A bit of Bungie history.

This will be the last hurrah for Bungie. The company that has made the franchise of Halo a worldwide phenomenon. Selling over 5 Million copies of Halo: Combat Evolved, 9 Million copies of Master Chief's return in Halo 2, and to see out the trilogy leaving a huge hole in our hearts, Halo 3 has sold well over the 9 Million mark. While the Halo spin off, Halo: ODST, sold a meagre 3 million in comparison to its cousin it was still the top selling game in the US for months.

According to Bungie, they wanted to see out, almost a decade of, Halo in style. Reach boasts a range of new vehicles, power ups and battle gear, it is also going to set a new standard in worldwide conflict. What is meant by this is that instead of you being the center of battle, the whole world is in turmoil and you can see this throughout the game.

On the night.

I was lucky enough to be invited to go along to the Halo Reach Pre-Launch event at the University of Technology Sydney tonight (1/9/2010), only 13 days before the set release date. They offered a firsthand look at the beginning of level four "Tip of the Spear", a hands on preview of the returning "Firefight" mode and something that I will be keeping in my memory banks for years to come, a talk to the second man on the moon, Buzz Aldrin.

But this was not all we were treated to. We got to see Kinect in action with Adventure Rafting and an inspirational talk by the Make A Wish Foundation, which I will get to later.

Racing around the track and housekeeping.

We were first greeted with a waiting game. A remote control 4WD time trial, around a sculpted Halo styled track which featured its own war with Marine, Covenant, Brute and Spartan warriors placed around the track fighting each other. The winner received a silver, limited edition Reach Xbox 360 Slim console and a copy of Halo Reach. This was not me... actually my time sucked compared to some of the others there. Racing isn't my forte.



After this bit of fun we were moved into the hall so the night could commence. We had a Microsoft rep talk to us for a bit saying how it would be a huge 12 months for MS with the release of Reach, Gears of War 3 and Fable 3, but also with Foxtel coming to Xbox Live and Kinect set for launch within months. With this final declaration he booted up Kinect and demonstrated how it works with a game called Adventure Rafting, which included photos throughout the game which can be uploaded directly to Facebook.

Making a Wish is within Reach.




The Make A Wish Foundation came up soon after and told everyone of their partnership with Microsoft in line with the release of Halo Reach. In support of such a great foundation, MS have banded together and came up with an amazing and selfless proposition. 100% of all money spent in the marketplace that involves Halo Reach Avatar Items will be donated directly to the foundation. On top of this $5 from every Halo Reach game and Halo Reach Wireless Headset sold will also go towards the foundation. I just have to say that this is an amazing thing that they are doing and I am completely behind this.

The Bungie boys were up next, with the Lead multiplayer and Campaign designers coming out to give us a small, almost teaser like, 10-15 minutes of the fourth level 'Tip of the Spear'. This included the new warthog design which fires 6 rockets a trigger pull, 2 new human weapons, a new covenant weapon and our first look at the campaign Elites, which make a comeback as the main enemy on Reach. They explain that this game will change the way you look at the Halo universe, you will no longer see it as a set of rings that explode due to Prophet guys wanting to purify the universe. But as a real universe, that struggles to survive the onslaught of an alien horde.

Talking up a Buzz ends with a Firefight.


To top of all these speeches we were given the honour of being spoken to by Buzz Aldrin. Now many of you may know, but for those that don't, he was the second man to set foot on the moon, only behind his co-captain, Neil Armstrong. This may not seem like much, but to listen to that man was amazing. He was very eccentric, but intelligent, he explained that we are many decades off being able to travel in space day to day as the cost of the building the space craft vastly outweighs the amount of money that could be offered by the general public to use them. It was a great honour to be in the same room as this man and I wish I could have talked to him for hours longer.





But we had to move on and rounding up our night was the hands on preview of the Firefight mode. Now I did not personally have a go of this as I was busy taking photos and talking to Bungie, I did get a little secret that may not have been fully disclosed. In the campaign you play as Noble 6, but my Noble 6 is different from your Noble 6. You can fully customize your own Noble 6 any way you like and this customization carries over from campaign, to matchmaking, even to firefight. Another feature that was added to firefight is the option to customize your firefight games.

The stations that were set up featured 2 of the many customizable firefight game types. They included: Grunt-pocalypse – you face off against nothing but waves of grunts which throw grenades like crazy, say random crap that can barely be understood and explode into confetti with every headshot you pull off. The other game type was a bit more old school, Rocket-fight. And as the name suggests, you only use rockets.

After being invited to such a great event I would like to thank Microsoft and Bungie for putting this on and I am really looking forward to this game! Keep an eye out for a review of my Legendary Edition once the game is released!

~Fightclub

Edited once, 5/9/10 - 12:32am.

Holy shit, you lucky prick Fightclub. Gotta say, I'm jealous.

Nonetheless, great write-up. And the simple fact that Microsoft is donating that much to the Make A Wish Foundation is absolutely phenomenal. Hats off to Microsoft, for once.

Just getting more and more pumped for Halo: Reach. Can't wait. Nine days.

EDIT: Eh, what's this?


It's being released on the 14th, isn't it?

Edited once, 5/9/10 - 12:30am.

haha fixed up. thanks fir that Dubson.. i wrote that on the train ride home (no parking close to the Uni cheap lol) and i got the 9th from Black Ops lol my bad :p

Aha, all is good. Thought you got some kind of awesome inside news that it was being released on the 9th or something, ah well.

Lucky as!
Very Nice write up!

Nice write up, jealous

jealous cant wait for reach

That would have been amazing to attend, so jealous. Awesome write-up, too.

Can't wait!!!!

reach is gonna be mad

Good read Fightclub. Pretty lucky man. Reach in 9 days.

Hooray for reach.

good job ! +1

can not wait, will be lots of fun and a great write up btw

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. Only 9 more days until xboax becomes fun again