Bungie's final Halo game, and probably my favorite in the gameplay sense.

The prequel to Halo CE shows how events kicked off for Cortana and Master Cheif, with a squad of Spartans that helped evacuate Cortana from the imploding planet Reach.

In the sense of story, this is the weakest in my opinion. While having a strong ending, I coudn't really care about the overall cast. In a way, was kind of a Halofied Call of Duty. Great action and setpieces, very military, but pretty meh cast and characters.

The gameplay though is great. It reminds me of a more refined Halo CE which had some of the most satisfying shooting in the series. Every gun felt great here and really solidified Bungie as a veteran FPS developer. The missions and level design is probably some of the best I've seen so far in Halo and oh my god the space flight missions, I am a sucker for that and something that was needed for a long time in Halo.

The setting of Reach is pretty cool. It kind of reminds me of an alien European countryside. Bungie did a great job with the locations as no 2 levels ever felt similar. It was so fun the whole way through.

Playing reach reminds me that it's kind of sad Bungie left Halo behind because I can see the potential this franchise could have been if they stuck with it for one more generation. Now I hesitantly must go forward to playing the 343 Halo games and see how they stack up.