It’s the fiiiiinal countdown – duh-duh duuuuuh duh, duh duh-duh duh duh! Duh-duh duuuh duuuh, duh-duh-duh- but enough of that. Halo: Reach is out Tuesday, and nerds all over the planet are already hugging their Master Chief plushies to their heaving bosoms and sighing in anguished anticipation. Love without madness, as Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño* once wrote, is not love, nor love without jetpacks and sticky grenades and a hijacked Banshee. Or something like that. 

So anyway. In the interests of promoting love and madness and everything in between, I’ve put together a sort of mission briefing for deploying SPARTANs. It’s everything you need to know about 2010’s biggest launch in one compact, easy-to-use, plasma-proof package. 

In the beginning

In a bit of brainbox-boggling metaphysical contortion that breaches all known and unknown proportions, Halo: Reach – the series finale (for now) – is also where the Halo series actually starts. Madness, indeed. Set just before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, Reach is all about the Covenant invasion of (yes, you guessed it, I’VE GOT A PROMOTION OVER HERE, GUYS) the colonial planet, Reach, also – inconveniently enough – pretty much the last of humanity’s real presence in the great, wide, out-there. Everything can really only get worse from here on out, and it’s going to (see: Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo: ODST, Halo Wars).

All noble things are as difficult as they are rare

Much like Halo: ODST (and Halo Wars, if we’re counting that; we’re counting that), this game won’t be featuring the series’ increasingly irrelevant poster boy, Master Chief. This time around, players will be strapping on the SPARTAN stuff of an unnamed member of Noble Team, a bunch of United Nations Space Command spec ops soldiers who were unlucky enough to pull the Reach patrol detail that morning. Worst day at the office ever.

New! Improved! Now with 100% added stuff!

Halo: Reach debuts a load of new (old) weapons, the technology presumably later lost or something. Which is rather a shame, because the M392 Designated Marksman Rifle is way better than that stupid Battle Rifle. There’s also the Type-52 Guided Munitions Launcher, or – more specifically – a homing sticky grenade launcher. Which is pretty much the most terrifying thing ever. 

I get by the collapse of humanity and almost certain extinction with a little help from my friends

Like all previous Halo titles, it’s all about the co-op. If you’re not playing Halo: Reach’s campaign in 4-way co-op on Legendary difficulty, you’re doing it all kinds of wrong. Also, for the first time, Bungie has scaled difficulty according to the number of players, featuring smarter enemy AI and damage resistance, and promising the toughest Halo experience ever – so really, do enjoy the finale. Over. And over. And over. Pathological completionists can take some comfort, at least, that there’s no Vidmaster Classic achievement. 

* Pedz to his friends. Maybe.

Join our Halo: Reach discussion in the forums