When you imagine the pitch meeting between Bungie and Microsoft it’s easy to see why the two split a few years back. Bungie says right, we want to make the next Halo game without Master Chief, make it a prequel so everyone knows how it’s going to end, and the only enemy is the Covenant so no Flood levels. Microsoft exec cocks eyebrow, reaches for button to release Zune enabled hounds. Oh and there’s a girl Spartan, adds Bungie sensing the tension, a bead of sweat running down their brow. All right, a hot chick Spartan, sounds good, says Microsoft. Um, actually she’s a bitter veteran with one arm, mumbles Bungie. The bark of the Zune hounds echo down the corridor, the Bungie staff member dives, screaming, for the window.

Halo: Reach is easily the most gorgeous Halo game so far, the graphics are the tune up we were expecting to get with Halo 3 and the grainy atmosphere of Reach perfectly matches the dark subject matter of a planet facing a global extinction activity. Explosions are spectacular and the weapons and armour of both the UNSC and Covenant forces are more detailed that ever. Naturally the audio of Halo is fantastic with another rousing harmonic score urging on your gun toting super solider.

The Covenant return to there former status of gurgling hissing aliens who want to eat your face and make babies in your corpse

On paper it doesn’t seem like such a good idea. Especially considering the most famous science fiction prequel story with a fore known tragic conclusion would be the Star Wars prequels (insert joke about spastic colon related Star Wars prequel symptons). So maybe all this baggage is the reason that Reach is such a success; because make no mistake, it’s a huge success for Bungie. Firmly establishing itself as the best game Bungie has made so far and, gosh damn it, this is the best Halo game I’ve ever played.

Jorge, pronounced George, as in George Jetson, who was also from the future

As a quick recap for Halo virgins, the original Halo: Combat Evolved was set as the Master Chief made his escape from the decimated planet Reach aboard the ship Pillar of Autumn. Halo: Reach tells the story of the Covenant’s surprise attack on that planet. This game casts you as Noble 6, the otherwise unnamed new addition to Noble team, an elite group of Spartan III's. From the moment the game starts you get to customise Noble 6, similar to the PEC system in Rainbow Six Vegas, and carry that appearance through the campaign, cut scenes included, and on into multiplayer. It sets the tone for the whole Halo: Reach package, it’s all about customizing the experience of Halo. As if Bungie left their paint set behind before they left, knowing they wouldn’t be coming back to see us again… okay now I’m tearing up.

Despite the fact the assassination moves are impractical, they're always so cool to pull off, note knife blade coming out aliens jaw

Hell here's another one for giggles, the Spartan's often leap on the Elite's backs, Aussie rules style, before plunging the knife

The story isn’t about the fall of Reach, we know that story, we know how it turns out, the story is about a squad of soldiers facing impossible odds and taking every opportunity to piss in the face of an enemy they will not defeat. Each member of Noble Team has character beyond the surface roles they represent. Even you’re relatively faceless avatar character Noble 6 has history and secrets that play a part in the story. The standout character is the hulking Spartan II Jorge who seems to get the best moments and the best lines. My one complaint with the campaign, and it’s a gripe I’ve had before, would be the aversion Bungie has to any sort of exposition in their story telling. At one point your unit meets Dr. Halsey and there’s an awkward and interesting exchange between her and Jorge. Anyone familiar with Halo lore would easily understand what was going on, but it would go straight over the heads of others not familiar with the expanded universe. Bungie did such a good job of telling a tight story with ODST and it’s disconcerting seeing them fall back into bad story telling habits with Reach.

All the soldiers you meet in your travels have names, with the ones joining you appearing on your hud and then blinking out when they die, I think this bloke was called Jenkins

In my opinion the campaign is the most enjoyable of the Halo series. The setup is familiar, pitched battles, move to vehicle, drive to the next battle, but Reach manages to shake the formula up with a few sections dotted here and there like the well publicised space combat. A certain level even feels like a nod to Halo’s main competitor in the weekly Live rankings. Bungie has also removed their dreaded repetitive level designs that tortured players of the first two games. At the time of writing coop matchmaking hadn’t been implemented but split screen works just fine. Multiplayer both scales the difficulty and reduces the assistance from AI team mates.

