'Halo: Reach' delivers pinnacle 'Halo' experience

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It is, perhaps, the ultimate compliment.

Having spent much of a Friday last week locked away in my media room playing Halo: Reach for work, for a review, I returned to it over the weekend to play through the game a second time for fun.

This week I plan to spend another couple of days playing through game developer Bungie's last Halo a third time.

Among those who professionally play and critique video games, returning to a title to replay it is a rare thing.

In fact, it's something I have never done twice.

Why do I think that Halo: Reach's campaign is worth playing and replaying and replaying?

There are a lot of things about the game that make it a joy to play, but what keeps bringing me back is that the game has few dull spots.

Rarely have I found a place in the campaign, which took eight hours to complete the first time and less the second, when it lost my attention or interest.

Bungie does this by carefully avoiding the traps that the first four instalments sometimes fell into.

They avoid repeating locations or similar settings in much of the game.

Halo: Reach brings with it a set of new, game-changing, armour abilities that allow you to jetpack around some maps, or drop transparent, multifaceted shields to hide within.

Bungie also included several vehicle-based missions, which have you dogfighting in space, flying through the burning high-rise buildingss of a dying city in helicopters, and taking down armoured defence positions with a tank.

Even the foot missions include a healthy mix of goals and combat styles, sometimes requiring stealthy take-downs or sniper fire, sometimes shotgun charges or the methodical repairing of defence turrets.

And Bungie scatters these missions among a collection of more common, straightforward tasks, helping to break up the monotony sometimes found in shooter games.

This pacing combined with new gadgets, weapons and enemies, and a much more colourful and varied setting, deliver a game that is almost as enjoyable to replay as it was to experience the first time.

It seems now that Halo: Reach is Bungie's single greatest work, a game that the developer has been leading up to for nine years.

Bungie's greatest challenge will be to prove that the games it plans to make in the future do not fall in the shadow of this pinnacle moment - that Reach was not a peak, just one step closer to that one great game.

- Kotaku.com

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