14 DAY TRIAL // Halo: Reach is the newest first person shooter from developer Bungie and publisher Microsoft, telling the story of how humanity lost the planet of Reach to the forces of the Covenant and how the actions of a few Spartans influenced the events of the first two games in the series.
Bungie has probably done more for console based space flight sims than any other company by including the space based levels in Halo: Reach that arrive a little before the half time point of the single player campaign.
The Saber based section is surprisingly competent and suggests that Bungie could very well put together a space sim in the vein of Freespace but a bit more arcade minded if it wanted to.
In the game the section managed to break up the on the ground Covenant bashing while also pushing the story forward.
Players need to defend a space station and then disable an enemy corvette, tackling pretty much the most important missions when it comes to designing a space based sim, the ones which really test the mettle of a developer.
The game does not offer a “match speed” button, which means that the dog fights can be more twitchy that they could be, but the challenges are interesting, with some tight flying and quick weapon switching crucial for success, especially on higher difficulty settings.
Halo: Reach then offers yet another surprise, with the Noble team boarding the Covenant corvette in order to rig it so that it can deliver a slipstream device to the enemy Supercarrier and destroy it to ease pressure on surface troops.
The ship has low gravity and some of the most imaginative battlefields the game has to offer, with an especially tough fight involving a Zealot and more than one cloacked Elites.
It's unlikely that the huge numbers of Halo players will be so impressed by the flight sim elements as to create a proper audience for the genre on consoles but it's still a good sign that they can work on those platforms as long as the developer keeps them simple and engaging.