4 Reasons I’m looking forward to Halo Reach

Yep, it’s out today (at 00:00 hrs tech­nic­ally), and no, I don’t have a copy, yet.

My wife and I have been big fans of the Halo fran­chise since we star­ted play­ing it co-op on the ori­gin­al Xbox years ago when it came out. Multi-play­er was nev­er our thing, but co-op, now there’s fun.

So yes, I’ll be pick­ing it up soon, and yes, there will be many even­ings when we’re ensconced in our base­ment, a nice romantic fire, and the gentle sound of gun­fire and gren­ades — good times.

And here’s four reas­ons why:

1. Huge storyline and story
Though this is the last Halo game that Bungie (the game’s developers) will be pro­du­cing, Halo Reach actu­ally takes place earli­er in the series story arc — weeks before the events por­trayed in Halo: Com­bat evolvled, the first Halo game.

By being a sort-of pre­quel, I’m expect­ing to under­stand more of the game uni­verse — and will also cause me to dust off my Halo, Halo2 and Halo 3 discs to play through those games again. I don’t have ODST, but am temp­ted to pick it up to be a completionist 

2. Famil­i­ar uni­verse and gameplay
As I men­tioned above, I’m famil­i­ar with the Halo exper­i­ence. This means I don’t really have to learn a new con­trol sys­tem, learn how to nav­ig­ate the world, and how enemies react. I’m guess­ing that’s 30% of the learn­ing curve, and I’ve already got it down. Bring it on!

3. Co-op
The BEST part of the Halo series so far. Co-op game­play lets you and friends help each oth­er through the chal­lenges of the game. Halo was really the first FPS my wife and I could enjoy togeth­er. Gears of War also does this well, but Halo has a spe­cial place in my heart as a thing we can do ‘togeth­er’.

4. Qual­ity
Game after game, Bungie has won awards for each ver­sion of Halo, all of them point to a qual­ity title that doesn’t dis­ap­point. No mat­ter what my level of FPS skill was, the Halo series always man­aged to chal­lenge and keep me entertained.

Well, I’m sure there are more good reas­ons for check­ing it out, but for me those are the big ones. How ‘bout you? Why will you be pick­ing up Halo Reach?

This post of is one of many I pub­lish weekly at the Future Shop Techb­log. Read more of my stuff here.