Looking at the package that is Halo: Reach, there's a lot to be excited about:  it's the final Bungie-developed Halo title before 343 takes over the franchise, it's got some of the biggest multiplayer leaps and bounds that the franchise (and possibly any multiplayer shooter) has ever seen in depth and scope, and above all, it's the portion of the story that I personally have wanted to see visually.  For anyone that has read The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund, the story of Reach's downfall sparking the way between the humans, the Covenant, the Flood, and everything that we've seen in the Halo Universe is the linchpin for me.  It's one of the reasons I dumped the extra $20 for the limited edition to get Dr. Halsey's journal (which happens to be an amazingly in-depth read and a great supplement for fans of The Fall of Reach). 
 
Regardless of all the ups, there's a ton of downs that I've seen over my time with the game...and it kind of saddens me.  Technical and concept issues abound: 

• Heavy motion blur - This standard of most modern day games seems to be a bit overwrought throughout any play session on Reach, to the point that some folks are citing headaches, nauseousness, and other health issues while playing.  Mind you, all video games have a warning stating that some of the technical aspects of the graphics and/or presentation might cause issues like this, but it's odd to see it happening so late in the franchise.  While the game is absolutely gorgeous, the motion blur can be a massive distraction at times.
• Depth-of-field weirdness - Most games handle depth-of-field with ease, like the Call of Duty franchise.  Personally, those games set the standard for how to properly handle depth-of-field in a game.  Nonetheless, Reach has a problem with this.  Since there is no aim-down-sights feature (which will be referred to as ADS for the rest of this, if I type it again at all), the way your character focuses on stuff and how that affects the background is incredibly awkward.  In the beginning mission of the campaign, there is a moment where you are flying in to a distress beacon.  Looking directly at your teammates flying next to you will result in proper texture work.  Looking at something else turns them into a blurry mess, and frankly, it's a bit disheartening to see that happen.  There's no real reason why that should happen other than Bungie trying to use some fancy graphical trickery to simulate something that didn't really need to be simulated in the first place.
• Dramatic frame rate drops - I had heard from a friend that there were points later in the game where the frame rate is nigh unbearable.  I didn't believe that it was that bad...until he showed me.  I'm absolutely surprised at how bad the frame rate gets in those later missions, and I could even see it being a hitch that keeps me from getting the Legendary achievement for playing through it myself.  I'd hate to think what that would be like with 4-player co-op going.
• No penalty for leaving a multiplayer match - This is one of the most mind-boggling things possible.  In previous Halo games over Xbox Live, leaving a match resulted in a penalty that led to you having to work harder in order to get your ranking back up.  It helped to make sure that people weren't just jumping ship because they were losing or because they weren't getting the high KDRs or whatever that they felt they deserved.  Unfortunately, Reach has NO penalty system whatsoever, which has led to plenty of matches that left me as the only player on a team against three others.  In turn, the online is a little less fun.  Why?  This lack of penalty leading to people jumping ship has caused another serious problem to rear its ugly head...
• Poor host migration - I can't count on two hands and two feet how many times I have seen a match lead to staring at the score screen while someone is being picked as the new host.  The wait time on this is even longer than the moments that it happens on Modern Warfare 2, leading to many people leaving the match rather than sticking around because...again...there's no penalty.  All that does is cause more host migration issues, and in turn, it's a massive clusterfuck.  It could, quite literally, drive a man insane.
• Depending too heavily on Firefight-style fights in campaign - So far, I'm only two missions in on Heroic.  I'm going to be starting over on Legendary after seeing my friend basically walking through it, knowing that I'm on the same skill level as he is.  Despite that fact, I've noticed a lot in the campaign how I'm finding myself basically pinned up at an outpost or a particular area, dropships come in to bring down waves of enemies, and I've got to either kill them all or defend against them until someone completes hacking a door or something.  It's one of the issues I had with the ODST campaign as well, since many of the missions in that felt the same way - sectioned-off areas where enemies just swarm you.  It was understandable in ODST, though, as that was the big thing that game brought to the Halo franchise.  The first two Halo games did not have this issue, and even Halo 3's campaign never felt like a Firefight-style setup.  It's a little saddening that the campaign has been brought to this rather than following the tried-and-true formula of previous games.
• Multiplayer relies heavily on old maps - Many of the Team Slayer maps that I've played are essentially remakes or inspirations of maps from the first three Halo games, particularly Halo 2 it seems.  While those maps are great (and I personally love the remake of Ivory Tower, called Reflection in Reach), I never feel like I'm seeing enough of a rotation in those maps.  A lot of that probably has to do with the "choose your match" setup, where you are allowed to decide which of three game types you want to vote for.  Unfortunately, most of the Halo community seems to only want to play three game types:  SWAT, Slayer DMR, and Snipers.  Notice anything similar there?  It feels as though multiplayer games in general have all succumb to this "almighty headshot" theory, and it's fucking tragic in many ways.  Despite the fun that I have with SWAT, I want to play Halo the way Halo was meant to be played.  Maybe I'm too nostalgic for Halo and Halo 2, and I never played a whole hell of a lot of Halo 3 (as I've been pretty vocal about my feelings on that game many times).  Nonetheless, it'd be nice to see the community offer a little more variety, and if not that, then it'd be nice to see Bungie have a stronger rotation.

