Aug 20, 2010 19:57 GMT  ·  By

Halo: Reach is Bungie's last entry in the Halo series and is one of the most eagerly awaited launches of the year, with its focus on Spartans fighting Covenant forces on the doomed planet of Reach right before the beginning of the original Halo: Combat Evolved.

At Gamescom Microsoft offered a playable version of the Firefight mode, where groups of players working together as Marines need keep back ever increasing waves of more skilled Covenant assault troops.

[ADMARk=1]The initial battles aren't that tough and I ventured out to where the Covenant drop looking for some isolated enemies to kill but after a short while the Elites become truly ferocious and before long I and my fellow Marine gamers where backed up in out own base, dying and spawning in a room full of Covenant baddies.

Unfortunately my time with Firefight was all too brief but the game seems fluid and engaging, with team work a must for those who want to survive a lot of enemy waves.

The single player element of Halo: Reach will tell the story of Noble 6, a new addition to a team of Spartans tasked with special operations behind the Covenant battle line.

The events of the game will take place before the fall of Reach and Bungie has said that a lot but not all the questions fans have about the series will be answered in the new game.

Reach will be the last Halo game that Bungie, the creator of the series, will work on as they have signed an agreement with publisher Activision for the next ten years, linked with a new intellectual property that has not yet been announced.

It seems that other projects linked to the game universe will be handled by 343 Industries, which has recently advertised for jobs linked to Halo development.

Halo: Reach will be launched exclusively on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft on September 14.