You’ve survived the covenant threat as Master Chief, you’ve managed to save the city of New Mombasa as a team of O.D.S.T’s but now prepare to face your biggest challenge yet as the Noble Team.

          Planet Reach, the home to the UNSC’s Spartan super soldiers. In this latest instalment you play as Noble 6, a Spartan super soldier in the year 2552 (set before all of the previous Halo titles). You start the game by being dropped onto the planet Reach to investigate a distress beacon, thinking that it may be ‘rebels’ causing trouble, you decide to go and check it out. After searching around and talking to locals you find that the ‘rebels’ are the least of your problems, say hello to your old friends…The Covenant.

          The game play of reach has taken more of a retro turn in the fact that it leans more towards the original Halo: Combat Evolved than any of the later titles. Also there have been a few major changes to the equipment from the earlier instalments, for example you can’t dual wield weapons like we’ve seen before, however to make up for that Bungie have added new armour abilities which do help against the covenant forces. There are 5 basic armour abilities to choose from through the main campaign as follows; Jet-pack, Armor Lock, Sprint, Hologram and Active Camouflage. Each ability helps in different ways and all also have a downside. With the Sprint armor ability you can’t use your weapon until you’ve either finished sprinting or stop, Jet-pack makes you more obvious to the enemy (flying to a huge open space and you’re going to get slaughtered), Armor lock is good because it makes you temporarily invincible however you’re immobile for this time, Hologram may fool you’re opponents once, maybe even twice but sooner or later they’ll find where the holograms are coming from and Active camouflage makes you invisible to the naked eye but it plays havoc with your radar and shows enemy blips surrounding you when nobodies even there.

          As opposed to Halo 3, the character customisation aspects have been greatly improved. Any modification you make to your character will be shown on the cut scenes of campaign no matter what you do. The amount of detail you can go into in the armoury is astonishing from putting a Tactical GPS on your forearm to putting a Med pack on your thigh. This is a huge reason to replay the game or play online to fit in with the new credit gaining aspect. Each time you complete something whether it’s campaign missions or firefight (yes, we still have it) you gain credits towards purchasing new equipment from the armoury. Also with the new added feature of commendations to work towards there’s no way you can miss out on gaining credits. Whilst playing online in the previous games you progressed through the ranks based on experience points earned after each game, Reach is based purely on the credits and how many you gain. Each rank requires a certain amount of credits in order to progress, so it’s only natural that each higher rank needs a higher amount of credits in order to build upwards.

          Overall the storyline alone makes Halo: Reach worth the wait but the new features that have been added make it more fun to play and gives you more ways to go about taking on challenging obstacles. I’d give it a rating of 9/10 just because of the vast online and in-game properties that haven’t been seen previously in the series.

There’s only one thing left to say…Welcome to Reach.