Halo Reacharound

Halo: Reach is probably the only game I’ve played where I like the bonuses with the special edition more than I like the game itself. I bought the Legendary Edition of Halo Reach on sale for $49.99, which is less than a regular copy of the game is going for. I think it was somewhere in the range of $149.99 when it was first released, but that’s Guitar Hero kinda money, and no one goes out of their way to buy special editions. By biding your time, you can usually pick up these clunky boxes on the cheap, because retailers hate anything that doesn’t fit nicely on their shelves. I saw the same thing happen with Bioshock 2, and D.J. Hero. The product itself is the size of a pet carrier, and includes a statue featuring five immoveable action figures ala Tod McFarlane on a  large base, a book, and lots of styrofoam. Not the regular kind of packaging styrofoam: this shit is classy. It’s solid, grey, perfectly moulded to every contour, and bears the Halo: Reach emblem. I felt bad when I threw it out. It was like throwing out the hubcaps to a car. The box itself is designed to be a display item, and the artwork on it extends to the interior. Inside, there’s the statue, which has to be partially assembled, and then a second case with the book and game in it, along with a loose paper telling you how awesome you are for owning it. The book is a string-bound journal with magnet lock filled with drawings and loose clippings, and includes weird little bonuses like patches and fake key-cards. I didn’t realize at first how long the book was until I started reading it. It’s created to give the reader greater insight into the mythos of the Halo universe. Halo, by-the-by, is way up it’s own ass. It also included an in-game armour effect for a flaming helmet. In a game where only headshots matter, having your head on fire is bad-ass, but it makes for an easy target. By using it, I can be sniped from literally any player with any gun at any distance. It makes me wonder how long Nick Cage survived as Ghost Rider. Ghost Rider would have been a better movie if a Spartan sniped him thirty-five minutes in, then tea-bagged his corpse. There was also an avatar award, but nearly every game has one of those now.

The game itself, after having played through it, is more challenging and more frustrating than say, Halo: ODST, is closest predecessor. Being killed by invisible A.I.s; or using every last piece of ammunition on a map on an enemy and still not have them fall over dead; and being insta-killed by kamikaze Grunts with grenades, when no other grenade in the game seems to have much effect, is all frustrating. There’s also more than a fair share of glitches. In the game you’re playing alongside your Noble teammates, who invariably seem to get stuck in some part of the map. For me, Kate refused to leave a warthog, and I had to try and solo two unkillable alien monsters in a parking garage. I tried about ten times on my own, then went back and tried to free her by slamming the warthog into a wall and tossing grenades at it. Apparently, it was all my fault, because I hadn’t parked the warthog in the invisible designated area. Somehow, she was able to solo these beasts on her own. Other times, I’d be doing a vehicle mission, and they’d just stay behind because they were too damn slow. I would leave them behind in an active warzone while I flew off. Another time, I was on a space mission, and I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do, so I tried to dock my ship in the hangar. This sent my character flying through the windshield of his spaceship and into the interior of the station, which for some reason had been rendered, although it was inaccessible. I missed Number 1’s instructions on another mission and kept trying to get into a base without killing everyone around me first, because I’d gotten a little tired of that. So I died about sixteen times trying to jack a seraph, when I couldn’t.

Halo continues to be the only shooter franchise where guns do nothing, which is why my preferred weapon of choice is my fist. It’s far easier to punch an enemy to death as opposed to shooting them. It takes one to two punches as opposed to 100 bullets. This is the future, mind you, and in the future, there is no ducking for cover either. Every vehicle is easier to flip than an S.U.V.. To all this nonsense, they added jetpacks so you can Bobba Fett yourself. There’s also the new armor lock ability, which makes you invincible for a few seconds. So when you’re playing multiplayer, you have to stand around and wait until they drop their shields. At that time, you can lob a well-timed grenade at them, and they’re helpless, but one of your teammates will invariably run into the fray and get killed by it. Halo multiplayer is always friendly-fire on, so you’re constantly being betrayed by jackoffs, or else you’re using a heavy weapon and you get one of your teammates stuck in the crossfire. Too many betrayals and you can be dropped out of the game. When that happens, their networking doesn’t allow for new players to enter the game, so you’ll be short-handed for the rest of the match, which can last over fifteen minutes. So your team can be ahead, and then you look at the player list and realize you’re the only one left against a team of sixteen. This crap happens even before the game starts. You can’t even drop out of the map select menu once it starts. So if you’re sick of playing the same level endlessly, you can’t escape.

The plot is kinda lacking. You’re basically just being ordered around while the planet is being invaded. You already know by the time you put the game in that the planet gets destroyed, so what’s the point? So you take down some anti-aircraft guns and save some others. Your teammates die one-by-one in one selfless heroic act or another. Then you get “chosen,” ala Master Chief to cart Cortana’s holographic ass around. Never has any resource in a war been so overestimated. If you know Halo 3, then you know that Cortana is basically a computer program version of Princess Toadstool. She’s worthless for anything other than getting captured and needing to be rescued. Plus Master Chief has a weird sexual relationship with her, much like you do with your computer. Noble Six doesn’t even get the courtesy of a reach-around. Bear in mind: she’s a computer program. She could probably upload herself to any system wirelessly, but they haven’t figured out how the internet work in 2500. So these poor dudes have to carry her around like precious cargo, while being shot at. Thanks Cortana!