Line #79 YMMV/HaloReach


1	%%* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Martin O'Donnell. Do you even need to ''ask''?
2	* BestLevelEver:
3	** Nightfall: [[StealthBasedMission Sneak your way into enemy territory under the cover of darkness]] [[FriendlySniper with]] [[ColdSniper Jun]], saving the local militia and sniping Elites as you go.
4	** Tip Of The Spear: Drive the new Rocket Warthog through canyons, destroying an AA gun; dismount and fight through a Covie-held facility, steal a Covenant Ghost or Revenant and destroy another gun, then take the turret of a Falcon and rain grenades on Covenant forces. Wrap it up by grabbing the Jetpack for the first time in the campaign and flying up to the giant Covenant Spire to take it down... or hijacking a Banshee and using it to decimate the small army guarding the facility.
5	** Long Night of Solace (The one used in the E3 demo): Opens up with you fighting through Covenant forces on a beach to get to your [[SpaceFighter Sabre]], letting you take the fight to space. You board a Covenant spaceship and have to put down the entire crew, and then protect a warp drive your team smuggled in to wreck the whole boat. The areas are huge and you have the almost the whole menu of weaponry to mow down the increasingly pissed off Covenant with.
6	** Exodus: It starts out slow - [[ItsQuietTooQuiet eerily so]] - where the only enemies you face are a handful of skirmishers and [[GoddamnedBats several suicide Grunts.]] Then, all at once, you're placed in the middle of the action, fighting Skirmishers, Jackals, Grunts and ''Brutes'' left and right, while you get to [[BigDamnHeroes save civilians and soldiers]] who were amazed at Six coming out of absolutely nowhere to save their asses. You'll get to use several awesome Armor Abilities and weapons here. You can find Gravity Hammers, Fuel Rod Guns, countless [[TookALevelInBadass Spikers]], Sniper Rifles, Shotguns, Rocket Launchers, as well as [[JetPack Jetpacks]], Drop Shields, Cloaking, Armor Locks, turrets and Falcons, all ending with you saving the entire city's remaining population to be evacuated safely. Oh, and there are no Elites in this level, either. The level is just one awesome "go all around the city and kick some ass" mission.
7	** New Alexandria: Six of the seven Armor Abilities to be found[[note]]the seventh, Evade, is not available in the campaign at all[[/note]], flying around in falcons or easily hijacked banshees, an open level with a variety of missions that can happen in any order, this level will never have the same events twice. You fight every enemy race of the Covenant in this game here, both in the sky and on the ground, you can again find a variety of weapons, and if you do this right with two or more people on your team, you can easily get events to be beyond simplistic to complete.
8	** The Package: [[spoiler: Sneak back to the location of the game's second level]], now a blasted wasteland rather than an ice shelf. Drive a tank right up to Sword Base's front door, fight your way inside for the second time, and, after some plot exposition, fend off wave upon wave of forces with a huge stockpile of weapons and ammunition. And/or Banshees if you can nab them.
9	** The last level, [[spoiler: The Pillar of Autumn: Bring the fragment of Cortana through canyons and caves with Emile, at one point driving a Mongoose right past dozens of enemies, until you reach the ship-breaking yard. Fight some more in close quarters to a landing pad, where you need to fight off the Covenant, until handing over Cortana to Captain Keyes and taking control of a huge mass driver cannon to destroy Phantoms, Banshees, and the overhead Covenant Cruiser so the ''Pillar'' can take off... [[HeroicSacrifice leaving you behind]]. Carter and Emile's sacrifices deserve some credit too.]]
10	* BrokenBase:
11	** There's a growing rift in the player base of Reach, now that the Halo series is in the hands of 343 Industries. 343i's first order of business was to release a title update for Reach, to introduce some changes to aspects of the gameplay that the community had been clamoring for. The two opposing factions, then, are those who are in favour of the title update changes, and those who think Reach was perfect from launch day. The game, itself, was ''easily'' Bungie's most divisive, as well as ambitious, Halo game. Might as well list what '''everyone''' ''liked'' about the game, rather than name what split the fandom.
