Atomic has had a chance to play through the first few hours of Halo: Reach, and we likes what we sees.
Bungie is no stranger to first-person shooters on Microsoft's Xbox 360, and they helped it launch with the release of Halo 3 - a title that reached critical acclaim, selling over ten million copies and hitting a billion multiplayer matches in March of last year. But stranger than this huge success was the release of Halo: ODST; though ODST had similar commercial success and sold two million units in a single day, it was not up to the same quality bar that Halo 3 reached, a star-studded cast failing to balance out the disappointingly short campaign that left us wanting more.
Luckily for us Bungie had another ace up their sleeve: after finishing Halo 3, the development team was split into two groups. One would work on ODST, and one went on to create what we recently had a chance to sit down and play, Halo: Reach. Eschewing the mighty boots of the iconic Master Chief and avoiding the somewhat trembley sneakers of ODST's Rookie, Reach puts us in the very tough boots of another Spartan, Noble 6, otherwise nicknamed 'Six'. Clever, huh?
Six is part of an entire Spartan team based on the human planet of Reach, which is the most important military planet for the United Nations Space Command, and the place where the war effort against the Covenant is coordinated. Playing not as a one-man Chiefy army but as part of a squad, the other five Spartans will be around throughout the campaign, with commander 'Carter-A259' sending you off at various points for specific tasks, such as "wipe out that base" or "go up in space".
Sitting down in front of a shiny Xbox Slim at the recent Kinect launch (console cable-tied to prevent access to the disc drive), we grabbed a controller and sat down to the opening cinematic. Immediately noticeable is the engine: though it is quite definitely the same as used in Halo 3, it's been completely revamped to pack in more textures, more models and more effects on-screen than our eyeballs could soak in at any one time. Watching a transport full of Spartans fly across a very visually-detailed landscape was pure hedonism, and as we landed, we were slowly given access to the now-classic Halo controls.
They've been tightened and polished since Halo 3, and controlling Six is easier than running over pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto. We're drip-fed controls over the course of five minutes without a forced in-your-face tutorial, until learning that our Spartan team has been dispatched to a facility on the planet that isn't responding to calls. UNSC command figures that either everyone is on a coffee break, or they've all been killed by the Covenant, so we're sent in to check up on them.
And, as always, they're all dead.
So it's our job to clear out the Covenant, but rather than sticking to the same old guns we're used to in Halo 3, there's a whole range of new or updated models included. Amongst these are the Needle Rifle, which causes unshielded enemies to explode if hit three times; the Plasma Repeater, an updated Plasma Rifle that slows down rather than overheating until reloaded; and the Grenade Launcher, which either explodes on impact or can bounce and explode once detonated by the release of the trigger, also blasting an EMP pulse that strips enemies of shields.
These weapons feel tighter than an Olympic-class swimsuit stretched over taut buttocks, and the punchy explosions are masterfully complemented by the powerful crack of the sniper rifle. It's more of the same, but something completely new, too.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012