I should note it definitely hurts the game that online coop campaign isn’t there straight out of the box, it was one of Halo 3 and ODST’s best features and omitting it initially to add later is a shame. Bungie’s logic was to allow players to make their way through the campaign unspoiled by accidentally dropping into someone else's late campaign level and skipping the story, but Halo has become synonymous of online play and a game to be played with friends. But keeping that door locked for a few weeks doesn’t seem worth it.

Taking down a Covenant drop ship is always immensely satisfying and there's lots of opportunity to do it in Reach

Bungie has spiked the difficulty more than a few degrees north as well. While Halo 3 and ODST’s Legendary modes were challenging, Reach’s is ball bustingly hard. I suggest situating pillows around the room to hurl controllers into and avoid breakage. The enemy AI has become far less predictable. When you rush an enemy group they fall back and flank you, when you try and snipe an Elite he’ll duck and weave and run for cover if they see you first. You’ll even find yourself getting killed by Grunts and Jackals on normal difficulty if you don’t watch your back. It’s difficult, but it never feels cheaply difficult like the Jackal Snipers of Halo 2 did. When an Elite Zealot round house kicks you in the face and sends your body ragdolling over a railing you can’t help but think, damn, I deserved that.

Adding to your woes is the fact your team mates, whomever of Noble team has tagged along plus the occasionally group of soldiers or ODST's, are not nearly as canny as the Covenant have become. Obviously this is Bungie’s attempt to balance the AI so unkillable team mates don’t fight all your battles for you. But at the best of times all you can hope for is that they offer some distraction, giving you a chance to flank you’re enemies.

I hope your checking out the explosion and that gorgeous light bloom effect and not the female Spartan's shapely, posterior, because that's me. Yes, that's right, you were, by proxy, checking out my ass

But the campaign is only half the package, possibly even less than that, because Reach is the complete experience. The multiplayer is like a next gen version of the experience from Halo 3.

You can consider the Firefight mode in ODST a beta for Reach Firefight, probably one of the most comprehensive and enjoyable coop gaming experiences on any console. You can leap into any of a dozen variations of Firefight games or make one to your liking, customizing every single element of the experience, then invite your friends to play it. There are more modes than the standard Firefight available as well with Generator Defence, Gruntapocalypse and sniper and rocket launcher focused game types all vying for attention.

Of course even better than having Matchmaking in Firefight is having someone to Safety Dance with! We can dance! Dun dun DUN da dun da dun dun dun

Multiplayer itself is crazy fun with playlists broken up into Cooperative (Firefight), Competitive, and Arena. Competitive currently has Rumble Pit, Team Slayer, Team Objective, Multi Team (four teams of two) and Big Team battle. Within each of these playlists are a myriad of game types ranging from the straight up Slayer, to classics like Oddball, new additions such as Headhunter and Stockpile and the return of the odd classic such as Race. At each matchmaking there are three game types to choose from with players voting one of three or to veto all three for something else. Arena is for the super serious Halo competitor. Players compete in four aside team and multi team games and there are regular ‘seasons’ and at the end of each period you’re given a ranking and placed in a league group with the goal to improve your skills and climb the ladder to Halo godhood.

The armour abilities, which play the occasional role in the campaign, are a challenging choice in multiplayer. It takes practise to master certain armour effects over others. Sprint for instance, is universally useful for rush attacking enemies and escaping encounters that start to go against you. On the other hand the jet pack can make you an angel of death, dropping from the sky to ambush hapless enemies, or a floating pinata, easily clipped from any spot on the map. The armour abilities have been pretty derided on the Bungie forums by puritan fans, but they're an essential part of Halo: Reach and add a whole new level of complexity and strategy to what's all ready one of the best console multiplayer experiences available. If you don't like them though, just stick to Team SWAT.

oh, clothesline, he's booking a trip to the dentist after a melee like that

One of the most impressive features of Halo: Reach is that each of its parts could have been a solid game on its own, no where is this more true than the editing tool Forge World, a giant level with hundreds of bits and pieces available to create a customised level and game type. It’s an amazing feature and even the most jaded Halo hater would have a hard time resisting the Lego like toybox experience of Forge World. Several maps in the multiplayer rotation are Forge World based and if you didn’t all ready know, you’d be hard pressed to guess they had any connection. Forge was around in Halo 3 and led to some amazing creations but like the revamped Firefight, Forge World is more than twice the tool Forge was. The ability to phase objects into each other and the landscape opens up all sorts of opportunities for keen creators.