12	** Weapon bloom and shield bleedthrough were two hot topics back at launch, and especially with 343's title update. The former has its defenders because weapon inaccuracy through continued fire [[OlderThanTheyThink isn't exclusive to Reach]], while those who hate it note that Reach's bloom is heavily exaggerated and makes many weapons less effective than they should be. Shield bleedthrough meanwhile is what happens when enough damage to pop your shields also hurts your health in the same stroke, and it's such a hot button topic that the ''Master Chief Collection'' can have matches both with and without the feature and an indicator on the loading screen as a pre-emptive warning.
13	** DMR starts. The DMR is effectively both the Battle Rifle of prior games and the [[VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved CE Magnum]] rolled into one quick-killing weapon so long as you can pace your shots, and even over a decade after the game's release the debate rages on between the competitive crowd for the weapon's efficiency and usefulness versus the casual crowd not wanting the rest of the arsenal to be rendered useless by starting with the gun. The ''Master Chief Collection'' attempted to amend this by having exclusive modes like Slayer DMR dedicated to those that prefer it, but it doesn't fix everything.
14	* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: Averted by Bungie, who have repeatedly rolled out new playlists to accommodate popular gametypes such as SWAT or Infection, preventing players online from getting annoyed at having to participate in the same modes too frequently.
15	** Expect to see Team DMR mode a lot. Hell, the DMR in general is the gun 90 percent of players will be using online.
16	** Played straight with the Hemorrhage map, a remake of the series' perennial favorite Blood Gulch, which gains a lot of nostalgia-fueled votes whenever it appears as a choice.
17	** Grifball on MCC, because of experience gain being tied to medals instead of team score, turned into a boosting farm nearly every game for the first few weeks after release.
18	* DemonicSpiders:
19	** The Mythic skull practically turns every Leader-class enemy into this, because it doubles shield strength as well as health now.
20	** Elites with Energy Swords. Like in the first ''Halo'' game, they run faster than you do and have enhanced shields and health, making it extremely tough to gun them down before they reach you and one-hit-kill you. It gets even better in Score Attack when multiple cloaked Elites bumrush you with swords drawn on the final wave.
21	** Elite Generals and Zealots obviously qualify in campaign, but their worst incarnation is without a doubt, Heretics in Firefight. They can randomly spawn as any one wave in each of the three rounds of Arcadefight or [=FF=] Limited, they appear in some of the largest numbers of any wave in the game, and they wield ''human weapons''.
22	*** The different waves of Heretics are practically the definition of FromBadToWorse:
23	*** The first one is a assortment of Minors with [=ARs=] and pistols, with the odd Major or Ultra with a DMR or shotgun thrown into the mix. Not that bad unless you're out in the open when they spawn... but just wait.
24	*** The second round will have a precision loadout: the Minors all have [=DMRs=], and they're backed up by Majors with Sniper Rifles, who instantly explain [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard why Bungie cut the Beam Rifle from this game]]. Oh, and this round has the aforementioned Mythic Skull turned on. Good luck dealing with the sniper who keeps Tough Lucking away from your shots after you take his shields down to half.
25	*** But OH GOD, the third round... Explosives. [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill EVERY Minor has a grenade launcher.]] And the Majors? Just remember that a rocket to the face will still one-shot you even with 2x shields. If you're real lucky, you might have a Major spawn with a Laser instead. Not that you'll know where any of them are because the radar-killing Cloud skull comes on this round, in addition to Mythic and all the previous ones.
26	** Pretty much any time you hear a Drop Pod come down in Firefight, you know you're in big trouble. Enemies from Drop Pods are actually programmed to be more aggressive and chuck grenades even more often. You'll draw four of either Elite Ultras with Plasma Repeaters, Brute Infantry with Concussion Rifles, or...
27	** Grunts with Fuel Rod Guns. Little target, big volley of blasts that will kill you in a close area. You have to snipe the little buggers because you're not approaching them.
28	*** And [[FromBadToWorse in case that wasn't bad enough]], hostile Elites can now use Fuel Rod Guns, as well (whereas up until now [=FRGs=] could only be wielded by Elites on your side). [[OhCrap Same lethality, now with shields.]]
