Reaching for Reach...Halo that is...

This review is dedicated to the one, the only Svenzy, whose Halo skills rival that of a toddler with only half a pupil and no thumbs. DEATH OR TESTICLES!

When I leant over the counter of the gaming store I had walked in (and by walked in I mean raided {and by raided I mean killed everyone inside}) to pick up a copy of Halo Reach, I felt like I was holding history and a human head. In a sense I was holding history, but in reality I was holding a very popular game that had decided to call it a day. And a human head.

Halo was a game I had avoided for a long time. I think my first impression of Halo was unfortunately shaped by prior prejudice. The prior prejudice being that I liked good quality shoot-em ups.

That, and the shoot-em ups that I had been used to before this were Quake and Unreal Tournament. So Halo took me a little out of my reach *snigger*and proved to be a game that I really didn’t ‘get’. Going from a system where the cross-hair showed where you were shooting to having a cross hair that was a circle that went red when you were close enough but still didnt really depict where you were shooting was something I really struggled with.

Playing it now, almost a decade later, I’ve realised a two things: It doesn’t seem to have changed much and the system I once struggled with is now something I can deal with.

Playing multi-player on the same map I was in all those years ago (it’s that one in a valley and there is an ocean on one bases side and a rock face on the other bases side, no idea what it’s called, don’t care either, I’m a Viking not a cartographer) and the only difference I can see is that I’m armed with an automatic rifle instead of the assault rifle, and that I can choose to have a different load-out with differing abilities.

The abilities include camoflauge (which enabled me to blow up a tank that was destroying the shit out of our base), healing shield bubble thing, shield lock (which, for some reason, activates as you punch the ground), diversion (which creates a hologram of yourself that runs off and thus ‘diverts’ enemy fire) and a few others that I can’t remember but has no bearing on my point anyway.

The point of course being: Sprint is a special ability.

For some reason, these ‘supersoldiers’, these ‘Spartans’, can only sprint when given the added ability to. Other than that they do a particularly fast walk. What the hell? Sprinting is in EVERY good modern shooter, COD, Killzone, even that piece of crap MAG had the option of sprinting.

This might not have been so bad, if like in Unreal Tournament or Quake the map forced you reasonobly close together, but NO. I spent most of my first games in Halo running around giant maps just to find where the enemy base might be before getting killed and making the same two minute hike to getting where I needed to be to get killed, again and again. Maybe I’m just used to COD, where your enemies are never more than a 15 second sprint from wherever you are. Maybe I’m used to Unreal where the maps were a reasonable size, and if there was a larger map all I simply had to do was jump and cover an enormous distance to shorten the gap between myself and my target or simply run the normal speed which suited the gameplay and level environment.

Having said that, I find the game fun. It’s in no way ground-breaking or adrenaline inducing (like COD or Killzone or Unreal), but it’s fun. It’s the shooter you play to relax.

The campaign, on the other hand, is the first campaign in a shooter I have thoroughly enjoyed playing. To those who don’t know, I have never finished or really enjoyed a shooter’s campaign. I don’t see the point when multi-player is right there and is the real testament to your skills.

But playing the campaign, albeit with a friend, was enormously entertaining. We all know that games are better multi-player, but this was different. It was simultaneously competitive and co-operative, we had the joy of killing aliens (who were thankfully REAL aliens for once and not just the most unpopular race on earth at the time) and got to drive around in some fun-to-use vehicles.

But once again, the game isn't hugely exciting. It's like raiding a knitting club; you raid it when you feel like raiding but don't want to make a real commitment to the bloodshed (needles still hurt though).

The game itself is immaterial in this review, as everyone thinks it's fun and it got all these great reviews etc etc, BUT, what's being left out is this:

I have no video to put online.

Why? One reason is that I am too lazy to figure out how to do the whole recording with the wires and the usb and the Xbox and whatnot, and the other is that the game has an in-game recorder.

I thought, booyeh, I can regularly post any awesome kills I get. And there is a small chance I might be able to do this... as long as I buy a Bungie subscription.

What the fuck is wrong with Microsoft? I'm sick of their bullshit. Their Xbox didnt have wireless in it when released, which even the Wii had (despite it only having the power and of a Gen 1 gaming machine) and they then wanted you to buy an external wireless adaptor for 150 bucks. They then wanted you to pay extra to get online to then pay for services and games online.

Fuck you Microsoft, and fuck you Bungie. I recorded my game, I want to put it on my website. I'm not even sure if I could do it had I subscribed to the Bungie membership system, and I know that you could only view it had you also been a Bungie subscriber.

I dont understand the squeezing of the extra dollars. Halo is a massive franchise, they made 200 million in the first 24 hours for Reach. I just want to put the tank I blew up online, and that awesome headshot I scored against the guy driving on the opposite end of the battlefield (both true accounts).

The reason that Halo has sold so many copies and is so poluar is because it's suitable for a larger age group then COD or Killzone or such games. Why, just today there was some stupid kid from New Zealand refusing to shut the fuck up about him working at McDonalds and asking me if I wanted a big mac. That boy alone could kill New Zealands tourism industry which is the only thing keeping their economy going to begin with.

Halo is simultaneously a pain in my muscular Viking arse and a game that I would love to play if I had more friends on Xbox live.

I'm going to give it a 3 out of 5 and a mention that if a Spartan and a Viking got in a fight, the Spartan would be murdered so hard Greece would sink.

Til next time, the gamer with horns on his hat.

PS. If you didnt know the Viking Gamer got into the Game Informer, you do now. Seeing as this months Game Informer didn't have a new 'Next Big Critic' (amatuer writers section) I can only assume that my article was so great that no-one else thought they could live up to its standard and thus did not submit their feeble articles.