This time, a game that I actually play online! Incroyable! And a collection of games I used to play in the arcades when the Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter cabinets were full. Enjoy!
Halo: Reach
- Platform: Xbox 360
- Release Date: 9/14/10 (2 weeks behind!)
- Achievements: 1000/1000 Before DLC
- Playthroughs: 4+ @ 80+ hours
- I compare it to: Low Fat Halo (Now with Jetpacks!)
- Play it again? Yeah, too fun not to.
If you haven't already read about my history with the Halo franchise in the review for Halo 3: ODST, I'd suggest taking a quick look at that. Ok, so, Halo:Reach. I'm actually going to break with one of my conventions here and first, talk about *gasp!* multiplayer!
Aside from being the best free game I ever got (you'll have to ask me about this if you don't already know), Reach was remarkable in another sense: I've probably played more Reach online than any other game. Why? Several reasons. One, the Halo formula was extremely strong to begin with and it's only gotten better over the years. Reach actually incorporates some of the mechanics from Halo 2 (my previous multiplayer favorite) that I loved that were missing from Halo 3 (no more sword nerf!), along with the great addition of armor abilities, including, wait for it, the JETPACK! That + Rockets = Hours of Fun. And some other things too. (Play Firefight mode Gruntpocalypse. You won't be disappointed.)
Two: The credit system and daily/weekly challenges provide a lot of incentive to keep playing an already excellent game. Credits are earned for playing all modes of the game (including the now excellent co-op Firefight mode), and finally buying that Firefight voice (get Buck!) or Armor Effect you've been saving up for is a great feeling.
And Three: Halo is the franchise I'm probably best at online. In CoD, I die a LOT. I progress only through sheer attrition and only play team based games. In Halo, I often do free for all, and I often win. No other game gives me the sheer ego boost that comes with a 30+ kill count at the end of a match. Yes, I just said I like it because I'm good at it. At least I'm honest.
Now, the things I usually discuss.
The Reach campaign takes place on the doomed UNSC military base planet of, wait for it, Reach. Die hard Halo fans know this period in the Halo timeline as the events leading up to the first game, and those of us who read The Fall of Reach (or if you just read that book title) know that it will not end well.
You play as Noble Six, the FNG in a fireteam of Spartans. Thankfully, you're neither mute, nor a rookie. You're just new to this team and say little, which I'll gladly accept after a year of way too many laconic neophytes. Six joins Noble team right as the Covenant begin their invasion of the human population center / military stronghold planet (In retrospect, maybe we shouldn't have put those in the same place. Hmmmm. Live and learn). Fighting through the advance scouts, Noble team discovers that the Covenant is after something other than just the annihilation of the planet's population, and they're willing to launch a full scale invasion to get it.
Like multiplayer, the Reach campaign streamlines the established Halo formula, giving us more of the things that have been great about the series and less of what's been dragging it down. You won't find a single Flood spore in Reach, and I couldn't be happier about that. There's even a very well executed space combat sequence (I haven't loved it so much since Rogue Squadron), whose only real flaw lies in it's unfortunate brevity. Reach also has several great new weapons, some of which I think should have been around since the beginning. The needle rifle and grenade launcher are great fun, but none beat my personal favorite, the DMR, (I like to think that it stands for Deathifying Murdermachine Rifleocalypse, or even just Death Making Rifle, but I'm sure there's a more canon appropriate Back-ronym floating around out there.) a closed bolt, semi-automatic engine of optimal headshot production. Seriously, if you can't pull off a headshot with this thing, there is no hope for you.
After playing the campaign through a few missions, you will notice that the tone is far more serious than the rest of the series. Though Noble Six and his teammates score some significant victories against the alien invaders, the significance quickly dwindles as the odds become more and more overwhelming. Reach surprised me not only with the tone, but with the connection it manages to forge with it's characters. Six is about as developed as Master Chief ever was, but the time you spend around Carter, Kat, Jorge, Jun, and Emile (you do at least one mission fighting alongside each), and the feeling like you're beginning to know them makes the moment when each meets their fate almost devastating.
A quick note for the hardcore geeks out there. If you're wondering if Reach is unwaveringly true to the canon established in the book, don't worry, it ISN'T. So just accept that right now.
Between the darker tone, the multi-dimensional characters (some of the best in the series, IMHO), and the overall improvement in storytelling, Bungie has set a new bar for the series that made the Xbox and Xbox 360 as successful as they are. Too bad it's the developer's last Halo. Most likely, that means it will be mine too. I refuse to put money on that, however.
Samurai Shodown Anthology
- Platform: PSP
- Release Date: 3/10/09 (1 1/2 years behind!)
- Trophies: None!
- Playthoughs: >1 @ >1 hour
- I compare it to: That game I occasionally used to play. 6 times.
- Play it again: Nope, I've had my fill.
I have fond memories of Samurai Shodown. Between playing it for a few minutes at a time when I was tired of Mortal Kombat at the arcade and my friend's Super Nintendo, I had a lot of good times slicing and dicing as badass ninja Hanzo. No one else was really worth playing, I thought. So, it was with this same vibrant enthusiasm that I queued up Samurai Shodown Anthology. Not having a terribly compelling interest in the series as a whole, I decided to play my favorite character up as far as I could without losing in each iteration. 1 and 2 were about as fun as I remember (complete with 90's spraying blood if you score a lethal strike at the end of a match, and if you're REALLY awesome, cutting your opponent in two, although the level of detail was limited to a severed sprite which flashed into oblivion.), although nostalgia does tend to lose some of its color to the harsh bleach of reality. 3 onwards were simply exercises in repetition with minor tweaks, and no dismembered sprites. I lost interest and sent it back. If you lived and died for these games in the 90's, I'd buy this right now. Otherwise, a (short) rental will do you just fine.
Next Time! Cape CoD!
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