Halo. Not much as to be said when it comes to the most populer and best selling game of all time. The first game sold the Xbox and the second game was a huge seller for Xbox Live service and was still played through today. Now Halo 3, the last game that follows now ledgedary Spartan Master Cheif. And its a great game while being a little disapointing at the same time.

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The STORY. The story starts off where Halo 2 badly left off. Cheif returns to Earth in hopes to stop Truth from finding a activating the Arc to kill the Flood along with everything else. Joining Cheif is the shuned Elite, the Abriter. But don’t worry this is the Cheif’s story and the Abirter is left to tag along.

Here you’ll finish what Halo 2 started and left you off. The campain mode is easy and if you played the other two games you need to up the level. The game is action packed and doesn’t slow down too often the score helps set the mood for the action on screen and really gets you pumped up. The game will take roughly 8-15 hours depending on the level you play and/or if you play Co-Op.

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The GRAPHICS. I have to point out the graphics of Halo 3. They are not the best but not the worst. We’ve seen better looking games in the past and future games look to trump this tenfold. The lighting and most enviroments look good but like I said its not the best or what you might be expecting, but Halo wasn’t never about graphics but its gameplay.

The GAMEPLAY. The gameplay has always been Halo’s bread and butter. Halo made the FPS cross over from the Keyboard and Mouse set up to the console controller and includes great vehicle control and combat and this game plays the same way. Why fix it if it isn’t broken? And Bungie didn’t change a thing. They added a few new weapons and a few new vehicles and called it a day.

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The MULTIPLAYER. This is where game shines. Just like in Halo 2 the MP mode will be played 3 years from now. All 11 maps have a great feel to them and are all diffrent. The matchmaking system returns to put you in games with players of your skill type. New modes like The Forge allows you to completly edit (not terrian) the layout of weapons, spawn points, etc. to create anything you want on the battle feild. Here you can save it and upload it to Bungie. The only downfall is the lack of options to search for custom and Forge games. You must Invite friends only. The same goes for the co-op mode. The same was said about Halo 2 and Bungie did nothing to help this.

Then you have the sweet Theatre mode. Here the game saves all your progress and you can move the camera around, take pictures, and make small movies to share with your friends. The only complaint is you can not rewind campian mode nor can you record any of it. But that’s just a small complaint.

The END. In the end Halo 3 is a must have for anyone who enjoys a good Multiplayer game along with anyone who enjoyed the other Halo offerings…I’m sure they already got their copies of the game. Halo 3 will still be played years down the road and Master Chief will be looked upon now as a legendary video game personality.

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So I’ve read a few of the reviews out there for Halo 3 and they all pretty much say the same stuff:
“Gorgeous!”
“Epic!”
“The best multiplayer available on any console!”…And so it goes.
So I won’t bore you with more of the same. I’ve always been at my best when I’m bitching about something anyway, so that’s what I’m going to spend most of my time doing. Not that I disagree with any of the aforementioned reviews, I just think that the annoying things in this game are really annoying, and deserve to be discussed more than they have thus far.

We’ll start first with the campaign:
This really is an intense experience if played on heroic or legendary, and shame on you if you played it on any of the other settings. The only acceptable reason someone would have for playing this game on a lesser difficulty setting would be having recently lost a limb or the better part of their cerebellum.

Most of the nine levels are amazing. Extremely varied, wildly imaginative and with less design related confusion than it’s predecessors. The story is so-so…Bungie definitely jumped ship on the Arbiter’s story and stuck strictly with Master Chief, which is understandable from a marketability stand point, but disappointing to the hard-core fans of the series who enjoyed the depth of story that the Arbiter brought to the table.

So…let’s go back to Halo 2 for a split second so I can prove a point. After you finished that game whom did you think you’d be dueling it out with at the conclusion of the trilogy?

The Arbiter? Not likely…

One of those turkey-necked prophets? I certainly hoped Bungie wouldn’t resort to that…

How about Guilty Spark? He was pretty evil and certainly went all HAL on us at the end of the game, but not really a big enough of a threat to…what? Are you serious? He’s the last obstacle we face at the end of the greatest videogame trilogy of all time!?
Did it ever occur to Bungie that we wanted to fight Gravemind? Gravemind, who was such a towering and unnervingly mysterious character in the second installment, was basically turned into a non-factor. If it weren’t for a few one-sided telekinetic dialogues he has with Master Chief and the Arbiter, I would’ve completely forgotten that he existed. In most games that end logically, the protagonist will be pitted against the leader of the species/organization/group that he has been fighting for the entirety of the game…I guess Bungie never got that memo.

And what’s with the second to last level? This level is simply titled, “Cortana” since this is the level in which you finally rescue your glowing blue damsel in distress. After getting to the halfway point of this level you’ll want to re-title it, “Oh my god, what have you done to my beautiful trilogy, you Bungie bastards.” Everyone hates this level…everyone. So you know that Bungie released this game fully aware of the wretchedness of this level. It’s ugly; it’s annoying (the flood attacks you from all sides constantly during this level) and the board looks the same the entire way through. Plenty of backtracking, plenty of dying…this level single-handedly guaranteed that I will never play the campaign in it’s entirety ever again. Just awful…

And on to the conclusion of our beloved trilogy…SPOILER ALERT!!! You have been warned.