29	*** In Exodus, the first enemies you face are purely suicide Grunts. There are dozens of them, and very little room to maneuver.
30	*** The above isn't so bad if you're pretty good with Armor Lock.
31	** Hunters will now take pains to protect their weak spots.
32	*** Luckily, you can stick them with a plasma grenade and blow off a ''considerable'' amount of their back armor.
33	** Skirmishers. They're the same species as Jackals, but most don't use shields. Why? Because they don't need them; they're faster than even Drones. The ones that do, have a pair of medium-sized shields on their elbows and will strafe wildly around the room with their faces covered while plasma-spamming you. Did we mention that it's nearly impossible to kill these things without a headshot if they're running?
34	*** FromBadToWorse: If a shielded Skirmisher raises his shields above his head, it becomes immune to all non-explosive damage for a brief second. Body shots with a Sniper Rifle included. Even better, all Skirmishers have Evade, Sprint, and Hologram as armor abilities, even if they don't always use the latter.
35	* EnsembleDarkhorse: Jun. Aside from getting ADayInTheLimelight with "Nightfall", he is likely the member of Noble Team with the least screentime and story relevance. Nonetheless, his ColdSniper personality and the mystique that comes with [[spoiler:being the SoleSurvivor of Noble Team and the fact that we never discover his fate after he leaves with Dr. Halsey]] made him an immediate hit among fans. It's from this baseline that ''WebComic/HaloAFistfulOfArrows'' became one of the most beloved ''Halo'' fan works of all time, which just cemented his popularity even further. [[spoiler:His appearances later in the ExpandedUniverse, revealing he survived the war and became a key figure in the Spartan-IV program and pointedly not contradicting anything from ''A Fistful of Arrows'', is certainly a nod to his fanbase]].
36	* EpilepticTrees: An Elite during the final cutscene draws its energy sword with its left hand, prompting a common recurring theory that "the Elite is the Arbiter because he's the only left-handed Elite!" However, this is untrue because [[https://www.halopedia.org/File:H3_Arbiter_taunt.jpg the Arbiter is right-handed]] and during the events of the final cutscene he was aboard his flagship chasing the ''Pillar of Autumn'' to Halo. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNLsMXNLdsc Hacking also reveals the Elite is actually a Field Marshal]].
37	* FanficFuel: Beyond the SPARTAN-III program lending itself well for creating original characters that can die, disappear or what have you to the ends of the series universe, especially with [[spoiler:Jun's SoleSurvivor status]] that ended up being a major plot point in the ExpandedUniverse, the mere idea of Noble Six [[spoiler:surviving the ending or even managing to get onto the Pillar of Autumn to join Master Chief]] is an extensively popular concept that still lingers with the fans over a decade after the game's release.
38	* {{Fanon}}: Just before Noble Six is killed, a left-handed Sangheili appears in the foreground. Many fans assume that this is the Arbiter, though as stated above under EpilepticTrees, this isn't possible in canon, and Arbiter isn't actually left-handed.
39	* FriendlyFandoms: The game has this with ''Film/RogueOne'' because they are DarkerAndEdgier prequels to iconic sci-fi franchises featuring [[DwindlingParty Dwindling Parties]]. And have endings that directly lead into the opening scenes of the first installment.
40	* GameBreaker:
41	** The Gauss Hog is completely absent from multiplayer, and the Scorpion was quickly restricted to only a few maps, mainly due to their powerful weaponry. This has changed in the Master Chief Collection, however, with the Gausshog present in the Big Team Heavies playlist in all its overpowered glory.
42	** The orbital bombardment designator. It's only really balanced out by the fact it only appears in one mission in the single-player campaign, and it's rare in Firefight. For obvious reasons it's not available in multiplayer. How nasty is it? Point it next to a Phantom as it's about to unload a wave of multiple weak enemies like Grunts, and you're pretty much guaranteed a Killionaire. If you're anywhere close to the designation zone, you will be murdered just from the splash damage.
