The Fall of Reach

No, this is not about the book ‘Fall of Reach’. This is not even about how the planet Reach falls in the game. This is about what will make Halo: Reach fall, as a game. For the first time today since I got Reach on launch, I quit out of a game because I was so pissed of what was happening.

I was playing SWAT on Countdown trying to complete the daily challenge of killing 10 people with a head shot in one game. Not really a problem there. I average 15 to 20 kills per match in the SWAT game type. This particular match I was faced with a team of all Captains. From the start I could see something was off due to the fact there DMR’s were firing like AR’s. They stood in one spot, never moved and never died. Everyone on my team quit except myself and another guy. When the score reached 37 to 0 I had enough. So I quit. Now, I have all these thoughts in my head about trading the game away. Not because I seen some guys cheating, but there are more things that bother me about Reach than running across a cheater.

When I played the game in the beta I never really seen anything that I thought would hurt the game. On September 14 when the game launched I was surprised to see just how wrong I was. To start with all the spawns are just, wrong. I have had so many people either spawn in front of me or behind me or sometimes just on me. I thought to myself that it will be fixed in an update. The game is only a little over a month old. It was not till about 3 days ago I finally figured out that the spawns can’t be fixed. It’s the level designs that are the problem. The way the levels are designed it does not allow for you to always have a clean spawn. Then in thinking about the levels, I realized that almost every MP level in the game is from the campaign. The levels that are not from campaign have simply just been made by Bungie in Forge World.

It’s not just the level designs and spawns that are upsetting. Take a look at the armory. Everything is insanely priced. Obviously Bungie did not make the Armour options for people who only play the game on occasion. You have to eat, sleep and live Reach to ever get to any of the cool stuff. I have around 38% of the armory and have spent over 200,000 cR (credits). That is only buying helmets and chest pieces. I think that it’s insanely sad that Halo 3 was ruined by the Halo players itself and I thought that those same people would ruin Reach eventually. The way it looks though, Bungie will be what kills Reach, not the community.

So the question I’m faced with now is simple. Do I trade this game for another such as Fable 3 or something else I want? Do I wait till the rank cap and DLC comes out to see if any of these problems are fixed? I got to tell you, Fable 3 sounds pretty damn good right now.

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Author: Eric Baumgardner View all posts by
I operate this site. I also have been gaming for 23 years. I am an Xbox LIVE Ambassador and an Xbox Community Xpert. Need anything find me on Twitter @junegore or email me at junegore@jgghgames.com