Master Chief died…okay, I can accept that. He’s only human beneath that iconic mask after all…this is why everyone relates so well to Master Chief, so for him to die seems like a beautiful way to end the story…but not like this. You’re not even made aware that he died until you see “117” carved onto the soldier’s monument. C’mon! The Xbox is the console that Master Chief built, he deserves better! I want to see him gunned down in a blaze of glory or stoically watching as the inferno of an exploding Halo is reflected in his gold visor and eventually incinerates him in a blinding flash of white. I feel like we were cheated out of one of the single greatest characters of our time…his death was treated as an afterthought, and it infuriates me as a fan of the series.
Aside from the death of Master Chief, we get to see that the Arbiter is the new leader of the Covenant. This is cool, but without any more inclusion of the Arbiter into the story line this moment doesn’t carry as much importance as it should have.

I know I’ve trashed the campaign thoroughly in this review, but it really was a lot of fun. The gameplay is fast and frenetic, the graphics are top-notch (though I’ve seen better on the console in Gears of War) and the replayability of the levels (barring level 8, of course) is through the roof. And the first time you leap from an exploding scarab you’ll swear you just saw the face of a virtual god.

And the multiplayer is just as good, if not better…

First of all, the ranking system kicks ass…I take a hell of a lot more pride in being a Level 8 and a Sergeant, than simply a level 8. It seems like a really minute thing, but it adds a ton to the overall enjoyment of the experience.
But I’m not here to praise, I’m here to nit-pick, which I clearly stated earlier.
There’s less to nit-pick about with the multiplayer than there is with the campaign, but I’ll happily bring to light a few of the frustrations I’ve had with it.

Is anyone else as sick of Shotty Snipers as I am? Why do we have to play this god awful game every other round? This is a completely opinionated statement on my part, but I’m really getting tired of it. If you’re going to have these types of specialty games then please integrate others into the mix…Team Fiesta, Team Rockets, Team Swords…there are other possibilities you know.

Another facet of the multiplayer that literally makes no sense is the inability for your opponent to hear you. This is a major disappointment. I don’t understand this decision by Bungie at all. This is kind of like someone removing the horn from your car. You can probably make a few select gestures to other people that get your point across, but ultimately there’s just nothing as satisfying as laying on that noisemaker.

There’s really nothing else negative that I can say about the multiplayer package that Bungie has put together for us. It’s awesome, and I look forward to becoming a three star general in the hopefully not too distant future.

If you wanted to read about all of the good things this game has to offer then just read all of the other reviews and I’ll get back to you after that…go on, I’ll give you a few minutes.

All done? Oh right, it’s my turn now. Well, I’m busy playing Slayer…so yeah…what he said.

~Joey~

As a longtime fan of Bungie (going back to the original Marathon) it’s very hard for me to say this, but like HALO2, HALO3 is a letdown. That said, it’s a much better game overall than HALO2, so with that out of the way, let’s get cracking.

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In a word, crap. In a sentence: fight your way towards a mission objective, push the button, then fight your way right back out the way you came. Repeat for for 6 to 7 hours. That’s it.

To be fair, the story arc manages to wrap itself up nicely (not that there’s anything in HALO3 story-wise that couldn’t have been done in HALO2, which I guess just illustrates how useless the second game was). The Arbiter campaign is dropped completely; instead, he’s either your buddy or an AI player who simply follows you around (a la Dom in GEARS OF WAR). The first couple missions, set in Africa, fighting the Brutes, are pretty intense and fun. After that, the game does it’s obligatory “let’s jump to a new Halo ring and rehash the original game’s campaign.” Seriously disappointing. That said, you can now kill Scarabs (the big walker things) and Phantoms (the Covenant dropships) if you’ve got the time and willpower, which can be entertaining.

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GRAPHICS & SOUND:
It depends. If you’re playing by yourself, in HD, then the game reveals some impressive texture work, awesome lighting, and slick particle effects. If you’re playing in split-screen, the game tones back the effects for the sake of keeping the framerate up and the game looks like HALO2. Seriously. My roommate came in and thought it was HALO2. Not good.

Granted, it’s a lot cleaner than HALO2, without any of the awful draw-in and texturing nightmares, but the models are pretty much straight from the last chapter. Still, while the environmental textures and lighting are excellent, the game can’t help but look dated next to GEARS OF WAR and the Unreal Engine.

Sound is about what you’d expect. Marty O’Donnell returns and hammers out as many variations as he can on the HALO theme, from soft piano to rockin’ guitars for the big battles.

So the campaign sucks and the graphics don’t impress. Does this game do anything right, you might ask? The answer is multiplayer. HALO3 is 100 percent multiplayer focused. