaign.
Halo: Reach follows the similar formula of on foot sections to vehicle sections from past Halo games, but they don't play out like in the other game. The enemy A.I. is the best it's ever been. Enemies work together, take cover, and dodge your attacks in the midst of battle. Since you're fighting the Elites this time around, you'll have to deal with their rechargeable shields. When you combine these elements along with a couple new enemy types, the Halo Reach campaign ends up being the most challenging of the series. But don't worry, the game never feels challenging in a unfair way. The only real problem with the campaign is that the frame rate drops from time to time. There are some really awesome cinematic cut scenes, but the frame rate has trouble always being steady during these scenes. This also happens during some of the big battles. This isn't game breaking, but it's defiantly noticeable.
If you want to play with some friends in any of the modes, Halo: Reach now has a new menu party system. As soon as you load up the game and get into the main menu, you can see all of your friends that are also playing Halo: Reach. You can then just go over and quickly invite them into a party, and go straight into whatever game mode you want. You don't even have to be in any mode to start a party. Starting a multiplayer match is now easier than ever, and that's for the best since there is a lot of multiplayer in Halo: Reach. You can even now set a psych profile for matchmaking. You can set it up to tell what kind of people you want to play with. You set up how competitive you are, how much you talk and things like that, and all there really is to say about it is that it works.
Just like the last couple Halo games, Reach's campaign supports four player co-op. Each player brings in their customized Spartan. The co-op isn't radically different from past games, but since the levels are much bigger, players can take different routes to make to down enemies much faster. So playing co-op is still a lot of fun.
But if you want co-op without the story, Firefight mode is for you. Firefight mode was introduced in Halo 3: ODST, and is a Horde mode, but with more depth. Halo: Reach now allows you to customize Firefight. You can choose which skulls activate, if they activate, and what kind of enemies you can fight. So if you want to fight wave after wave of grunts, you totally can. You can even have a couple people play as Elites against the Spartans while they're fight wave after wave of Covenant. Firefight also now supports Matchmaking. So you no longer have to find people on your friend list to play co-op in Firefight. Firefight is as addictive as it was in ODST, and remains the best take on the Horde mode out there.
Competitive multiplayer is back and is now probably the most in-depth multiplayer game on the Xbox 360. The armor abilities in the campaign are also present in the multiplayer. This changes things dramatically. Using abilities like the hologram and jet pack successfully is challenging and satisfying. There isn't a ton of playlist, but each playlist has a large variety of modes. It'll be hard not to find something you like. Invasion is the most unique playlist, because it's Spartan versus Elites game modes. Unlike Spartans, Elites have rechargeable shields and health, while Spartans have only rechargeable shields. During Invasion you'll be doing different objectives as Spartans versus Elites. These end up being some of the most intense modes in the competitive multiplayer.
If all of that isn't enough for you, there is Forge mode. Forge was introduced back in Halo 3, but it's now way more customizable. There is even a level called Forge World, which is the size of six levels. So it's a big open slate for you to do whatever you want. You can now set more specific spawn times, use objects to go through other objects, through the ground, or in the sky with ease. And with more customizable custom games, the multiplayer is going to have a long life span.
Everything you do in all of these modes gets you experience points that adds to your rank. You can use this experience to customize your Spartan, or Elite. Not only can you customize every bit of armor you're wearing, you can also buy different voices for your character in Firefight. You can even buy different effects that happen when you die. Like the Grunt Birthday Party skull effect can happen to your character.
If you want to view any of this, the Theater mode is back. You can save any campaign play, or multiplayer match. You can go through these, save them and upload them to the Bungie server for people to download. There's a lot to do in Reach, so for the Theater mode to be back is great.
Halo: Reach is an amazing package. Every single inch of the game feels so polished, and so much fun it's hard not to enjoy. There's so much content here it's likely to keep you busy for a very long time. Halo: Reach is one of 2010's best games, and a must play for anyone that owns an Xbox 360.