Yesterday I declared Halo:Reach, Bungie’s latest release of the most popular FPO on XBOX 360, as “meh”. I then sprinkled compliments on the aspects of the game that I liked, and teased that today would be the day that explain myself. Without further adieu:

Where the !@#$ is the ammo?

Well? Where is it? Oh wait.…I’m dead…. Again…. Fun. My main complaint is that there just isn’t enough ammo in this sucker, or spare weapons to pick up. Maybe this is all part of the “doomed” storyline, but why in the hell can’t I arm myself even in the slayer mode. Thank Christ the horde mode has infinite ammo or this would be a game that I would have traded in. The lack of ammo boils down to a few factors in my limited time playing this game so far:

When did a grunt become a bad-ass?

I threw my controller across the room not too long ago when I became hopelessly mired in a level of the campaign. Mainly, I have to overcome a large group of grunts, a group of brutes, and a load of these elites. Despite my playing through on normal difficulty, every grunt I shot in the head with the DMR or Pistol just kept smiling and laughing at me. WTF? I repeated the level over 10 times until the gamma radiation took over. What’s worse are the Jackals. These guys are cranked up to speedster levels, and are freaking ruthless. Between them sprinting in and out, grunts that won’t die, and elites that have the shielding and regenerative powers I so miss, I don’t have fun with the game. I’m running for my life, and cursing all the lousy weapons I’m given. I might as well have been armed with Q-Tips.  All of this frustration on “regular” mode.

Would a Spartan arm himself with this crap?

Now some of the DMR shots normally get me a headshot, but the pistol they keep saddling me with isn’t worth squat. The Halo faithful swear by it, but it took me 9 days of playing to finally kill someone with it, and they were standing still and humoring me. I wouldn’t hunt a caged canary with that thing. Luckily, the derringer they give you is always equipped on every game mode. Awesome.

This DMR is god-awful as well. Sure, I can kill a guy in 4 headshots, provided I can score 4 concurrent direct hits in a short amount of time before I’m annihilated. Problem is the aim never stay true, and the weak caliber of the rifle round eats ammo, leaving you perpetually short, and ill-equipped. Again, this isn’t fun. It’s work. Like trying to spread mulch across the house, and constantly walking around the long way to bring a new bag.

What chaps my ass the most are the weapons that you get from the enemy. That have stayed constant, with even some improvements. I worked hours to try and get my BR and sniper skills up, but with the absence of the BR, I feel like I have wasted almost 2 years of training so I could work with the “noob” weapons of the needler and energy sword. All my hard work to avoid the noob kills has been flushed away, and I’m stuck with the training wheels weapons just so I don’t drop any lower than my current -35 rating. Fun.

Where the ~!@ are the health packs?

Among the worse “improvements” for ODST were the introduction of health packs. My consolation is that at least we don’t have the blinding red screen. That was unbearable. Here, we are subjected to the health pack system again, and luckily, every mission in the campaign is going into enemy territory in the dessert or somewhere remote where there are no aid stations. I would be a bit more understanding of this factor of the game if we could save a pack and use it later, or if they were distributed a bit better. It doesn’t have to rain health packs from the sky, but throw us a bone here and there.

Tune in Monday for Part 3…the Exciting Conclusion!!!