Dan McCarthy
Journal Contributor

The Halo franchise has finally come full circle- and that pun was most certainly intended.

September 14, 2010 marked the release of Halo: Reach (2010, Bungie), the prequel to the Halo trilogy and the end of the love affair between Bungie and one of the most successful gaming franchises in history.  As Sergeant Avery Johnson would have wanted, they sent it off with a bang.

Before I give my spiel here, let me just say that I am not a Halo “fanboy,” if you will.  I don’t crawl into bed in my Master Chief jammies, I don’t have a pin-up of Cortana in my bedroom, and my life isn’t narrated by the guy who says “SLAYER” before every multiplayer match.  If anything, I was skeptical of Bungie’s latest and final addition to the Halo series.  I, like many others, was disappointed with the final product of Halo 3: ODST (2009, Bungie), and wasn’t going to accept any less than the exceptional to throw down 60 big ones for Halo Reach.   Fortunately for all of us, Bungie went beyond exceptional, and made one of the best games to hit this year.

Halo Reach is a prequel to Halo: Combat Evolved (2001, Bungie), the Xbox classic that forever changed the first-person-shooter genre, and no, you are not playing as Master Chief.  You are Noble 6, the young stud sent in to replace a fallen solider in the Noble crew.  The Noble crew is a group of Marine super-soldiers known as Spartans, and they are the last of their kind aside from the Chief himself.  Your crew’s mission is to help protect the final and strongest interstellar human colony in the universe- Planet Reach.

Protect them from whom? Why, the Covenant of course!  The Covenant is an alien race that uses religion as an excuse to exterminate entire species from existence.  Imagine Nazis with spaceships and you’ll understand the severity of the situation.  Anyway, the Covenant have landed on Reach in search for important information, and to blow everything to hell while they do it.

Without spoiling any of the game itself, it is common knowledge to followers of the Halo franchise that the story of Reach is a tragic one.  It is also common knowledge that by the beginning of Halo: Combat Evolved, the Master Chief is the only remaining Spartan in the universe, so do the math.   Although the final result is known, the events leading up to it are truly remarkable, making Reach one of the most exciting, pulse-pounding and heart-wrenching stories in the Halo universe.

The multiplayer in Reach is, simply put, glorious.  You can really tell that Bungie wanted to make their final Halo game one that wouldn’t be put down for quite some time, and I can safely say that their goal was accomplished.  The weapon selection is vast and greatly improved from Halo 3 (2007, Bungie), and the addition of power-ups like jetpacks and a sprinting ability adds a much-needed variety to the system.  I will say that the starting multiplayer levels were a bit of a disappointment.  I found myself playing the same maps over and over due to the sheer size of the other levels.  Matches that started as ‘slayer’ finished as hide-and-seek, with our radars looking more desolate and empty than a library on the Jersey Shore.  However, these problems would be nonexistent on a 16-player online match, so it really just depends on “the situation” (Achievement Unlocked- 2 Jersey Shore references in 1 paragraph).

So with a riveting 12-15 hour campaign, an immense online experience, and the return of popular gaming modes like forge, theatre, and firefight, there is no reason for you to NOT pick up the final installment of the beloved Halo franchise.   You will remember Reach.