A little figure wearing red space pads flickers onto my screen from behind a pillar and I immediately pull the left trigger on my Xbox One controller to zoom down my rifleâs sights. Except this is Halo: Reach, and there are none.
My blue space dude lobs a grenade instead. The red man disappears again. My grenade gets snagged on the top of the tunnel Iâm in and bounces back toward my feet. This is how I died during my first outing in Reachâs multiplayer since 2012, and it wouldnât be the only time, either.
Shooters were different at the start of the decade. I knew this. And I knew getting back into Reach would take some adjusting. I did not know nor was I prepared for just how much my instincts and reflexes had atrophied in the time since, or how often I would die while trying to unlearn everything modern shooters like Destiny 2 and Modern Warfare have conditioned me to do.
I love to sprint. Itâs what most often gets me killed in other games, but also just as often what helps me get out of a scrape alive. Reach has sprinting, but itâs on a cool down and tagged to your armor ability and not available in the gameâs competitive mode. Get caught out in the open and someone will pick you off before you can get back into cover. I realized early on that I needed to be more cautious and methodical about checking blind spots and predicting where opponents would pop out, but that didnât stop me from spending the first few matches trying to race out into the center of the map like confused John Travolta.
The lack of iron sights has also been frying my gray matter. Itâs how I squint in games, and there is a lot to squint at in Reach, but the standard issue rifle doesnât have any option for focusing down the reticle. When I havenât been accidently chucking grenades, Iâve been wasting time searching for people with the gameâs zoom-in view. The M392 Marksman Rifle lets you look down the scope while firing, but whenever you get hit, which happens 90% of the time, thatâll bounce you back out of it. Firing from the hip feels so unnatural in 2019, but getting reacquainted with the satisfying zap of headshotting someone without assists has been worth the effort.
By far one of the weirdest things has been trying to shed my reliance on crouching. You can crouch in Reach, but you canât crouch while moving. Itâs something you have to hold the left analog stick down to do, which makes a lot of sense in terms of the physical demands of crouching in real life. Still, it runs completely counter to my modern sense of how super soldiers should functionâor, at least, how they usually function in a video game. In Reach, thereâs no sneaking behind rocks, or ducking in between reloads. On the one hand itâs frustrating but on the other it can feel liberating: thereâs no try, only do, get the kill or die trying.
âNo bloom no sprintâ is Reach multiplayerâs tagline, but itâs more than just words. For the uninitiated, bloom is an in-game effect that makes shots fired from further away less accurate, no matter how well you aim. Dipping back into the old school shooter in the twilight of the decade in which it was released, itâs immediately apparent how different it is. What you see is what you get. When I play Destiny 2, it feels like a guardian angel is watching out for me, helping me get to safety just in the knick of time or nerfing an opponentâs shot in real time in order to account for dice rolls happening behind the scenes. In Reach, I only have my reflexes, my spatial awareness, and the wiles of my teammates to get me through the round. Itâs not a world I want to live in full time, but returning to it has felt rejuvenating.
