Halo: Reach (2010)

Best: Forge World. Halo: Reach, a prequel to the main trilogy and Bungie’s swan song, proved how versatile Forge—Halo’s creation mode—could be. Halo 3 had Forge, but it was fairly barebones, only allowing you to manipulate existing maps (though DLC added a handful of maps designed for Forge). Halo: Reach, meanwhile, introduced Forge World: a series of blank canvases upon which you could design multiplayer maps and modes. And man, did Halo players go nuts, creating everything from to-scale remakes of older maps to fascinating, inventive new ones as fun as anything Bungie produced in-house.

Worst: Armor abilities. Halo: Reach bucked tradition and added loadouts, allowing you to start rounds of the multiplayer mode with a jetpack, a sprint function, or a hologram, among other game-changing skills, all tied to cooldowns. These were great fun in the campaign, and revitalized Halo’s core gameplay without eradicating the fundamentals that make it work. But at the same time, everyone in PvP just spammed the shit out of the armor lock. By the end of its life cycle, Halo: Reach’s multiplayer became less a game of precision and tactics and more a bloody bout of rock-paper-scissors.