Halo Reach Thoughts

Halo Reach is being unleashed on the gaming community in the near future.  Somehow it's kind of fallen off  my radar, but the release date is coming up so it's time to figure out if I plan on buying it.

You see, I own all the Halo games and have gotten most of them on release day, but this year I have a baby on the way and money is a little more tight, so I really need to consider a new game before I go drop $60 on it.

My main concern is that Halo has already been done to death.  Since Halo: Combat Evolved (the first game in the series) Halo hasn't changed all that much.  They designed the Golden Triangle of melee, guns, and grenades in a first person shooter and each iteration of the series from that point on has only introduced minor tweaks or graphics upgrades.  Besides breaking multiplayer balance in Halo 2 the games are all very similar.

For the most part Halo Reach looks like more of the same.  The improvements this time around are more units in the environment at the same time and the addition of special powers built into the armor of the main characters.  I really like the idea of huge battles with hundreds of units on screen at the same time, if it's implemented well it might make the game worthy of a purchase.  Besides that, most of the other tweaks to gameplay aren't earth shattering or utterly game changing.

As the release date draws near I'm going to dive into more Halo Reach impressions, reviews, and hands-on testing to see if I think it's worth buying.  But, if the Halo formula is the same thing it always is, this might be the first Halo game I don't buy on day one.

For more Halo content look back at my Halo Reach beta impressions or my brother's post on how the battle rifle completely broke the fun in the Halo series' multiplayer.