I’m not fundamentally sure if it is correct place to post my thoughts on Reach, but I figured to post here anyway.
Halo: Reach’s Flaws/Problems
Since Halo: Reach was released in September 14th, 2010 and I was one of those folks received pre-ordered game in midnight event. Nearly ten month has passed, I have been playing Halo: Reach and I noticed many flaws in the game and honestly, I have been thinking about this if I should post or not. But, I have decided to make my own comments.
Armor Abilities: Personally, I think it’s broken or unbalanced because of several problems/flaws appeared during usage of specific armor abilities and I have been examining the pros and cons plus any effect on the gameplay such as kill time and how it blends with map. I will make a list of it and describe each of Armor Abilities.
Sprint: I think it is fine for now, but it has little problem such as melee system (double melee) and it allows you to run away when you’re severely outgunned or outplayed. I believe it does hurt the gameplay.
Evade: I would consider it as broken. It had several problems such as: extremely fast recharge rate, allowing you to spam evade more often, which it is basically basis of sprint being on steroids or worse. Again, it allows you to run away from outgunned or outplayed as well.
Armor Lock: In any FPS game, including Halo shouldn’t have “perk” or “ability” to be Invincible. It has serious unfair advantages such as “Frosting Effect”, “Plasma Grenades Shedding Effect”, EMP, Sword block, have ability to see the battlefield around you via 360 degrees around and being invincible to everything. In effect, it’s meaningless way to delay your death in six seconds.
Jetpack: Ruins the map control. Basically, it allows user to use their jetpack to reach to un-reachable places then camp there or use it as attempt to escape from being outgunned or outplayed. Also, sometimes it can be used to overwhelm a player if it is done properly. I would call it a cheap way to beat skilled players without any effort at all.
Active Camo: It is useful Armor Abilities, however it is useless to use because of radar jammer which it makes you detectable to other players. Also there is lack of cover in the any maps, making usage of active camo more difficult.
Drop Shield: It is fine, it has weak shield that aren’t effective at all. There is no other flaws in that dropshield. So it’s fine for now. Although, it should be pick up only.
Hologram: It is fine as well, despite being useless. But it can be useful for sniper, especially open maps such as boneyard or spire, you can use it to track shots being fired then boom, you have a dead sniper there.
Now, let’s talk about another several flaws on Reach, all right?
Bloom: It is little broken due to two reasons: Luck factor and total randomness. For instance I can use a “precision” weapon such as DMR. At close range, you can actually achieve kills via spamming. Medium to long range is purely based on luck, hoping that your one of shots actually hits something. It actually does lower the skill gap due to luckiness factor and randomness factor involved in the bloom system.
Grenades: It is vastly overpowered due to large blast radius with higher damage. You can easily spam the grenades to score easy kills with little to no skills required to do this. Don’t you think it’s little crazy?
Campaign: It was meh campaign at best. It broke the canon, even insulted the best-selling novel called: The Fall of Reach, written by Eric Nylunds. It had many inconsistencies that can’t be simply explained at all. Also, some character deaths are pretty much unnecessary such as Jorge. It isn’t considered that a SPARTAN-II are much more valuable than a SPARTAN-III? If so, then why he did have to die for no reason? Also, Kat’s death was meaningless as well because it stated that she was extremely smart, she would have anticipated this occurrence but sadly no, she did not which it led to her death. Carter, Noble Six and Emile’s death was fine in the storyline.
Maps and little of Forge: Seems that they got lazy with maps, they just released repetitive maps that were from campaign. It baffles me that why they didn’t consider to make completely unique multilayer maps instead of copying from campaign? Now, on Forge: I said it had a small flaw, nothing serious at all. A little flaw is that the color of map in the Forge world is repetitive grey and honestly, it’s getting little irritating. To make a well detailed map with less grey as possible is little impossible, because of screenlag and framerate drop.
Ranking System: Well, there was no ranking system (skill based). Credit system with ranks isn’t related to skill at all because it means how long you have been playing at Reach. I’m not going to mention Arena because I don’t play it so much, so I can’t effectively say about it at all.
Betrayal System: It is broken because of a moronic players gets in the range of my fire, thus killing them as betray and they boot me. It was ridiculous, it was not my fault, it’s fault of a moronic player. Also, when I get betrayed, sometimes boot option doesn’t appear at all because it apparently doesn’t consider that betraying me is betraying.
Now, I know some guys may hate me for this but I’m just expressing my opinion and probably constructive criticism at Reach. Don’t get me wrong, I still do like Reach because of fun factor being involved, customization, firefight, forge and some good things in the matchmaking such as team classic, grifball, living dead, some of BTB games, and custom games. I admit that I am a General as well.
TL:DR
Halo: Reach is flawed, more likely seriously flawed, but I still play it because of fun factor involved with firefight, customization, custom games, some games from matchmaking and I’m just acknowledging the flaws in the Reach, that’s all.
Now, I have concluded in my post; you may disagree or agree with my statement. If so, then elaborate on why you agreed or disagreed. I do welcome to your arguments and I can do my best to make my arguments/defending my statement.
