The Weekend and My Comments on Halo: Reach

Well it's finally the weekend, and I get to relax. Took some exams this week, saw the Spurs lose 3 times in a row, and played some of that new Halo: Reach. I was kind of skeptical while playing Halo: Reach for the first time but I grew to really enjoy the experience. At first it seemed incredibly familiar to Halo 3 but I was wrong, sort of. The graphics are pretty much the same, but other then that there have been some great new improvements. The character seems much more heavier, staying true to the fact that you aren't a super spartan like the Master Chief. There has been some button remapping but it seems to work out pretty well as you play more of it. It's also necessary to replenish your health with health packs now, in addition to waiting for your shield to regenerate which adds some more complexity to the gameplay.

Now to the awesome features... Halo: Reach now has what the call "armor abilities," which can be selected in the beginning of a match or new respawn. The primary armor abilities are: Guard, Scout, Stalker, and Airborne. Guard is an interesting one. With Guard, your Spartan plants himself to the ground, allowing a small shield to protect him. During this limited amount of time, your Spartan becomes completely invincible, capable of deflecting rockets, grenades, and gunfire; even possibly ricocheting the rocket to hit the target who shot you. While this is great, it also has it's disadvantages. While active, it's quite obvious you have this ability on; it's loud, bright, and powerful, which leaves you vulnerable to being attacked after the time is up. It's perfect however if your in a tight spot and a grenade or such is thrown at you.

Stalker allows the Spartan to be able to activate active camo for a limited amount of time, as well as scramble the enemy's radar when they are near you. It's perfect for the type of person who loves to assassinate and sneak up on people, especially with the cool new assassination animations. The thing you have to consider with stalker however, is that whenever you walk your camo is less effective, and becomes completely ineffective once shooting or chugging a grenade, so you have to be careful and sneaky with this one.

Airborne is another interesting ability that will tempt you to try out immediately. I mean... it's a freaking a jetpack. Your spartan can now have the ability to fly in the air for a temporary amount of time with the jetpack. Now the advantages of having a jetpack are pretty obvious; being able to kill your enemy from above, get to locations others cannot, and traveling to specific locations faster. The one thing you have to keep in mind here is that the amount of time you have to power your jet pack is short if you hold it down for a long time, so it's best to fly in spurts once it gets around half way till the power is out. Flying in the air also makes you quite vulnerable (no kidding, right?). Despite these disadvantages, the jetpack proves to be quite valuable.

My favorite however, is the Scout loadout. It's incredibly simple, yes, but it is (in my opinion), the most effective and useful armor ability. With the Scout loadout you simply have the ability to sprint for a limited amount of time. The sprinting is surprisingly very fast, and helps you evade dangerous situations easily. It can also be very, very useful in the Headhunter game type. Headhunter is the game mode in which you kill your foe and receive their skull. You can kill multiple enemies and steal their skulls as well, so you may return various amounts of skulls to the specified scoring points. When you have a couple of skulls there's nothing better than being able to sprint your Spartan quickly to the scoring points, dodging gunfire and such in this hectic gametype.

I know I emphasized a lot of my comments of Halo: Reach on the armor abilities, but that's what I consider to be the most important and new feature, along with the gametypes which I might cover later. It's looking promising so far, and considering this is just the beta, I'm even more anticipated for the full retail game. At the moment, I got my eyes on Red Dead Redemption and Halo: Reach. They are, for me, a must have. If you haven't read up on Red Dead Redemption, I urge you to take a look at it.

So, so far a pretty good weekend. Got to try out the newest installment to the Halo series, might see Iron Man 2 today, and it's been pretty relaxing so far. Now if only the Spurs would win a damn game. Last night's game was pretty frustrating, but hats off to the Phoenix Suns, for surprising us with their talents this year, and hats off to Dragic who had an incredible game last night that he'll never forget.

Until next time,
- Marcus