Halo: Reach Eyes On

Bungie are at E3 to discuss the latest addition to their ever-expanding Halo series, Halo: Reach. Although it was just an eyes on, I had the opportunity to chat with Pete and Mike from Bungie, who were involved in the production of the game. Written as a prequel to the much beloved trilogy, Halo: Reach has the Covenant finding Reach and threatening the lives of millions of people.

According to Bungie, this instalment is their “most ambitious” to date and they were clearly excited as they demonstrated a couple of missions to a select few journalists.

The first took place with a stunning, aerial beach landing where a squad of four had to breach a base up an incline. But as they proceeded toward the base, pods rained down in their path unleashing waves of bad guys intent on putting a hole in your face.

Not being a huge Halo fan, I couldn't help but think this was more of the same old thing. Granted, the enemy and ally AI may be a bit smarter now, and it looked stunning, but overall it was difficult to see why this was in anyway “ambitious”.

However, the second stage of the demo did look very different. It showed our squad of armoured pals get into a space-ship and take to the skies for some intergalactic combat. The lads at Bungie then zipped between huge motherships in an intense dog-fight with incoming waves of enemy craft. Although the game had some Halo aspects in the HUD, even fans of the series would struggle to recognise these levels. When asked just how much of Halo: Reach would be set in spacecraft, Pete calmly replied “it's a perfect balance”. Obviously he's been well trained in the art of dealing with the media, but NZGamer.com will give you our impressions when we have some personal hands on time with the game.

Halo: Reach is planned to drop into orbit on the 14th September as part of a worldwide launch.