43	** Fuel Rod guns in most versions of Firefight count too. The weapon's high power, relatively large clip, and fast firing rate means it outclasses most other weapons in sheer splash damage. Compounding this is the fact that it has a high max ammo count (5 in magazine, 30 total, compare to 2 and 8 for the Rocket Launcher), and Grunt squads commonly carry them in round 2 and beyond, meaning that ammo is common.
44	** The campaign versions of the Falcon helicopter are not present in matchmaking, as their nose cannons and side grenade launchers quickly make mincemeat of any target they lay fire upon.
45	** Grifball, brought to ''The Master Chief Collection'' in the ''Halo: Reach'' update, quickly became exploited for XP boosting. Ranking up in The MCC is based on medals earned, unlike ''Reach'' where every game gave the same XP and sometimes a bonus for challenges. Thus players began forming “chains” where they would stand in a line and beat down or assassinate the player in front of them and themselves be beaten down, rinse and repeat, allowing them to earn tons of medals in minutes. 343 admins began issuing bans to players attempting this, then removed Grifball from matchmaking and made it an occasional playlist.
46	* GeniusBonus:
47	** Just how many players noticed that "Nightfall" starts at 2'''6''':30 Hours?[[note]]If you still don't get it, days only have 2'''4''' hours on Earth.[[/note]] Reach's days are [[http://www.bungie.net/projects/reach/article.aspx?ucc=intel&cid=24020 twenty-seven]] hours long.
48	** The digits of Noble Six's call number 312 add up to 6, and also all factor into 6.
49	* GoddamnedBats:
50	** Those goddamned Drones. Especially ''en masse''. As such, they don't appear in Firefight.
51	** Brutes in Firefight, who always land at least one lucky stick. Kiss that Perfection medal you were going for goodbye.
52	** Grunts with Fuel Rod Cannons.
53	*** Go play the Gruntpocalypse variant on Score Attack. You'll never underestimate those little dudes again.
54	** Jackals with Focus Rifles. Especially on Waterfront, where they camp at the top of a cliff. Considering you play on Heroic by default on Matchmaking, getting shot by one of these guys usually means you'll die if you don't kill them quick.
55	*** The ones with Needle Rifles, too; Firefight seems to be the only mode where they actually aim for your head.
56	** Skirmishers, the Jackals' bastard cousins, move around at hyperspeed and can only be reliably put down with headshots. Some even have two deflector shields on their elbows to protect them from said headshots.
57	*** What do you get when you cross Gruntpocalypse with Skirmishers? Skirmigeddon. Good luck if you missed your first shot on that one who was holding the Focus Rifle...
58	* GoodBadBugs:
59	** If your footing is uneven in multiplayer, the game will sometimes cancel your Assassination animation while awarding you the medal and kill. Sucks if you wanted the bragging rights, but it could also save your hide from nearby enemies.
60	** Forge World map variants exist to let you run around underwater without penalty. You can't see squat and there's nothing interesting down there, but still...
61	** On rare occasions, Covenant vehicles are known to mock the laws of physics and launch themselves to infinity and beyond, largely due to the game resolving their springy hover movement in odd ways.
62	** Bungie reported several amusing ones during the Beta. They were all fixed, of course.
63	*** A female Spartan would [[GenderBender switch to a male model]] when its shields were popped.
64	*** When rotating an Elite in the Armory, the legs wouldn't move with the rest of it.
65	*** Continuously bumping into Kat would cause her to string together suggestive dialog.
66	*** In the Oddball gametype, a hologram could pick up the ball.
67	** One that Bungie either missed, ignored or decided was for the best, is the split-screen bug that allows for up to 4 players on the same console to play Firefight and Campaign. The glitch is performed more or less like it was in Halo 3 and allows for a full campaign squad on a single console.
68	** In Nightfall, it is possible to jump through a door if you park a forklift next to it and dismount. This allows you to avoid the most difficult section of the level, including a mandatory Hunter fight, and prevents the enemies past the door from spawning, letting you walk to the exit of the level unopposed.
69	** Flying Grunts.
70	** It's possible to, very rarely, have a frag grenade stick like a plasma grenade.
