Halo: Reach

Good day, ladies and gents! It's that time: Time for the second review of The Game Cave! Today, we're taking a look at Halo: Reach.

Halo: Reach is the prequel to the award winning Halo saga. It depicts a squad of elite Spartan warriors on the human-colonized world of Reach. Why they named it Reach, I will never know. The name doesn't seem all that creative to me. Anyway, the planet is now under siege by a malicious alliance of aliens called the Covenant. I guess they ran out of better named planets to terrorize. Regardless, Reach is under attack, the humans appear screwed, so they go for broke and fight back while getting all the citizens off-planet. So, Noble Team sets out to participate in the biggest evacuation attempt in human history. Next to Katrina of course. Oh wait, Bush didn't do crap for those people. Well then yes, the biggest evacuation attempt in human history. Now, if you're one of the fanboys out there such as myself, you all know how Reach ends. I guess Noble Six's helmet lying discarded in the sand in the middle of a plasma-glassed wasteland isn't indication enough. What, you thought Noble Six heroically and climactically goes to the beach? Well, I won't spoil it, but I get the feeling I already did.

So, the story's pretty solid. Let's discuss gameplay and some of the issues I have with the game. If you've ever played Halo 3 or Halo 3: ODST, then you've played Reach. But here's the letdown. The engine is obviously Halo 3, the tech looks more advanced than Halo 3, everything seems improved upon as far as Reach goes. BUT, it's a PREQUEL to Halo: Combat Evolved! Why does everything look shinier and more technologically advanced when it happened BEFORE Halo One?! They even have the Mjolnir Mk VI helmet as an unlock when you reach a certain level. If the Mk VI existed before Halo: Combat Evolved, then why bother having Master Chief running around in the Mk V until Halo 2? It makes no sense! And the ODSTs didn't even exist until Halo 2, yet you see them running around in Reach, and even get to play a mission with them! Where's the logic here?! Answer: It's Halo. It doesn't need logic to justify itself.


Ok, so I got the issues rant out of my system. Let's discuss the multiplayer. I will admit, I have been playing the multiplayer religiously for weeks now. However, Halo has jumped on the bandwagon of class-based multiplayer. Team Fortress 2 began this trend, and many games since have mimicked them and created classes for their multiplayer. Halo has however taken a different approach. Where most games feature classes with different weapon loadouts, Halo has opted for different equippables, such as the bubble shield or sprint. So, in that sense, it strayed slightly from the common version of class-based multiplayer.


All-in-all, Halo: Reach is another great game Bungie has pumped out. It's fun, it's exactly the same as what we know and love, and it expands upon the Halo universe and makes us more knowledgeable about a world we love to learn more about. With that said, if you're anything like me, you want Bungie to stop beating around the bush and continue the story of the freaking Master Chief! For God's sake, you last see him drifting through space in cryogenic stasis in half of a ship! I want to know what happens to him! So hop on it, Bungie.

Tron: Evolution

Welcome to the first review of The Game Cave! My name's Jeff, and I'll be reviewing the game Tron: Evolution.

I got the PS3 version of the game, so if anything in the review does not coincide with the Xbox 360 version, that is not my fault. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed this game. The gameplay is fantastic, the story excellent (except the ending, which I will not spoil), and the multiplayer exquisite.

So, the story. It's a prequel to the hit Tron: Legacy movie, however you play a character that means absolutely nothing to the story whatsoever. You play as a new system monitor, who everybody calls "Monitor" (shocking, I know!). However, the emotionless, speechless, serious-as-a-rock Monitor actually has a name that NOBODY USES. His technical name is Anon, short for Anonymous (ooh, creative). He's a new program that was developed by Flynn to police the system and keep the Basics, default programs that were written when the Grid (the programmed world the denizens of Tron live in) was created, and the ISOs, a variant of the Basics that developed a sense of free will, in check. Generally, the Basics and ISOs get along. In the beginning of the game, the leader of the ISOs is about to be installed as the co-administrator of the Grid, a jump forward in tolerance toward the ISOs. There has been a lot of friction between the Basics and ISOs, and they get shunned from many Basic activities, such as the Game Grid and clubbing. As for the ISOs, all they long for is acceptance. So, you have the Basics and the ISOs. Well, then they introduce a THIRD protagonist, the Abraxis virus. This virus basically infects programs and turns them into digital zombies. Evidently, it is now law for every video game on the face of the planet to begin moving towards some sort of zombie-uniformity. Halo features a zombie game mode, Red Dead has a zombie expansion pack, Call of Duty made zombies even more evil by making them Nazis. There's even a Guitar Hero knockoff game that features zombies! And now, Tron has invented the zombie computer program. Congratulations, you've joined the ranks of every other sellout that features zombies since Left 4 Dead hit the shelves. So, we have the three protagonist races, and the main character. Now play the game to find out the rest.


Ok, so, gameplay. The gameplay revolves around parkour, and WOW does it do parkour the right way. The parkour elements flow into one another with mind-numbing, heart-stopping, trouser-tightening elegance. I haven't seen parkour elements this well done since Mirror's Edge. And the parkour even fits seamlessly into the combat. Yes, all you fanboys out there, the game does in fact feature amazing light disc combat. You have the traditional 3-button long-range combo, the 3-button short range melee combo, and the I'm-going-to-shove-this-disc-up-your-#@! combos. Yes, the game features combos that will in fact screw over any opponent you could come across. You can even kill, no joke, TANKS on FOOT. When your disc is that powerful, that's just not giving anybody a chance. You're like the Godking of the Grid, and anybody who objects to your reign will get their own disc shoved up their rectum. Even the big, tough, scary programs get their butts handed to them by the Monitor.


So overall, Tron: Evolution is a solid game that long-time fans of the movie will love. The game gets a 10/10 in my book, and I would most definitely recommend playing it whether you're a fan or not (I certainly wasn't). Play it, love it. Tron: Evolution.