“Remember Reach,” cries the marketing campaign accompanying the release of Bungie’s latest (and last) entry in their flagship franchise, following on from Halo 3’s slogan of “Finish the Fight” and Halo 2’s “Buy an Xbox or your loved ones will shun you!”
And, indeed, upon reflection Halo Reach is an experience worthy of remembrance; an atypic­ally epic follow-up to its illustrious forerunners, which – though technically marvellous – nonetheless sticks all too closely to its familiar gameplay formula. It serves as a prequel to the events of 2001’s Halo: Combat Evolved, set upon the doomed human colony planet of Reach where the player takes the role of a nameless soldier serving as part of an elite team dispatched to investigate unusual surface behaviour.