Halo Reach
It's a good game, but the high scores out there calling this a masterpiece seem to be overrated. From all the segments, the one near the end when you have to defend the doors of the laboratory was the highest ranked one for me. I think that the developers were tired after making Halo CE, 2, 3 and ODST. According to their contract, one more Halo game was required and for the last one they pushed in directions that they didn't in the previous games.
I loved the soundtrack, the dialogues and the cutscenes. The story is short and shows what happened right before Halo CE. The player already know that Reach is a planet that is going to be devastated. The scope of the game is clearly smaller than the main trilogy. I could see a steady progression as the game puts you under different scenarios such as helicopters, tanks, factories, large scale weapons, different types of enemies and a fun battle outside the planet's atmosphere. I guess the press rated this game between 9 and 10 because the devs pushed the game into providing multiple battles with awesome environments.
Gameplay wise and design wise I can't help it, but notice some things that I don't think are that excellent. If I compare Halo Reach to Wolfenstein 2009, F.E.A.R. 2, Shadow Warrior reboot, Quake IV and other titles from the time. Halo Reach offers great environments, a compelling story and fun battles. Halo was one of the games that began this thread of bringing cinematic experiences to games. With the game being short I think that they threw in as many as ideas and combat scenarios as they could to push themselves to bring their time working with Halo for so long to a decent closure. You don't have a complex story with multiple grand scale battles. The different battle scenarios felt more a showcase of their tech and trying out ideas that didn't make their way in the other halo games. In Halo 2 and 3 the story was more tightly integrated with the different combat scenes.
I often found myself lost and this was caused by the level design. Many FPS that I played employ techniques such as blocking paths with debris, force the player to a certain direction by means of incoming fire, use lights that draw your attention, among other techniques. Factories, houses, towers and the landscape itself often leave the player totally free to explore. There is more than one entrance for example. Or the road in outdoor scenes bifurcates and there is no scripted event, enemies or dialogues to guide you there. This is why I often ended running in circles trying to find the objective. The following may be my own fault, but I've noticed that in many places what guides you is some NPC and you have to follow it. Due to the open nature of each environment I'd often wander around and disregard the NPC.
Certain design decisions didn't resonate well with me. First, the story is set before Halo CE and this created a technological paradox. It's the last Halo of the gen, but with the game's story being set before Halo CE, the technology in the game's lore is less advanced. I didn't like the decision to have to drop your weapon once the ammo is depleted. Why didn't they place ammo boxes? In Halo Reach the shield with auto regen hasn't been yet developed. There are some powers available, but you have to pick up one and you can't carry more than one with you. The HUD is so crude, why didn't they made a prettier HUD?
The icon "[X]" to activate something. It's pretty much a standard in many gams. In Halo Reach they did place it in the beginning of the game, but afterwards they skip it. This creates a confusion where I'd often become lost because I'd not notice the damn thing that requires player interaction. This includes the dialogues, they could have added instructions on what to do but often they say something along the lines "go there and help them" without providing more details.
I don't know if migrating their game to UE3 was an option, because Halo was more or less on the same level of UE2 games. The buildings and houses in Halo Reach were so empty, lacking furniture and more decoration.
