I played co-op with a friend and we picked up on the Truth and Reconciliation mission. The detail of that level is amazing. Sparkling lights, green grass and a lit up purple sky. Compared to the classic look, which looked like a desert with a night sky, the updated look is so much more appealing. However, there was lag in the game and it did come from the updated graphics. When switched to the classic version, there was a decrease in lag. It also only happened only with whoever ws not the host. After the "sneaky" portion of the level was over and we entered the Corvette, the lag ceased. I don't know if it happens in single-player but it did in online multiplayer.

A noticeable glitch remained too, in the next level. You can still drive the Warthog deep into the water without dying. While this may not be an actual "glitch," it is mildly entertaining and good for laughs especially looking at the difference between classic and updated graphics underwater.

This is actually my first run through on Legendary for Halo: CE and I'm finding the difficulty to be a little simpler than I expected. Perhaps that comes from my experience with Halo 3 and Reach on Legendary. I don't know. But it's not easy. Not at all. Elites dodge, duck and shoot with abandon; jackals are terribly annoying with their plasma pistols firing at perfect rate. Grunts surround me everywhere and take two hits to beat down. And this is co-op. I'm sure single-player Legendary is a lot harder. And it is. Finishing the Pillar of Autumn mission today required a lot more patience than Heroic. Compared to Heroic where I never died versus Legendary where I died five times and shields were frequently down. The next mission, Halo, was already difficult once coming on the base where the Elites and Grunts totally surrounded me and shot me down with little effort. I stopped there for now.

What I do enjoy is that there are a lot of grenades again. In Reach, there are not many grenades. I think it's a lame way of increasing the difficulty but perhaps it's story related. I don't know. Either way, having constant grenades at my disposal is nice. The blast radius is also huge for frags and stickies.

Respawning is smooth. It's exciting when me or my teammate dies and I have to move to decent cover in order for them to respawn. It adds a sense of suspense because once my friend dies, staying alive becomes the priority or else go back to the last checkpoint.

The terminals are a nice touch adding more to the story and giving the player something different to look for that is not in the original game. The skulls add that value also and are similar to the Halo's of recent as they can enhance enemy health, make bigger explosions and there's one that won't let you pick up Covenant weapons. I haven't used any yet though I do look forward to using Grunt Birthday Party with Boom.

The audio and music is so good. The Assault Rifle still has the same bassy sound effect and the pistol has some extra bass to it also but audio sounds such as the Needler are touched up nicely. Explosions sound great and voice audio is still clear as before. The music is the most noticeable right from the title screen as it's more clearer and crisper. It also sounds like there are some reinstrumentations but all the music is exactly the same.

The menu's resemble the Halo of old and even the controls with the menu. If I press down on the control stick too hard, it'll skip two or three menu options forcing me to use the control pad. Not too big of a deal but I don't think that's a piece of nostalgia people actually needed or missed.

The ability to have several controller options are nice. I'm fond of the Halo 3 setup and it's nice to know that particular setup is available. However, the controls from the original game are default and the only difference is the black and white buttons now mapped to the Left and Right shoulder buttons. There are a good variety of controller options but there are no custom options but there are enough preset options that people should be able to find something that suits them.

The actual controls still feel smooth and it's very evident that Halo's overall feel, even in Reach, has not changed much, if at all. Any major differences are felt in the physics as strafing is very easy in Halo and that remains. The controls hold up very nice with no complaints about an outdated feel.

The multiplayer maps that come with the game are the best maps in the Reach multiplayer--period. The default maps that came with Reach are bad so it's nice that these classic maps are here to stay. They are recreated beautifully with nice textures, great lighting and meticulously rendered environments. It's very, very evident 343 put a lot of effort into making the maps look nice with obstructing original feels of the maps. Even the variants that 343 created, which do add some slight differences to the original Halo maps, don't kill the original style. You won't find those variants outside of Anniversary multiplayer however. Only within Reach style with Armor Abilities and original Reach gameplay. But there are Anniversary gametypes which take out AA's and speed up movement and decrease bloom on the precision weapons. Purists will be upset about it but I don't think it's that bad at all. The pistol is still a 3 shot pistol but just harder to connect due to the slight bloom that still exists.

The Firefight map included, based on the second mission, is a lot of fun and very challenging. I actually played the Halo mission and as I was playing in that base area, I had the thought "This feels like a Firefight mission" as Covenant poured from the drop ships. Well, turns out Installation 04 is that exact same area. It's a slight bit more predictable than other Firefight maps but it's just as difficult, maybe more difficult as Covenant pour in from all sides. Playing with two people makes it very, very tough. Playing with four is a little bit easier but it's definitely challenging.