Halo is the franchise on Xbox 360 with Halo 3 still ranking very high in Xbox Live titles. Well today Halo fans got another instalment in the series, this time its Halo Reach. While previous iterations have sold millions of copies and attracted fans from the world over, I get the sense that people aren’t as invigorated by this release. Has the franchise run its course or will Halo continue to break records ?
So are people still interested in Halo. Of course there’s the fan boys and girls, but I’m talking about the broader mass populous of gamers, is Halo something they still desire ? This time round the Bungie developed Halo Reach is a prequel and focuses on how the Halo legend was forged. This time the battle between Spartan soldiers and the evil Covenant is enhanced with improved graphics, new levels, weapons and more. But in a game that’s so clearly multiplayer focused, how much is there for single players.
Kotaku is reporting the single player campaign is only 8 hours long. While the multiplayer aspect has certainly gained a lot of attention over the years, the single player experience has always been engaging, interesting and quite frankly a lot longer. This may be an aspect of Halo Reach that disappoints fans. While a lot of Xbox owners do play online, not all of them do, for those people this equates to around $100 for 8 hours of entertainment, good value ?
Image source: Brads blog
Personally spent countless hours engaged in Halo 2 multiplayer battles, I played through the single player of Halo3 in the first 2 days after launch. So yes admittedly I am a fan, but there’s something about Reach that just doesn’t have me rushing to the store. Whilst online marketing has certainly been around the net, in the traditional channel of television its essentially been non-existent.
The true gauge as to Halo Reach’s success will be sales figures, something we’ll have to wait a little while for. It may have launched at midnight in the cities and 9am to the rest of Australia, but due to the time zones it means the US are still a couple hours away from their launch.
More info @ Xbox.com
