Halo: Reach for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

The campaign is, as promised, essentially non-stop action. You will clear rooms of dozens of enemies, fighting considerably greater numbers of elites (and later, brutes) per skirmish as well. Indeed, the battles certainly fall short of the full-scale bloodbath many professional reviews claim they were playing through, but that's simply the consequence of their reviewer nature. The increase in general difficulty is nearly negligible especially when adding a friend; it seems more appropriate to say that there are certain (but few) situations in which you will find it hard to keep your controller in one piece, while playing solo on legendary.

Armor upgrades seemed neat at first, but despite looking as if they could mean getting a greater grenade capacity (max of 2 each), or more ammo... no, aesthetics only. This won't really add to the replay appeal for most people.

The environments are gorgeous, especially for Halo which never seems to use fully up-to-date graphics engines, and for once, ears on characters don't look like totally garbage design. Framerate is good even in the most action-filled moments, but there are several cutscenes in which character models lag and superimpose frames, creating distracting blur effects. The music is well done as well, with the exception of a song with a constant beeping noise, that is incredibly annoying. Voice acting for the vast majority of characters is well done, but there are certainly a few bad eggs (Marine commander calling for help in the second mission stands out). Kat is nearly impossible to understand: "Carter!" will have you ducking thinking she's yelled "Snipers" or "Hunters."

The story is definitely polished, well executed, believable, and literally does take you to the first moments of the original Halo. One team member makes it off Reach alive, but you never learn what happens to him after he departs--you know he made it based on the appearance of another character in the previous titles that he escorts.