What 's good:
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It’s widescreen. Most people much prefer things in widescreen once they get used to it, and that’s certainly true for me. Not only does it eliminate the black bars on the sides, but it makes everything noticeably larger, which works well with the fact that the graphics are more detailed.
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Co-op play over Xbox Live. Some people report lag issues (my partner had them), but it’s the first time I’ve ever played the campaign co-op, and it’s a lot more fun that way for me.
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The music sounds great.
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Gameplay is the same. I haven’t seen any examples of the two additions to the campaign, skulls and terminals, which seems appropriate since thus far I haven’t tried looking for any of them. Skulls are obviously hidden, but if terminals jumped out at me the game would feel less original.
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Achievements, skulls and terminals.
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The new maps for use with Reach look fabulous. Since I never played any of the originals in Halo CE or Halo 2 (I didn’t start gaming until Halo 3 had been out a while) I will happily avoid getting into comparisons of gameplay other than to say I fully understand why 343 didn’t invest the money and resources needed to replicate the Halo CE or Halo 2 multiplayer experience.
The Firefight map is very nicely done, though a bit brutal since enemies have a lot of cover and so many ways to get the to main platform. The man cannon is particularly nasty in that regard. 
If I had my druthers I’d get rid of the big spinning thing and most of the sounds associated with it to make it more like the parts of the game that inspired the map, but for those of us who play a lot of Firefight a new map is always welcome.
What not:
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Navigating menus needs to be less sensitive. If I try to navigate them as do I menus in other games, as a friend of mine said when he was trying to change some settings, “Geez, I’m all over the place!” Very frustrating, inexcusable programming fail. This is something that definitely needs to be fixed in an update.
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I don’t like the new weapon sounds. They’re harsher and louder and I find that annoying. I turn down the volume, which compensates for the fact that they’re louder, but they still don’t sound right and then the rest of the game sounds aren’t as loud as I’d like them including that great newly recorded music. There’s an option to hear the original music. I wish there were an option to hear the original weapon sounds.
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Night vision in the sniper rifle is almost unusable because it’s too bright. I suspect they used the same code to apply the night vision effect unchanged, but the new graphics are already brighter and the combination is way too bright. During that part of The Truth and Reconciliation I switched the graphics to the original whenever I wanted to use the sniper rifle with night vision.
As an example of the difference, after getting through the first batch of enemies on T and R you go up a ledge, kill some jackals, and off in the distance at the base of the rise with the turret on it is a health pack. Just to compare, I scoped in on the health pack from a distance. In the original mode I could clearly see a health path, an Elite I’d killed, and two plasma grenades he’d dropped. In the new mode all I could see was a mottled bright mass. Had I not known what was there I would never have been able to identify any of it. Every time I needed to scope in with night vision turned on I reverted to the original graphics.
They should have adjusted the effect to account for the fact that the graphics are brighter in dark parts of the game (which I otherwise like) so it didn’t brighten them as much. This needs to be fixed, but it’s highly unlikely it will be. Too bad.
What’s good and bad:
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The dark parts are brighter. This makes it easier to navigate the game, but in my opinion it changes gameplay slightly in some ways because it makes some sections easier to navigate and reduces the need for the flashlight or night vision when using the sniper rifle. I’m sure part of the reason 343 brightened up the graphics in dark parts of the game was so we could see the new graphics better. I could do some sniping on T and R without using night vision that I never could have done without night vision before. The night portions of the game should still look as if it’s night and I should still need to use the flashlight.
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I have mixed feelings about the new graphics. Some are fabulous, but others have too much color in them, in my opinion. Some environments look better with muted colors, such as inside the Pillar of Autumn. A military vessel shouldn’t be full of red, yellow and blue like a set on Sesame Street. This isn’t a big deal, better graphics should enhance the sense of realism and make the game more immersive. When they attract your attention because they look odd, such as lots of primary colors where they seem out of place, it draws you out of the immersive experience.
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Keyes would look better if he didn’t look as if had a lot of soot on his face and uniform, but I guess that’s a personal preference regarding how people are rendered in games.
Just my $0.02.