Two down, two to go

Another returning feature that will give Halo: Reach that extra bit of online life is the Theatre Mode that allows you to rewatch your previous games from multiple angles, record clips and take screen shots. Never was there a more invaluable tool for those who want to improve their online skills. You'll learn more watching the people who kicked your sorry ass in one rerun than you will spending an entire day falling for the same old traps. It also gives you insight into tucked away power weapons and ideal camping and sniper spots. In case you didn't notice every screenshot in this review I took myself using recordings of my adventures. Or at least just the times I looked cool.

Learning how not to throw grenades at your own feet helps your game as well

Reach is more than Halo 3.5. One of the main things thats going to draw in new players and delight old die hards is the armoury feature. Every game played, campaign, coop or multiplayer earns you credits and experience. The experience points earned lead to increased ranks and ranks unlock features in the armoury that can be purchased with credits. The first things you can buy are different helmets and bits and pieces for your personal Spartan. As you progress you can actually dress up your avatar to look like any of the members of Noble Team. As you're credit increases you can splash out on some more extravagant items like voices of famous characters to sound in Firefight (Masterchief being the most expensive voice to buy) and armour effects like flames or lightening to shoot from your helmet.

Earning credits is usually pretty slow going but you can boost things along by focusing on another nice addition to the Halo experience, weekly and daily challenges. Every day four new challenges appear that require you to kill a certain number of enemies in a certain game mode, sometimes with a specific weapon, or to complete a campaign level at a certain difficulty and with a certain combination of skulls equipped. The weekly challenge is often more time consuming or challenging with an equally large reward. In addition to the supplement to the credit account, the challenges keep the game fresh and varied, actively encouraging players to dive back into the campaign or taking on obstacles they might not previously have bothered with and rewarding them for doing so. Expect a lot more shooter games in the future to have a challenge feature of some kind.

Some things might have changed in Halo: Reach, but you can still punch an alien tank until it explodes with your bare hands, ha ha ha!

So there must be something I dislike about Reach right? Yes, there’s no option to search by region which still blows, although given the sheer number of people playing Reach finding local players is never hard. Overall matchmaking can still be a little frustrating and if you weren’t a fan of Halo 3 matchmaking Reach has the same issues. There are no skulls to find on each level which was hugely disappointing as playing the game coop with friends to skull hunt in Halo 3 and data log hunt in ODST was a heap of fun. There are the odd pieces of info, similar to Halo 3’s terminals, dotted through the game, but there’s currently no incentive to find them.

I should probably point out that one of the coolest new features of Reach, the ability to assassinate someone and set off a cool little kill animation, is hugely impractical and basically sets you up to get knifed by someone else. After you've seen the animation a good dozen times you'll probably try and avoid using it for strategies sake. Lastly, spawn camping has, surprisingly, become an issue in some of Halo: Reach's maps. It's too easy to snipe someone from the other side of the map within seconds of their spawning, but hopefully this is something Bungie will address as they fine tune multiplayer. Something they won't be able to fix with a patch is the ease with which people can get a couple of easy achievements in Firefight by using custom settings. It's a petty thing to complain about but it seems very unBungie like for them to ship a game with such an easy exploit.

Hunter's are more into the Agadoo than the Safety Dance

Halo: Reach is the best possible Halo game you could want. If you're a fan of the franchise and felt disappointed in Reach it might be time to accept the fact you're impossible to satisfy and have deep seated psychological problems that you should probably call you're mother up and talk through. It's certainly not meant to turn anyone onto the Halo love train, so if the jumping and forcefields and crazy screaming midget aliens have annoyed you so far don't expect to suddenly fall in love with Noble Team. But this is the last Bungie Halo game, and could very likely be the last best Halo game we're going to get for a while, if ever, and Bungie has made this a game for fans. To sum up my affection for Halo: Reach in a single sentence I can only say that I've played more of the game so far than I have any other game this year, and I'm thinking about playing some more right now.