Game Informer's February issue out this month, exposes a whole raft of details about the forthcoming and highly anticipated next instalment in the Halo franchise, Halo: Reach.

We've pored over the eight-page spread which goes into some depth, detailing Reach's basic plot, the characters, gameplay mechanics and new weaponry. But seeing as we're the helpful types, we thought we'd take the liberty of boiling down the article from a big wordy, word broth into a more manageable course of bite-sized fact chunks. Now, we hope you left room to digest all this, because there's a lot to chow down on here. Let's tuck in:

• This is part of what Bungie's creative director Marcus Lehto calls, "...a more serious approach to the franchise. We wanted to delve a little deeper into our characters themselves - into the Spartans. They're not perfect - they're susceptible to damage."

And that's your lot. If you want the full skinny, check out the February issue of Game Informer where there's enough Reach info to fill fifty Warthogs.