Halo: Reach – Let the Teabagging Begin!

Last Monday just before midnight, I found myself in a Gamestop full of awkward nerds who must have been trying to kill all the employees with the toxic fumes that their un-showered bodies produced in a desperate attempt to get their copy of Halo: Reach early. Upon asking the manager about this, he told me the midnight release of Starcraft 2 had prepared them for this underhanded tactic and built up an immunity to it.

Fast-forward a half hour and I perform my first teabag. My victim was a little kid who became quite furious after I told him he gave me Bieber fever. Kids these days.

The first thing you may notice is that the control scheme has changed a bit. Melee attacks are now more conveniently executed using the right bumper and action command/reload has moved to the X button. The only change that feels awkward to me is the B button, which changes your grenade type.

Physics have changed as well in Reach. Beatdowns (now called pummels) are less powerful, cutting down on the notoriously annoying “double beatdowns” from Halo 3, and you can now die or get hurt from falling too high like in previous games. You also can’t jump like Neo anymore, so you don’t think you can confuse people so easily by jumping over their heads.

Neo...jumping really really high.

One of the biggest changes to the game is the addition of a class system. Some gametypes will offer different weapon loadouts or abilities, such as a jetpack or the ability to create a hologram of yourself to trick enemies. Otherwise, you get to sprint, which can certainly be helpful in gametypes like SWAT when you need cover to survive. I find one ability in particular to be a little cheap as it lets a player become temporarily invincible and avoid taking damage from…oh let’s say a barrage of grenades.

The multiplayer maps in Reach are a mixture of old favorites and levels from the campaign. I feel that there are too few maps, most of which are ripped straight from the story, while a few others look like they were made by the developers in Forge. I would have liked to see much more variety here and am hoping they release a map pack soon. While most of the maps feel well designed, it’s only a matter of time before they get old. All the classic gametypes make a return with a couple of additions that are rarely ever played, like Headhunter.

The veto system has been drastically improved, now allowing players to choose 3 map/gametype options or the high school reminiscent option, “None of the Above,” which generates a new list for players to vote on while insulting each other’s choices over their headsets. Matchmaking in general has been beefed up as well, giving you more search customizations that help you be paired up with the sorts of people you actually want to play with. While this system has nothing on eHarmony’s 29 dimensions of compatibility, it still works pretty well. Unfortunately, you will still run into matchmaking searches that start over constantly as well as in-game connections issues. Nobody likes a laggy teabag, but we don’t have much of a choice, do we?

Let’s move on to the campaign. Jumping right in, the story is pathetic. It’s not as bad as ODST, but it’s close. Halo 1-3 always had you fighting to complete some epic task that would ultimately lead to making some big groundbreaking discovery that leads you to another epic task. In Reach, you just fight the covenant. Your objective is to blow things up and kill aliens. Not until near the end of the game do you receive a mission that is hugely important, but it still doesn’t quite match up to previous games’ endings. I won’t spoil anything, but stylistically I was actually impressed with the end because of how well it served as a transition into Halo: Combat Evolved.

Although the story lacked, the campaign was definitely fun. The locations were interesting and the missions involved some unique experiences that are worth replaying. The daily challenges also give you incentive to replay the campaign by offering you cR in return for completing certain tasks like “Kill 50 enemies in campaign”. I assume “cR” is an abbreviation for “credits,” but since I haven’t seen the word “credits” anywhere, I choose to believe it stands for something else.

Once you obtain enough cR (cat Rectums), you can buy armor. There is no purpose for this besides aesthetics, but it gives you something to work for. The more cR (chris Rock’s) that you collect, the faster you level up, which unlocks new armor. In other words, you like cR (cancerous Rabbits).

Lastly, be sure to play around with Forge 2.0. The developers made every aspect better and it is now much easier to make cool maps to share with your friends. All the frustration of trying to line things up is gone, which means you can stop breaking controllers by throwing them at the wall in frustration.

Halo: Reach serves as a great replacement for Halo 3. The changes are subtle enough to easily switch over, but vast enough to not get bored right away. Have fun. I will enjoy teabagging you all soon.

The Good: Bungie continues to give one of the best online experiences out there. New maps and weapons. New experiences. New campaign.

The Bad: Campaign lacked a worthy story for a Halo title. Matchmaking still has connection and matching problems on occasion. No double XP weekend yet.

The Verdict: Buy. Anyone who owns an Xbox knows not to miss a Halo title (except ODST, but we can just pretend that never happened).

Written by Not Judas

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