Halo: Reach, touchdown

With the arrival of Halo: Reach brings a huge smile to the faces of literally millions of fans, across 25 countries worldwide. Reach is a first-person shooter video game which was developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 console. Its more of a prequel as this is the 4th installment of the series but the setting is prior to that of Halo: Combat Evolved where, in the year 2552, the whole of humanity is locked in a war with the alien Covenant on the human colony of Reach weeks prior to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. Players control Noble 6 who is a member of an elite supersoldier squad during the battle for the world of Reach as the Covenant begin their assault on the planet.

Overall the Halo series has managed to sell over a whopping 34 million copies worldwide, and all Halo merchandise has grossed more than $1.7 billion!

This new installment in the Halo series is a massive leap forward with regards to the technology involved in its production. With the war between fans of the Sony’s Playstation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 still ever rampant, Halo Reach may finally place both consoles on a level playing field with the likes of Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2, as both these games have been highly praised for both their presentation and gameplay. As well as this, many of the original features have been carried over from Halo 3 and improved upon such as Forge. This is a level editor where maps can be designed almost from scratch. These new levels can then be saved and used in multiplayer matches and even allows you to use it online and invite aother players to take part.

From viewing trailers and gameplay footage, the graphics seem crisp and smooth. Usually games either give out sweet graphics but sacrifice frame rate and at other, more unfortunate times, display fantastic frame rates but skimp on the polygons used. But the arrival of this bastion of a game could provide both in amazing ways and show what the xbox 360 is truly capable of.

With all this and much, much more in mind, Halo: Reach could quite easily boost the entire series to near astronomical heights, not forgetting the fact that the multiplayer beta for Reach logged over 1 million players with its first 24 hours. Not too shabby I’d say.