71	** A rare, but highly entertaining, glitch can occur where a plasma grenade-hurling Brute manages to stick the glowing blue bomb ''to its own body'', blowing itself up. What's even funnier is that, [[DumbMuscle Brutes being Brutes]], this seems [[ExplosiveStupidity entirely plausible]] from a story perspective.
72	* HesJustHiding:
73	** Many fans believe that [[spoiler:Noble Six beat the ''entire'' onslaught of Covenant troops sent to kill him and survived Reach's glassing by hiding underground]]. Bungie however explicitly said [[spoiler:Noble Six was dead, as one director said they wanted to explore the scenario of being alone on a hostile planet and giving the player a BolivianArmyEnding]].
74	** [[spoiler:Emile]]; In his case, this is largely due to the fact that his body is registered as a "living" NPC and his shields still function, unlike any other killed NPC.
75	** Thanks to the description of ''VideoGame/HaloInfinite'''s Noble Loyalty coating[[labelnote:Spoilers]]"Arriving in a storm of clashing glass, one strange samurai turned imminent defeat into legendary victory."[[/labelnote]], it's become a popular theory that [[spoiler:instead of dying, Jorge was sent to the [[{{Jidaigeki}} Tenrai universe]] after activating the slipspace drive on the ''Long Night of Solace'']].
76	* HighTierScrappy: A high end of the barrel with the Designated Marksman Rifle, or DMR. When the game was re-released in 2019 for the ''Master Chief Collection'', people remembered all over again the hell of this weapon, which can 5-shot kill anyone so long as you have the fifth shot land on the head... And has a generous 15-round magazine. Prior to the Title Update, weapon bloom meant players had to carefully pace out each shot due to the accuracy bloom's excess, but after the update, you can all but fire it as fast as the rate-of-fire allows. Combine this with no real projectile leading compared to the Battle Rifle in ''3'', and you had a gun that could counter sniper rifles and kill across the map without much effort beyond accounting for target strafing. One of the only ways to effectively counter a DMR at range is to have a DMR yourself, as not even the return of the Magnum's zoom makes it as useful. Combine this with the BrokenBase around game modes starting with [=DMRs=] and people hold it as either one of the best choices in the game or the weapon that broke ''Reach'''s back singlehandedly.
77	* HilariousInHindsight:
78	** The "Broseidon" medal calls to mind the [[https://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=285 "Bro Gamers"]] strip of ''Webcomic/VGCats'', in which "Chet and JR", a pair of stereotypical ''Halo''-obsessed frat boys from the late 2000s, had the top possible score for a game on their review scale be "Broseiden, God of the Brocean".
79	** In a more obscure example, about a year before the game came out there was a LetsPlay of ''VideoGame/Halo2'' [[https://lparchive.org/Halo-2/ by Cooked_Auto]], in which he frequently discussed more obscure background elements of the series, particularly discussing the SPARTAN-III project in the "Delta Halo" level. He expressed interest in Bungie doing a game based on them, but then noted how incredibly unlikely it was for it to happen without courting a ton of controversy, given at the time the SPARTAN-[=IIIs=] were presented as ChildSoldiers who were [[WeHaveReserves highly expendable]]. Cue ''Reach'' late the next year.
80	** A few years after the game's release, another SpaceOpera franchise got its own DarkerAndEdgier [[Film/RogueOne prequel]] directly preceding the very first installment in its franchise, featuring a unique squad on a seemingly hopeless mission against overwhelming odds, that ultimately ends in victory but [[spoiler:with the death of the entire team]] and the destruction of the entire planet they're on. Bonus points for the final MacGuffin in both works being [[spoiler:data regarding a superweapon that has the potential to affect the course of the war, with the installments these prequels precede ending with that superweapon's destruction.]]
81	** Buck's voicepack option in Firefight mode has the same description as his character did in ''Halo 3: [=ODST=]'': "Truly, if he were any better he'd be a Spartan". Fast forward to ''Halo 5'', and...