Halo: Reach is fucking awesome.

Looking at the package that is Halo: Reach, there's a lot to be excited about:  it's the final Bungie-developed Halo title before 343 takes over the franchise, it's got some of the biggest multiplayer leaps and bounds that the franchise (and possibly any multiplayer shooter) has ever seen in depth and scope, and above all, it's the portion of the story that I personally have wanted to see visually.  For anyone that has read The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund, the story of Reach's downfall sparking the way between the humans, the Covenant, the Flood, and everything that we've seen in the Halo Universe is the linchpin for me.  It's one of the reasons I dumped the extra $20 for the limited edition to get Dr. Halsey's journal (which happens to be an amazingly in-depth read and a great supplement for fans of The Fall of Reach). 
 
Regardless of all the ups, there's a ton of downs that I've seen over my time with the game...and it kind of saddens me.  Technical and concept issues abound: 

• Heavy motion blur - This standard of most modern day games seems to be a bit overwrought throughout any play session on Reach, to the point that some folks are citing headaches, nauseousness, and other health issues while playing.  Mind you, all video games have a warning stating that some of the technical aspects of the graphics and/or presentation might cause issues like this, but it's odd to see it happening so late in the franchise.  While the game is absolutely gorgeous, the motion blur can be a massive distraction at times.
• Depth-of-field weirdness - Most games handle depth-of-field with ease, like the Call of Duty franchise.  Personally, those games set the standard for how to properly handle depth-of-field in a game.  Nonetheless, Reach has a problem with this.  Since there is no aim-down-sights feature (which will be referred to as ADS for the rest of this, if I type it again at all), the way your character focuses on stuff and how that affects the background is incredibly awkward.  In the beginning mission of the campaign, there is a moment where you are flying in to a distress beacon.  Looking directly at your teammates flying next to you will result in proper texture work.  Looking at something else turns them into a blurry mess, and frankly, it's a bit disheartening to see that happen.  There's no real reason why that should happen other than Bungie trying to use some fancy graphical trickery to simulate something that didn't really need to be simulated in the first place.
• Dramatic frame rate drops - I had heard from a friend that there were points later in the game where the frame rate is nigh unbearable.  I didn't believe that it was that bad...until he showed me.  I'm absolutely surprised at how bad the frame rate gets in those later missions, and I could even see it being a hitch that keeps me from getting the Legendary achievement for playing through it myself.  I'd hate to think what that would be like with 4-player co-op going.
• No penalty for leaving a multiplayer match - This is one of the most mind-boggling things possible.  In previous Halo games over Xbox Live, leaving a match resulted in a penalty that led to you having to work harder in order to get your ranking back up.  It helped to make sure that people weren't just jumping ship because they were losing or because they weren't getting the high KDRs or whatever that they felt they deserved.  Unfortunately, Reach has NO penalty system whatsoever, which has led to plenty of matches that left me as the only player on a team against three others.  In turn, the online is a little less fun.  Why?  This lack of penalty leading to people jumping ship has caused another serious problem to rear its ugly head...
• Poor host migration - I can't count on two hands and two feet how many times I have seen a match lead to staring at the score screen while someone is being picked as the new host.  The wait time on this is even longer than the moments that it happens on Modern Warfare 2, leading to many people leaving the match rather than sticking around because...again...there's no penalty.  All that does is cause more host migration issues, and in turn, it's a massive clusterfuck.  It could, quite literally, drive a man insane.
• Depending too heavily on Firefight-style fights in campaign - So far, I'm only two missions in on Heroic.  I'm going to be starting over on Legendary after seeing my friend basically walking through it, knowing that I'm on the same skill level as he is.  Despite that fact, I've noticed a lot in the campaign how I'm finding myself basically pinned up at an outpost or a particular area, dropships come in to bring down waves of enemies, and I've got to either kill them all or defend against them until someone completes hacking a door or something.  It's one of the issues I had with the ODST campaign as well, since many of the missions in that felt the same way - sectioned-off areas where enemies just swarm you.  It was understandable in ODST, though, as that was the big thing that game brought to the Halo franchise.  The first two Halo games did not have this issue, and even Halo 3's campaign never felt like a Firefight-style setup.  It's a little saddening that the campaign has been brought to this rather than following the tried-and-true formula of previous games.
• Multiplayer relies heavily on old maps - Many of the Team Slayer maps that I've played are essentially remakes or inspirations of maps from the first three Halo games, particularly Halo 2 it seems.  While those maps are great (and I personally love the remake of Ivory Tower, called Reflection in Reach), I never feel like I'm seeing enough of a rotation in those maps.  A lot of that probably has to do with the "choose your match" setup, where you are allowed to decide which of three game types you want to vote for.  Unfortunately, most of the Halo community seems to only want to play three game types:  SWAT, Slayer DMR, and Snipers.  Notice anything similar there?  It feels as though multiplayer games in general have all succumb to this "almighty headshot" theory, and it's fucking tragic in many ways.  Despite the fun that I have with SWAT, I want to play Halo the way Halo was meant to be played.  Maybe I'm too nostalgic for Halo and Halo 2, and I never played a whole hell of a lot of Halo 3 (as I've been pretty vocal about my feelings on that game many times).  Nonetheless, it'd be nice to see the community offer a little more variety, and if not that, then it'd be nice to see Bungie have a stronger rotation.

