Reach. Why?
Short Version: Players were fighting against the game more than they ever were compared to other versions while fighting players.
Long version: Bloom made inconsistancies, and allowed luck to be a factor in the outcome of a match(How many times were you took your time to keep the bloom low enough for the target to make all your shots count, while the enemy spammed and killed you faster than he should have?). Even with the bloom removed, it showed that Bungie didn’t really put alot of thought into the game’s weapon balance.
Many AAs became necessities due to map design(Countdown and Sprint. Swordbase/Caged and Jetpack), while making some of them not used frequently due to having no effect if the player used them incorrectly or if players know what is happening immediately.
Vehicles blew up really easily, and can flip frequently. Banshee was overpowered with its quick flips and fast reload speed.
Map designs on most maps were not good. Caged’s bridge design limited players movements a large majority of the time, giving players hardly any room for navigation and forcing them to take jet pack to get it back. Sword Base’s top level allowed camping to be easy, while spawning close to a Concussion rifle and a plasma pistol that can make things hard(note: Not impossible) to clear them out.
AAs just weren’t balanced. Sprint allowed quick exits due to no slow-down. Jetpack didn’t mesh well with large maps by screwing over map flow or sometimes making them mandatory due to the way the map was designed. Active Camo lasted too long, Hologram was nearly useless, and -Yoink- armor lock and it preventing players the most bad–Yoink- thing to do with vehicles: Running them over and making them part of the hood of a warthog.
Matchmaking system was awful. By not seperating parties with guests from those that don’t, it introduce a scenario where it was the complete opposite of what Halo 2 started: Keeping players with similar skilled opponents so that everyone can have fun. Bungie threw that out the window and allowed a system where you are paired up with just about anybody. I’d get games where I was frustrated by getting beat by players that I clearly shouldn’t be playing with, and found myself bored by beating players that I shouldn’t be playing with. It was as if they went ahead and tried to make this terrible.
And finally, the progression system, and their commendations. It was nice they added this in, if they decided to allow playing to be the primary income of credits. Turned out they didn’t do that, with their excuse being “We didn’t want players to level up too fast”. So, they made it so that it wasn’t necessary to play the game to get your credits for the rediculously long grind to Inheritor. To make matters worse, the commendation system required a rediculous amount of time to get them up, especially past silver. By the time I was at whatever rank it was before Brigadier, I didn’t care of it anymore. It had no purpose, and the grind was too long for me to care.
Out of all the online Halo games, Reach was the most frustrating. A large majority of the games’s features were not thought out well, and Bungie made some bad decisions in their ideas of balancing the game, and designing the maps. I found myself getting angry at the game for the advice getting me killed, and mad at the MM system for pairing up players that shouldn’t be here(not that I am expecting win after win.) Out of all the Halo games today, Halo: Reach was the one that didn’t have the Halo feel to it.
