3. Halo: Reach
A beautiful farewell from Bungie as they let their beloved franchise go after four previous titles. What makes Halo: Reach special is the inevitability of it all. Reach was often mentioned throughout the Halo series as a place which got royally screwed over, and at the start of the game it's hard to see why. With such a strong military presence and so many SPARTAN super soldiers, you'd think the place would be more secure than a nun's cherry on top of Mount Everest. As the game progresses, though, it shows the effort that Bungie really went to in order to make this game the most spectacular in the series. The first thing was the setting. The planet Reach provides a beautiful environment for players to roam about and explore during missions and, as is the fashion with most Halo games, it isn't the standard form of "enemies in front of you, shoot them until they die, then move to the next enemy cluster." Halo games are good at giving the players multiple choices in terms of destruction. Scorpion Tanks, Warthogs, jet packs, heavy ordinance; it can all be used in whatever way you want to play through the level. Halo Reach also gave us something kind of small but nice, in that your character, Noble 6, will wear the armor you customise him with during campaign missions and cut scenes, as well as during multiplayer matches. Noble 6 felt like a blank slate that players could project onto, whereas the Chief gained a set personality over the course of the three games he was in. As I said before, the story of Reach is about inevitability; you know how this tale ends, but you try desperately to avert it. This is made into a somber but perfect analogy, as the final mission sees you wander the bombed out and dusty ruins of Reach as a never ending horde of Covenant forces swarm your position. As you fight off the forces, your helmet begins to break and your will begins to fade, but living up to the SPARTAN program, you do not go down without a fight. Halo: Reach was a beautiful return to the beginning, to show how it all began and Bungie's final masterpiece in their franchise before giving it up to 343 Industries.