Things I Wish Halo Reach Had

I'm going for a SHORT entry today. And since my gripes with Halo Reach are few, this should be a short list!

1. Customizable Weapons Loadouts. Don't get me wrong, the loadout system is great. But wouldn't it be better if you could set yourself up with a few defaults to choose from?

2. Perks. I'm talking Call of Duty here. When the credit system was announced, it sounded like a good thing. But it turns out that all it is is a way to customize your armor skin. Does that really even matter? Flaming heads aside, in the heat of battle, everyone looks the same anyway. The armor effects are cool, though. But wouldn't it be cooler if you could buy something meaningful with your hard-earned credits? And speaking of meaningful...

3. Meaningful Ranks. Not to bash the ranks in HR too much, but for the most part, a high rank just means you play a lot. It doesn't mean you are necessarily skilled. Now usually people who play a lot are skilled, so highly skilled people should have a high rank, right? But not always. Being a General in Reach is cool and all, but it really doesn't carry with it the "street cred" that it did in Halo 3.

4. Displayed Skill Numbers. They had these in Halo 3. But in Reach, while you can see them at the end of matches, they are downplayed. I wish they hadn't done away with it so much. I like to see how tough my opponent really is up front. But the matchmaking does seem to work better in Reach.

5. MVP. This was one of the things I liked best about Halo 3, and they did away with it in Reach. WHY??? They even left room on the screen for it! That is really annoying. Just one of those cool little things that I really miss. I guess it won't be happening unless they do it for Halo 4 or whatever.

6. Arena Matches - 3 instead of 4. When it started it was 3 games a day to rank. But then they changed it to 4. I don't know about you, but I don't have time to play Halo for hours every day. And when I play, I sometimes do just want to play for fun. Three games can be done in 30 to 40 minutes. But when you raise it to 4, there's a good chance you'll have to play for an hour. That's an hour a day, just to maintain some dubious rank. Is it really even worth it?

7. Camo in Arena. Camo is my fav, but they got rid of it in Arena. (At least, last time I checked.) I can understand why, but I still don't like it.

8. No Equipment. Yeah, they have to be different from Halo 3. I understand that. But I still miss chunking an Energy Drainer thingie at people. Those were awesome!

9. More Color Options in Forge World. This may sound petty, but hear me out. I mean, Forge is great and all, BUT... how many steel blue walls and ramps does a person really need to see? After a while, it just all starts to blend together. It makes all the custom maps look sorta the same. Blue and bland.

10. Get Rid of Sprint. Others may like this one, I don't know. But I hate Sprint as an armor ability. It's no fun. It's boring. It sucks. Now maybe I just undervalue it, but to me, it's a waste of space. I especially hate when people Sprint head-on toward me, and pummel me like a linebacker. That is annoying. It wouldn't be so annoying maybe if I could do that in return, but most of the time when I try, I just get shot and die. I should blame my own skills I guess, but I prefer to blame Reach.

Halo Reach excels at a lot of things. The matchmaking is improved. Lots of things are fun about it. But I wanted something to gripe about today, and what better than one of my favorite games? Besides, it's really no fun to go through life without griping!

P.S. Well, so much for short! Eh, oh well :)