ill probably stand alone on this one, but i think reach is alot more fair than halo 3 with that paper scissors rock situation. it might just be because i havent played it as much as i played 3, but i found myself in so many situations in 3 where a ghost was viciously destroying everything, and the only hope of stopping it is either to stick it (which wont kill it on last resort, because lol spike grenades are terrible) or EMP it. or on sand trap if somebody grabs the laser and one of their team mates is in a vehicle, you are absolutely fucked, unless you can get like 3 plasmas stuck to their vehicle. trip mines are useless. at least in reach the sniper rifle can do a decent amount of damage to vehicles and armor lock allows you to have a built in defense against some vehicle whoring.

im with warsaw on halo 1's weapon balance though. everybody spawned with a pistol, and damage to vehicles leaked to the driver (and the pistol was very potent in that regard). if youre getting sniped and cant do anything to the other person, its because theyre on the other side of the map, which usually means you can use the map to your advantage and break the line of sight. if the sniper gets any closer, you can pistol them. dont have a pistol? assault rifle burst firing or the shotgun can atleast cause minimal damage to pop them out of the scope. you could throw a grenade too, but the point is, unless its an extreme situation like rockets in the corner or needler vs sniiper (and if you do that second one without keeping something better as a secondary, you deserve to get killed), you can usually improvise until you can get closer to do some real damage.
in halo 3, the assault rifle just didnt hit past a certain distance, and sometimes you just couldnt get a battle rifle to try to scope pop somebody whos sniping. basically, unless you had a battle rifle or carbine, you were fucked. whats the difference? in quite a few gametypes you dont start with brs, and most other weapons (looking at you shotgun) just dont do anything past a certain range. like i said, i havent really played enough reach to know exactly if this happens the same way in reach, but it suffices to say that sort of thing just doesnt happen in halo 1 unless youre at extreme range.

thats addressing the sniper situation. i could go on about weapon changes, since the shotgun nerfing is a whole rant on its own. as far as a sequel being different, thats perfectly fine, but the issue here is if they put those new gameplay mechanics into this remake.

E: and llama definitely has a valid point. having somebody to watch your back and shoot targets with in halo completely changes how you use weapons and what you use. everything i typed is from a solo perspective.