2/5 ★ – QuilDewIvy's review of Halo: Reach.

I can't believe people just ate up Bungie regurgitating the same twists, setups, and level layouts but much worse and said mmm that was tasty can I please have some more? It's the most hoo-rah of the Halos and also the most shallow story-wise, despite being a 'tragedy' of sorts, with the weird implicit misogyny death point, and the uh blatant bullshit the game grabs out of nowhere to act like we have stakes here. Just no character worth a damn, and this is after ODST, where there was like all of that, which just makes things more bizarre. The gameplay is very barebones too, with the campaign consistently 80% of the time of weak arenas with very basic enemies that demonstrate the worst AI use in the series. Like a solid majority of encounters here are just areas that are more designed for the Firefight game-mode, with just 'waves' of enemies that aren't interesting to fight or route around. The pacing of the levels are weak too, with a lot of key points that feel like they should be interesting ending really quick, and a bunch of shit gimmicks. Like what's up with that plane mission, or the several turret sequences, or the obsession with 'defend this spot from waves.' The multiplayer is also at its most disgusting here too, with a lot of the deep elements that showed up in the Beta and 1.0 being taken out wholesale real quickly by balance patches, with genuinely stupid binary decisions like Armor Lock being mainstays that affect the strategy to be more middling. Forge mode is good, but your options are now limited to a single aesthetic map, really highlighting the soulless husk that Reach represents, honestly. I think the most obvious example that Reach multiplayer is not built to last, that it's not interesting enough on its own, that even the MLG components are lackluster, is that during the MCC's additions on PC that came out after the player numbers for Reach matchmaking fucking tanked. No seriously, I'm accounting for 2/3 popularity too, even with 1 people just wanted to drop it. People are still playing 2 multiplayer on MCC. At least the constant of the music being incredible is here, really the only saving grace besides the general aesthetic. The worst Halo game to me.