Halo: Reach VS. Call of Duty: Black Ops

This is an attempt to create a non-biased comparison between Halo: Reach and Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Halo: Reach. Developed by Bungie, LLC.
Call of Duty: Black Ops. Developed by Treyarch Corp.

Gameplay

Halo: Reach
Campaign
Firefight (Versus and regular)
Matchmaking
Forge

COD: BO
Campaign
Matchmaking
Zombies


Graphics

Halo: Reach runs a new version of the Havok engine, rebuilt from the ground up. Unlike Halo 3 and ODST, Reach's graphics are much more vivid, smooth, and crisp. For example: The assault rifle in Reach has more polygons than the entire spartan character in Halo 3 (More polygons=better). Now that Bungie is showing character faces more often (constantly, actually) they had to recreate the engine for facial details as well, rather than just helmets.


Black Ops uses the same proprietary engine as MW2 and WAW, with some added features. The main changes are improvements in photo-realistic lighting, draw distances, explosive destruction and effects, and character details.

It might only be fair to mention that Halo: Reach is designed specifically for the Xbox 360, and Black Ops is going to be multi-platform. Making a game multi-platform, while increases sales, means that certain aspects can't delve too much into console-specific utilizations. Halo: Reach is utilizing the 360 as much as the 360 can handle. Black ops has to depend on the engine 100%, and can't take full advantage over each individual console.
For example, the Wii is known to have poor graphic. Black Ops is going to be released for the Wii. Certain features will probably have to be left out of the core game in order for it to work on the Wii without too much recoding (they can't make a specific engine for each console)



Storyline

Halo: Reach is an addition to a huge universe. The universe contains 5 games (including Reach), 6 books, and 7 short films, all of which relate to each other.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is all there is to the storyline. Although the Call of Duty franchise has 7 individual games, black ops is in no way related to the others in terms of storyline.

Realism

While realism isn't a quality that is an important factor to a game, some gamers will argue that it is.

Halo: Reach is in no way supposed to be or seem real. It's all made to be purely science-fiction. Since they have no boundaries to preserve realism, Bungie can literally do anything they want in their game.

Black Ops is aimed at being realistic. Things that you can do in real life warfare, you can do more accurately in Black Ops than say Halo.

Sources:
http://www.next-gen.biz/features/halo-reach-gutting-the-engine
http://callofduty.com/intel/353
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0_jiB2hqeQ
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=259802

I will continue to work on this article as more information arrives. If something is wrong, please correct me.