Reach is the fifth installment in the Halo franchise and the series' official prequel. It was the last Halo game developed by Bungie, before the development was taken over by Microsoft themselves as their division, 343 Industries, made the future main titles in the series.
This game, with really good and detailed graphics, is the prequel of Halo: Combat Evolved, and it tells the events of the planet known as Reach, which was mentioned a lot in the series. While it's amazing, the story was polarizing to some critics and fans. Some say it's great and emotional, while others say it's cliché. The campaign is also short and can be completed in a few hours.
With pleasing voice acting having Alona Tal as Kat and Jamie Hector as Emile as standouts, and a really amazing soundtrack going for a more somber and emotional tone, it's the first Halo game in the series to have a customizable protagonist, in which you can choose to play with either a male or a female protagonist. Even Captain Keyes from the first game makes an appearance in the final mission after several years. A lot of the Covenant enemies, including the Elites, were redesigned, with the exception of the Brutes. Some of the other characters, however, are one dimensional and poorly written.
Many different weapons, from old classics such as the Gravity Hammer to new toys such as the M460 Automatic Grenade Launcher and the Type-50 Concussion Rifle are available. You can also detach turrets to get a tertiary weapon and move freely, just like in Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST. We also have multiple power-ups, such as energy shields and invisibility fields, and a new customizable power-up which causes different effects depending on the game type you are playing.
Armor customization has been vastly improved, with lots more options to choose for customization. In addition there are eight types of new armor upgrades such as a Hard Lock and Sprint Boost are available in multiplayer.
An awesome Multiplayer mode has a new feature known as abilities, such as Jetpacks and Sprinting. Most features carry over from Halo 3 such as Replays, Forge, Multiplayer and more. Forge, especially, is vastly improved from Halo 3. A lot more types of items can be placed in certain maps such as Forge World, a huge open world map that you can build in. The great mode known as Firefight even returns from Halo 3: ODST.
If you don't have a Hard Drive installed to the Xbox 360 (it has to be attached to the Hard Drive bay and not a USB storage device), some features such as multiplayer Firefight, replays, file downloads and more are not available. But, with a hard drive inserted, you can download custom map and game variants using a file browser, where you can find another player's File Share and download their creations. You can now also have up to 1,000 creations on a single storage device. For the people who like to create a lot of content, now you can have more.
So, with all that being said, the original saga is complete.