Halo: Reach is fucking awesome.

How many people are really getting sick from the motion blur? Is it really that bad? 

i must by reach 

" How many people are really getting sick from the motion blur? Is it really that bad?  "

" @The_Laughing_Man said:

" How many people are really getting sick from the motion blur? Is it really that bad?  "

It's called simulator sickness, aka motion sickness.  It's just something that happens, but I can say that the motion blur in Reach is layered on pretty damn heavy. "

I've only experienced one really awful frame-rate dip, and that was online multiplayer (two drop shields and six people in extremely close quarters going absolutely batshit with all guns blazing). I'm just about through the campaign now, from what I can tell, so maybe I just haven't been looking at the right spots?

When you quit a match in Reach you cannot get into another multiplayer match for 15 minutes. That's what I read yesterday.

" @The_Laughing_Man: Yeah, it's definitely more noticeable than any previous Halo game, for sure. And given the right television, there are some weird ghosting effects that are still taking place, so shit can get real psychedelic real quick.  "

I can't even imagine how bad the frame rate would on 4 player local co-op, I shudder at the thought of it.

" @The_Laughing_Man:
I've not found the motion blur to be "that bad." I have found it noticeable, however. Particularly in the very first cinematic... or one of the early ones anyway, just before you start to play the game. Looking across at the other Falcon.... yuck. It's the motion blur. And it's a shame, because had it not been there, it would've looked just fine. Moreover, the Falcon opposite your own was traveling the same speed as you. Sooooo there shouldn't be any blur. When it works, it works. But it's times like that are noticeable and unfortunate.
 
I've found the campaign to be an absolute blast. The mission variety is excellent thus far (I think I'm halfway through), the AI is awesome (but I've figure those fuckers out), and can I just say that

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

the space mission blew me away!?

I expected it to be filler and poorly done, but it was a blast, and I would whole heartedly support a patched-in multiplayer component with it.
 
@jakob187: Tried online for the first time today. Experienced one host migration and the same community voting issues you spoke of. Seems everyone reallllly loves snipers, DMRs, and Swat. Fortunately, I'm a fan of SWAT... at least for now. Good christ Swat was fun on Cage. I forgot how much the online in these games gets my blood pumping. I don't think I've said "cunt" so much in my life. "

You can get a 15 minute "quit ban" if you make a habit out of it.

" @The_Laughing_Man: From what I've seen/played, it's mostly in cutscenes where the motion blur is most prominent. Like you said, you might be alright. There was another thread a few days ago that seemed to suggest it's all dependent on what sort of TV you're working with.   I hope you don't have any problems though, because the game is pretty fucking good.  "

" When you quit a match in Reach you cannot get into another multiplayer match for 15 minutes. That's what I read yesterday. "

" @natetodamax said:

" When you quit a match in Reach you cannot get into another multiplayer match for 15 minutes. That's what I read yesterday. "

That's a lie.  If you leave MULTIPLE matches over a course of time, you can't go into another match.  If you leave A match, you are just fine. 
 
@mikeeegeee: Don't get me wrong - I enjoy SWAT on this game.  However, I think Snipers and DMR is just fucking dull, and I only enjoy SWAT every so often.  It just feels too much like the Halo community saying "oh, hey, these modes make it more like Modern Warfare" without remembering what made Halo awesome in the first place. "

That's a very odd question actually.
I would think if a game had good value, it wouldn't have any problems.

" @jakob187 said:

" @natetodamax said:

" When you quit a match in Reach you cannot get into another multiplayer match for 15 minutes. That's what I read yesterday. "

That's a lie.  If you leave MULTIPLE matches over a course of time, you can't go into another match.  If you leave A match, you are just fine. 
 
@mikeeegeee: Don't get me wrong - I enjoy SWAT on this game.  However, I think Snipers and DMR is just fucking dull, and I only enjoy SWAT every so often.  It just feels too much like the Halo community saying "oh, hey, these modes make it more like Modern Warfare" without remembering what made Halo awesome in the first place. "

I agree.  
 
I mean, the thing that makes Halo, well, Halo is the energy shield/tactical methodology of the combat. I don't mean to just parakeet what the dude-fellas said on the Bombcast, but the game isn't really about being faster at the trigger than your enemy so much as it is outsmarting and outplaying your opponent.  "