82	* LadyMondegreen: When Noble Team talks to Dr. Halsey early in the game, Jorge addresses her as "ma'am". But his thick accent makes it sound more like "mum", confusing some players into thinking Dr. Halsey is Jorge's mother (which wouldn't even make sense since [[LaserGuidedTykebomb all SPARTAN-[=IIs=] were taken away from their parents in secrecy]] [[GreyAndGrayMorality when they were chosen for the program]]). FridgeBrilliance kicks in, though, as she ''was'' the closest thing to a mother figure the SPARTAN [=IIs=] had after their abduction into the program and many players who misheard the line just assumed this is what he was referring to.
83	* MemeticBadass: Dr. Halsey does this for Noble Six with a simple quote.
84	-->'''Dr. Halsey:''' Six has made entire militia groups disappear. Curious..."hyper lethal". There's only [[VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved one other Spartan with that rating]].
85	** [[JokeCharacter The Forklift]]. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=Yx_U98h_5ok Because forklifts never die.]] Bungie even released [[https://mennoknight.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/halo_forklift_by_a_mime_in_a_box-d2xsmja.jpg a wallpaper of it!]] The MCC release also gives an achievement and exclusive ID background for getting a kill with the forklift.
86	* MemeticLoser: Jun is merely a competent FriendlySniper in-game, but fanfiction likes to turn him into the ButtMonkey of the team.
87	* MemeticMutation:
88	** [[HartmanHips "KAT'S ASS"]], among others.
89	** [[DrivesLikeCrazy Kat can't drive]] [[labelnote:Explanation]]Kat's ArtificialStupidity whenever she is behind the wheel of a Warthog [[http://tinyurl.com/87xqcpc became memetic]] among fans due to her bad driving causing some very dumb deaths during playthroughs (such as speeding off a cliff), with some jokingly (or [[PoesLaw unironically]]) presenting it as proof that [[WomenDrivers women can't drive even in video games]]. In reality, the AI in general aren't any better at driving than Kat is; see NeverLiveItDown below[[/labelnote]]
90	** [[CapsLock DRASTIC DROP IN]] [[RougeAnglesOfSatin SAILS]] [[labelnote:Explanation]]One of the forum users on Bungie posted a long, angry, poorly-typed rant in response to his account getting banned for cheating, claiming that banning the people who cheated in the game will cause a "DRASTIC DROP IN SAILS" for Bungie's next ''Halo'' release. The post proved to be a good source of laughs for the rest of the community.[[/labelnote]]
91	** Current Objective: SURVIVE [[labelnote:Explanation (spoilers!)]]The objective assigned to the player during the game's {{playable epilogue}}, where they must make a LastStand against endless waves of Covenant forces. A screenshot of the segment containing the prompt made the rounds as a reaction image macro, used for instances where someone gets into an unpleasant situation and [[ThisIsGonnaSuck now has to bear the entirety of it]].[[/labelnote]]
92	** "Swordline", a boosting tactic in Grifball that became popular in ''Reach'''s MCC release. Basically all the players stand in a line killing each other one at a time, which allows them to earn medals at an accelerated rate. Done right, players could earn around 32 thousand credits per game, [[NoFairCheating until 343 started banning players who tried it.]]
93	* MisaimedFandom: Emile is extremely popular, yet he seems to exist solely to demonstrate all of the worst possible traits of a Spartan-III soldier. This largely stems from the fact that Emile's negative qualities are never given any focus and are more offhandedly shown, while his snark and CharacterFocus with a DyingMomentOfAwesome vastly overshadows anything that may have been shown to put a negative light on him.
94	* SugarWiki/MostWonderfulSound: The music that plays when you start the game.
95	* {{Narm}}:
96	** The reveal of the encamped Covenant army at the end of Nightfall. The characters sound horrified upon seeing it, but because it's so far away it looks like a big purple cloud.
97	** The Brutes are first introduced killing civilians with a set of unique animations. Unfortunately, the game doesn't consider those civilians to be dead until the animation has played out in full. Killing the Brute quickly will thus cause the civilian to stand up and run away like nothing happened, even if they were just thrown to the ground after having their spine snapped in two.
98	* NeverLiveItDown: Any discussion on Kat will likely bring up how she DrivesLikeCrazy. Her AI isn't set to drive worse than any other character, but because she is the only member of Noble Team that has a chance to drive a Warthog for you (twice, during "ONI Sword Base" and "Tip of the Spear"), she gets stuck with that unfortunate reputation.
