 Remember Reach. What starts out looking like a band of disorganized rebels turns out to be the landing force for an alien invasion. A small group of Spartans has to do their best to save the planet of Reach. It's a losing battle, but it has to be done.
1. Gameplay
 'Sup? But before I get into the campaign, allow me to talk about the multiplayer. Halo: Reach’s multiplayer is by far the best in the series. Any previous issues have been polished and, as a result, the finished product shines brilliantly. There are new awesome game modes, a good matchmaking system, and a huge number of players online at any time of the day or night.  Capture the flag can get especially crazy. The “Forge” game editor has also been re-included and upgraded. Talented game modders are now able to make almost anything they can think of. There are hundreds of custom maps, games, and game modes that players can use to challenge each other. I could spend hours writing about all of the different custom game modes I have enjoyed so far, but it would be far too much text for a review like this. Just take my word for it, the custom game modes alone make this game worth it. The campaign is a slightly different matter. The previous Halo games have all gone in chronological order. First, Master Chief found the ring and destroyed it, then the Covenant attacked Earth, then Master Chief destroyed the Flood and saved Earth. The end. Halo: Reach goes back before the first game and acts as a sort of prequel to the entire series. It sets the stage for the first Halo game.  Except Master Chief never had a jetpack. This is great for fans like myself who have followed the series closely from the beginning and there were a lot of moments that made me feel very nostalgic, but it left me a bit confused and dissatisfied. There were a lot of questions left unanswered after Halo 3, and I was hoping for a game that would address those. Halo: Reach did not do that and, if anything, just raised more unanswered questions. And the entire thing was even more depressing because I knew how the game was going to end. Everyone dies. That’s it. Master Chief was always kind of portrayed as “The Last Spartan”, which meant that all of the Spartans on Reach had to be dead by the end of the game. I already knew ahead of time that humanity loses Reach. So I knew things would end poorly, which kept me depressed the entire time. It wasn’t a game that filled me with hope for the fate of humanity, it was a game that kept me in the mindset that everything was lost.  And how do you stay motivated to fight a losing battle? This wasn’t awful. The story was well written. But it just didn’t make sense to me that Bungie would have the final Halo game they ever make be a prequel to the rest of the series. It’s not a conclusion. I suppose they could have been trying to be somewhat symbolic, since the end is also a sort of beginning, but what they created didn’t inspire a sense of hope as much as it inspired a sense of deep depression. My critique on Bungie’s choice in storyline aside, the game is extremely well done and a lot of fun. Excluding the storyline, this game is the best in the series by far.
That doesn’t mean this game could not be frustrating. The campaign itself was flawless, but the multiplayer will almost certainly frustrate players that are unfamiliar with the Halo series or unskilled compared to their online counterparts. However, this is gone into detail in the “online community” section, so more information can be found there. 2. Parental Notices
 Oh the pretty things I can paint. Unlike previous Halo games, Reach now includes the ability for the player to perform executions. If the player manages to hit an enemy from behind, there is a good chance that the player will instantly “execute” the enemy. The execution type depends on the enemy that is being hit. For instance, the player will rip out the grunt’s methane breathing device (they can only breathe methane).  Shh, don't talk. Against larger enemies, such as elites, the player can sometimes jump on the elite and stab him with a knife.  This might sting a little. There are also times when enemies can be lit on fire, although these possibilities are relatively rare.
3. Other Factors
Some of the best examples use just the physics of the game to create some absolutely insane scenarios. For example, one of my favorite game modes involves a team of players and a few warthogs. One player (the zombie) sits in the middle of a downward-sloped hallway and tries to kill the other players. The other players hop into vehicles and drive down the hallway at high speeds. When the players hit the bottom of the hallway, they are instantly teleported back to the top at high speed, progressively increasing velocity until they’re practically traveling at lightspeed. It gets insane but is so much fun to do. Unfortunately, the creativity of the modding community allows for some very interesting ways around the games inherent lack of sexual content. Most of the allegedly “adult” game modes included in the game are just named in a way that makes them seem to have mature content just to get people to download the map. At most the map may be designed to seem like some sort of adult area (i.e. the “XXX Strip Club” map) but are actually poorly designed and devoid of any sort of life. The lone exception is the players who use placed items in the game to create pictures. These artists create images of naked women using objects placed on the ground. If the correct objects are placed in the correct positions, the result is an image that looks like a pornographic picture. It’s actually somewhat impressive.  It's like making a sculpture of a naked woman out of Legos. However, unless a player actively searches for these types of images, they’re somewhat difficult to find. Your gamer will have much easier access to a wider variety of pornographic images on the internet than he does in Forge.
 Too easy. For those players who choose not to spend that amount of time to the Halo games (or those who have not lived long enough to dedicate that amount of time), the skilled gamers can make things rather frustrating. The Halo matchmaking system for its multiplayer is good, arguably one of the best designed so far, but it’s not perfect. Players will often find themselves pitted against higher ranked and higher skilled players, which can result in a very boring experience overall. Sometimes it’s enough to avoid certain multiplayer game modes, but for the most part the average player will have to put up with one or two unbalanced matches just to find one well-balanced match.  Balanced? If you really want to get better at the Halo series, you’re going to have to put up with losing long enough to learn the tricks that the “pros” use. Despite what it seems, there are usually simple things that gamers do to get themselves ahead. Gamers who pick up on these will do much better in the long run.
 Big game hunting. There is also one section in the campaign where the player will be pushed out of an airlock by a friend. This push will force the player to re-enter Reach’s atmosphere with only the suit and some sort of ambiguous re-entry module backpack device to protect the player’s fragile body from the extreme heat and impact of hitting the planet’s surface.  This is one of my greatest fears. There are also a number of instances where the player’s character performs some absurd, dangerous, and often unnecessary stunts in order to add to the drama. In one example, the player has to leap from a tower to grab the hand of an ally so that the ally could pull the player into a helicopter. The thing is that the helicopter could have just scooted over two feet and the player could have stepped on without danger.  Just call me "Skippy". One of the abilities that the player can get is a jetpack. This does exactly what one would think. It attaches rocket boosters to the back of the player that can give jump extra height. This can allow the player to jump over structures or across large gaps.  Try not to look down.
One of the Spartans, Kat, has a robotic arm. This is the complete extent of “human disfigurement” in the game.  She's like Luke Skywalker, but a woman. Civilian Deaths Occasionally, but especially in one metropolitan area, the player will find dead civilians in the area. The few bodies that there are serve to forward the idea that the Covenant are on Reach to exterminate mankind. Overall this is a very mild element.  They could almost be sleeping. Kamikaze Grunts are often the weakest and least intimidating of the Covenant forces, but some Grunts have taken their fanaticism and devotion to their superiors to a whole new level. These grunts will arm two plasma grenades and run at the player as fast as they can (which is not particularly fast). If they reach the player, the grenades will explode and do serious damage to the player, in many cases causing instant death.  Run away!
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