Addendum – Halo: Reach 1

by Adam Blue • Editorial

I’ve had a lot more time with Halo: Reach. After clearing the campaign I continued to play online due to all of my friends doing it. I then found a neat little section in the menu. Challenges. Oh yes, now I’m being challenged. This has brought me back into Halo full-swing. I love having objectives, and these meta objectives only satisfy that requirement even more. But with the additional playing of Reach, I’ve come to embrace the mechanics in a way so that I now know how to play this Halo. Some powers normally not used, I’ve found a use for depending on game-type or enemy play-style.

Melee attacks now have less usability. Either health has to be down very low, or you’ll be trading a couple of blows with your nemesis. The 1-hit kill assassinations have a few seconds of animation, allowing an ally to save you. It’s easier to sticky someone; there looks to be a hitbox over the models that, if looked at closely, will show a plasma grenade home-in on a target if off by a little. That’s fine with me, as splash damage has seemed to take hit. You can get away with close-range rocket attacks, and typically survive a couple close-range grenade explosions.

The game has certainly changed from Halo 3. I played a ton of Halo 2, and very little Halo 3. But Reach has redeemed itself, and even included a nice voting system instead of vetoing. Though, I have a HUGE complaint.

Picking a Team Slayer playlist, games typically end up being SWAT or Snipers – even on large maps with 4-on-4. No. No, no, no, no. This ruins it for me. This game type has its place, but not in a Slayer playlist. It’s a totally different type of game and not what I wanted to do at the time. I would QUIT games out of spite when the game type showed up more than once. Fix it Bungie. Fucking make SWAT/Snipers its own game type.

Quitting. See, that’s a problem. People that want to play SWAT/Snipers are then angered at me. But during game types I enjoy, people quit ALL THE TIME. This proved the playlists need to be narrowed down a bit. And the penalty for quitting? After a couple quits, it’s like a 15min temp ban. Once they fix the playlists I suggest removal of credits and ban.

As much as I’m digging Reach, that may change with the release of games coming up. Dead Rising 2, I’m looking at you.

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