Halo Reach - This Is the Halo Game I've Been Waiting For (very minor spoilers)

I completed Halo: Reach (on normal).  For once, it didn’t disappoint.  No giant monkey hammer reverse Donkey Kong boss battle this time.  A real, satisfying ending that wasn’t just a rehash of the now-iconinc race to get away from the self destruct from thehe first Halo.I only remember two escort missions, but they were very short.  One wasn’t so much an escort mission as a “kill the big boss to allow someone to get away from it” and the single “follow this NPC and protect him” mission involved my favorite thing about Halo: ODST, so I was grinning instead of cursing during that brief section.I really like the commendation system which, while having been done before in previous titles, is well thought out and gives the player feedback and statistics that are interesting and give the player targets to try to hit.  Oddly, it reminds me of one of my favorite D&D modules, in which the players were “scored” based on how well they did, and after the game was over, you could go and look and see how you did relative to other people, and what you could have done differently.  It and the modules like it made for extra fun, and helped us to improve our playing skills.Now that I’ve finished playing on normal to get through the story, it’s time to start slogging my way through Legendary.  It’s often frustrating, and it will take me a long time, but the satisfaction to beat a level on solo Legendary (at least in the first one, and I expect on this one, too) is worth it.Wish me luck…