Multiplayer mayhem
MultiplayerThe multiplayer component of Halo Reach can be the most in-depth or simplest online experience depending on what you’re looking for from the game. You can jump straight into game of every man for himself "Rumble Pit," or a 4 vs 4 "Team-Slayer" battle. Alternatively, you spend hours in the Forge mode crafting your own maps and game modes. For those looking for something a little different then straight up battles there’s the return of the likes of Capture the Flag and Oddball, but there's also some new additions that, unlike ODST, make this feel much more than just an update, including plenty of new maps.
Bungie has tweaked a lot of stuff and added more customisation options. You've now got a Psyche Profile, where you answer a few questions such as "are a Chatty or Quiet player?" You can then search via these preferences while matchmaking to find games that are more suited to your tastes. This includes searching for different skill levels and even players who talk certain languages. Among some of the other changes is an improved voting system in matches, a daily and weekly challenge system, the ability to connect with friends more easily and a revamped Firefight mode that now includes a matchmaking component.
The Forge has also been improved and Forge World gives you an insane amount of customisation options at your finger-tips. Long after people have got bored with Halo Reach's maps, there should be a host of new maps created by players to delve into. Everything in multiplayer has been designed to keep you wanting to stay online to experience the vast amount that is has to offer. You could play Halo Reach for a year and still not experience everything. That, for me, is one of the marks of a truly great multiplayer experience.
Alongside some typically brilliant new maps there are reimagined versions of some of the favourite maps like Ascension (Pinnacle) and Blood Gulch (Hemorrhage,) and new game modes such as Invasion, which is similar to Rush mode in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. This is an exciting new mode that takes place on some of the larger maps such as Boneyard. It's a six versus six mode with 3 squads of two on each team. Elites vie for control of territories to disable a shield guarding a navigation core; once the shield is disabled, they must transfer the core to a dropship—the Spartans must prevent this from happening. As the mode progresses, new loadouts, vehicles, and areas of the map become open. This is on top of a staggering amount of game modes and choice at your fingertips. No other game comes close to providing the level of depth that Halo Reach does.
The addition of armour abilities and the new weapons and vehicles gives the Halo series a welcome new layer of strategy online and means that many of those players that would "own" you in previous Halo games now have to deal with the likes of "Active Camo" and the game changing "Jet-Pack." That's really just one of the many reasons why Halo Reach delivers the ultimate Halo experience. The campaign is intense, exciting and cinematic, offering more variety to the gameplay than past Halo games, but it's really the multiplayer component that elevates it beyond anything else you're likely to experience on Xbox 360 during its life-cycle. I've never awarded a game 10 out of 10 and I'm not about to change that now, but Halo Reach is just about as close to perfection as Bungie could possibly have managed.
