Halo Reach is personally my favorite entry in the Halo series, even without fan favorite Master Chief as the main character. I still play it to this day to reminisce about Halo before Bungie's transition to Destiny, and before 343 took helm of the franchise. And even after all these years, Halo Reach is still one of the best Halo games out there and I'd recommend that anyone who owns an Xbox 360 or and Xbox One get a physical copy and experience the game for themselves.

Graphics
The graphics in this game are pretty impressive for the time they were made in. A lot of the models for Spartan reflect a lot of grit and are dirty from the war on Reach. Each spartan's armor makes them look different from the squad, Kat being the teams tech specialist wears light armor, with Jorge being the brute of the squad wearing large chest pieces and shoulder pads. Even the new enemies like the Skirmishers look like true covenant aliens to be feared along with the giant ships that glass cities and a large spectacle looking like it was taken directly out of a film. However during cutscenes when there is many characters moving at once, the motion blur is dialed up to 11, making it taxing on the eyes whenever the team moves together. Aside from that however, the game's skyboxes are the best they've been in Halo, with it depicting an actual war that you can see raging on in the distance, giving the war on Reach a dark gritty feel that reflects the tone of the story.

Sound
The sounds in Halo have always been amazing and this game is no exception to that. Every weapon and vehicle in this game has their own sound that differentiates them from other weapon in the entire game. Covenant weapons may sound like true alien weapons, while UNSC weapons reflect the militaristic weapons that are used today, just updated to look like weapons of the future. The music in this game also facilitates the sound design, Marty O'Donnell's score really hits home what Halo Reach is about, and when you're blasting through aliens with Marty O'Donnell's legendary score playing loudly during your moment of triumph this game there's nothing else like it.

Addictiveness
This here is the best part about Halo Reach. Due to the fact that this was Bungie's final game in the Halo series, they made sure to take all the previous Halo games' minigames and other forms of content and pack them all together. They took Halo ODST's best contribution to the series; Firefight, and expanded it to multiple maps along with the ability to customize every bit of it. You can play as Spartan or Elite, defend the generators or survive rounds of the toughest enemies that you can choose to appear during certain rounds. You choose how many skulls you want to enable, you choose how difficult you want this to be. Get tired of Firefight? Head over to Custom Games and run a couple matches with your friends, or play split-screen and battle it out once again customizing every option, to weapons that spawn, how much or how little your health is available, what game made, time limit, you name it you can change it. Maps not doing it for you? Head over to Forge, where it is the best that it's ever been in the Halo franchise (Excluding Halo 5). You can either create your own, or search through the file share browser and see what everyone in the community has created and uploaded and play these modes and maps for yourself. And if you think they can be improved, feel free to overwrite it with your own ideas. Just wanna play online? Head over to matchmaking, where you can co-op Campaign, Firefight, or just have PvPs with other players across various gamemodes. And after all that is said and done, head over to Theatre mode and relive all the moments you just experienced. Take pictures and record videos for everyone to see in all their glory. The game has so much replay-ability on its own that even now I still go back to turn on skulls and get rare dialogue that I've never seen. And all of this to rack up credits to buy pieces of armor for your own spartan, where you can customize just about every piece head to toe. And if you need more credits, there's always weekly and monthly challenges to speed up the progress. This game offers the most amount of content out of all the Halo games hands down.

Story
The story of this game is a depressing one, it's the tale of Noble Team attempting to push back the Covenant attack, even when the odds are stacked against them. Many people didn't like the story because of the fact that people found it to be too militaristic, and the characters weren't constantly chatting about their personal life and everything about them and instead were more focused on the battle they were in. However in my opinion, all of Noble Team with the exception of your character Noble 6 are really well done characters. Bungie stated they wanted players to be more connected with this team than they were with Master Chief, and in my opinion they succeeded with flying colors. Carter as the leader of noble team is the commander who deeply cares about all of his squad and maintains responsibility and control of situations, even defending his squad when they are threatened by other people like Dr Halsey, who originally started the Spartan program. Kat being the "smart" one of the group is constantly peeking in places even when she's forbidden to do so to further her knowledge on the war and stay up to date with everything going on, making her my personal favorite character and the one I'd like to know the most about. Jun being the silent sniper is subverts expectations and is extremely chatty and has no qualms with jumping head first into conflict. Just like Emile, who not once takes off his helmet throughout the entire game, leaving the only thing to remember him by is his iconic skulls helmet. He is the savage killer of the team and loves violence and killing Covenant, even when it's viewed as a dangerous option he still embraces it. Jorge being the brute of the group is surprisingly gentle and sympathetic towards those who have lost loved ones throughout the war, unlike Emile, even if it damages the reputations Spartans have as super soldiers. Because of this we see a bit of bad blood between the two which makes them more than just soldiers on the field. Finally there's Noble 6....technically Noble 7 but close enough. There's nothing known about him except that his missions are top secret and he is known as highly dangerous and highly skilled just like the Master Chief himself. Noble 6, is you the player, as whatever customization you have in multiplayer is carried over to the campaign as well, making you feel like that's you in the game like you're contributing to the war and protecting your friends. Despite being a lone wolf, Noble 6 is thankful for the squad and the people who have fought by their side throughout the war, and proves that even one spartan can pose the largest problem to the covenant even if they aren't the Master Chief.

Depth
The game's story took me a couple days to complete, 10 hours or so, however depending on the difficulty and skulls you have enabled, who you're playing it, the amount of time varies. The game has a lot of offer, in multiplayer, and singleplayer. Most of which was covered in the addictiveness section, as they go hand in hand with each other.

Difficulty
This is probably my least favorite part about the game, but also my favorite. This game on Easy, is of course easy. Normal is a little difficult, but still nothing to write home about. On Heroic however, I think this game is at the true pinnacle of difficulty. Enemies are not impossible ot kill or melee, but you can't rely just on that. Headshots are important and the best way to take out the enemies, but sometimes you need to spray enemies like Hunters to take them quickly before they take you out. The marines are not as helpful and will constantly die, making it very clear that the covenant outclasses regular marines, and when Spartans entire the battlefield, the tide changes. On Legendary however, enemies just become in my opinion unfair. Elites will rush to melee and even if you're outside their range of melee, you'll still die in one hit. So usually you prioritize them, stop them from getting close, however even so, you'll die in about 5 shots in quick succession, and when they're using a weapon that can overheat versus a weapon with a set amount of bullets after a certain point you need to reload, and the ai never overheats weapons. Even when charging a plasma pistol and firing, grunts and Jackals are able to follow it up much faster, and they follow you over a larger distance than when the player uses them. However, if you're up for near impossible challenges, that's the mode for you. And if that's not enough, enable some or all skulls, and fight without hud, enemies are faster strong throw more grenades that have larger blast radius, still have never beaten the game on laso, at least not without a squad of 4 other people basically carrying me. Maybe I'm just not that good, but that's just me.

Overall, this game is great, and anyone who has an Xbox an hasn't played this needs to get it and experience it for themselves. There's so much to the game that I could go on forever about how many things I've done and how much memories I have from playing custom games Indiana Jones maps and obstacle courses and races, and that one mode where you dodge the soccer balls that roll down with a gravity hammer and energy sword to get to the cars at top to run people over with...? I forgot what that was called, was fun and I still play that split-screen with my friends, and I probably always will.

Very good review man, I have a lot of memories with the game. A complete classic, would love to own it physically one day. Feel like you could do with a little less detail in the story section, just say your thoughts and the parts that impressed you. Otherwise excellent review.