99	* PortingDisaster: As the first game in ''The Master Chief Collection'' to be ported to PC, ''Reach'' had some issues (most notably the fact the graphics didn't function properly above 60 fps) that weren't present in later games in the collection. After releasing ''Halo 4'' and completing the collection, 343 Studios went back and brought ''Reach'' up to the level of quality of the later games.
100	* PlayerPunch: Sure, it could be said that the entire game is one big Player Punch, what with Reach falling and [[spoiler: all of Noble Team dying]], but the strongest punch is arguably [[spoiler: Kat's death]].
101	** Or the InterfaceScrew in the PlayableEpilogue. BeautyIsNeverTarnished where {{Player Character}}s are concerned. When it is, you know things are [[FromBadToWorse about to go south]].
102	* ScrappyWeapon: Not many of the new weapons introduced in this game are well-liked, largely due to being too gimmicky for their own good.
103	** The Plasma Repeater is an attempt to give the Covenant an analogue for the Assault Rifle for balance reasons, especially in multiplayer. In practice, this just means that you get an Assault Rifle with an awkward {{Overheating}} mechanic attached to it that's ill-suited for a weapon intended for sustained firing, and without the traditional shield-destroying power of normal plasma weapons. And to top it off, the Plasma Rifle also returns for this game, and upstages its intended replacement in just about every measure.
104	** The Focus Rifle is an attempt to create a version of the Beam Rifle that functions more uniquely than just "Covenant Sniper Rifle", and it does this by taking inspiration from the Sentinel Beam, which due to the setting of ''Reach'' would be a tough inclusion from a canonicity perspective. The fusion of these two weapons unfortunately leaves much to be desired: the Focus Rifle does poor damage and relies on you having close to perfect accuracy with the weapon for a second or two to get a kill; and missing for any length of time will result in the weapon overheating without getting a kill, leaving you vulnerable.
105	* SignatureScene: [[spoiler: The PlayableEpilogue, Lone Wolf, where Noble Six makes a LastStand against endless waves of Covenant forces, is one of the most well known and most acclaimed moments in the entire ''Halo'' franchise.]]
106	* StopHavingFunGuys: Since ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare2'' was SeriousBusiness, and ''Reach'' is now very popular, many of the StopHavingFunGuys from the former have now migrated to the latter, much to the chagrin of veteran ''Halo'' players.
107	** [[{{Scrub}} Scrubs]]: Like with any popular game, they always appear. Complaining about things they never take the time to learn the weaknesses of (Example: Taking three steps back and ''not moving'' as they stare at another in player Armor Lock as though they were hypnotized by it, dying that way (be it an Armor Locker's teammate or an opportunistic enemy or even the Armor Locker popping out and killing his opponent himself.), and then complaining about it on the Bungie forums.
108	* SuspiciouslySimilarSong:
109	** "[[https://youtu.be/jTyGWXX4ve8 Ghosts and Glass]]" bears more than a passing resemblance to "[[https://youtu.be/zEtYTEUOPWI Fairytale]]" from ''WesternAnimation/{{Shrek}}''.
110	** There's a part of "Winter Contingency" that sounds a lot like Music/{{Led Zeppelin}}'s "Kashmir".
111	* ThatOneAchievement:
112	** "If They Came To Hear Me Beg," an achievement that requires the player to land on, and assassinate, an Elite at the end of a fall which would otherwise kill the player (most players tend to try for it at the beginning of the penultimate mission). Sounds simple enough. What makes it so NintendoHard is that it's so damn ''random'' - not just getting the kill itself (your target Elite tends to move away from where he was when you jumped[[note]]so be prepared to hilariously die on the ground behind him without him noticing[[/note]]) but moreso getting the achievement to register. Reportedly the most reliable way to get it is to take a non-sprinting leap off the cliff and perform the GoombaStomp animation (which is either completely random or tied to a very small window of you pressing "melee" just above the Elite) when you land. When ''Reach'' was re-released on ''The Master Chief Collection'', this achievement was noticeably not included.
113	** "One Final Firefight" in the MCC re-release requires you to earn 150,000 points on Lone Wolf. Even if you play on Easy with all skulls on to maximize point earning, 150k points demands hours of grinding with no saves, respawns, or checkpoints, with even Elite Generals giving only a measly 260-ish points each.
114	* ThatOneLevel:
115	** All of the missions on Legendary, but Exodus takes the cake- the only mission where you don't have support from your invincible, never out of ammo squadmates, Brutes are intoduced into this level, and the Drones would just ''love'' to have a chat with you.
116	** "Long Night of Solace"'s space section becomes ''brutal'' on Legendary. Seraph fire is so deadly that your ship's shields might as well be made of paper, and their enormous range coupled with the sparse cover in space means it's a challenge to face down just one at a time, let alone dozens. Made worse in the PC port, because the ship damage is tied to framerate.
117	* TheyChangedItNowItSucks:
118	** Some gamers dislike the new ranking system because it's tied to your Credit accumulation, and not actual skill or kill/death ratios like in Halo 3. [[http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?cid=25287 Except the "TrueSkill" system is still in place]], just running behind the scenes as opposed to being displayed in-game.
119	** The ranking system was changed again in the MCC release, and some players called it even worse. While the credits necessary to cross ranks have been drastically lowered, unlock rewards can only be bought in a linear order. Before a new player who wanted, for example, Master Chief's Firefight Voice could save their credits until they had the 250K to purchase it right away. But in MCC, players are railroaded into purchasing everything else first with only 1 credit per rank unlock, meaning you have to buy more than a hundred other cosmetics you may not even want just to get to that Voice.
120	** [[http://haloreach.isnotcanon.net/ An entire website was built about Reach supposedly ruining the canon.]]
121	** The [=TrueSkill=] thing is being questioned (to some people's eyes, it doesn't even exist) [[BrokenBase even today]]. There are theories about the possible reasons for this being that [[SequelDifficultyDrop the game is too easy, even on multiplayer]], or it works... [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks differently than it used to]].
122	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: The communications outage at Visegrád Relay at the beginning of the game is initially blamed on [[LaResistance Insurrectionists]], a faction that has intrigued fans of the series but has never shown up in the games proper beyond a very minor role as neutral AI enemies in the multiplayer of ''VideoGame/HaloWars''. This possibly would have been a good moment to give them a proper spotlight in a ''Halo'' game by introducing them as a StarterVillain who quickly get upstaged by the Covenant, while also providing an interesting character moment for Emile, who is stated in his backstory to hold an intense hatred of Insurrectionists. This could lead to additional conflicts later in the game, such as an EnemyMine scenario (this idea would eventually be explored in ''Halo: Collateral Damage''). In the end, the Visegrád Relay attack turns out to be entirely the work of the Covenant.
123	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: Barring Kat and Jorge, Noble Team qualifies to an extent. While their most prominent personality traits are present, the campaign was simply too short to give all six of them the focus they needed. Carter manages to avoid it to an extent because he's the leader and he gives the orders the player follows throughout the campaign, but Emile and Jun only become prominent towards the end, when the other spotlight-sharing characters have been killed off.
124	** Somewhat more egregiously, Emile. ''The Pillar of Autumn'' is the ''only'' level where he has a prominent role, and that's because literally everyone else is dead in the team (bar Six) is by that point.
125	* TooCoolToLive: [[spoiler:Everyone on Noble Team, except [[SoleSurvivor Jun]].]]
126	* UnderusedGameMechanic: The game introduced the Fireteam mechanic, which causes encountered NPC troopers to join your side as an accompanying squad. However, you have no command over any of these troopers ([[ArtificialStupidity who aren't exactly intelligent guys]]) so unless you can give them powerful weapons they'll just be cannon fodder. Additionally, the mechanic isn't available on every level, meaning often times you may encounter troopers but they won't accompany you, rendering them meaningless if you wanted support fire or someone to carry heavy weapons.
127	* {{Woolseyism}}: Several of the 5-kill sprees medals that had generic names in English like "Sword Spree" were given their own names in the French translation, with "Sword Spree" for instance becoming "Weapon Master".

Context YMMV / HaloReach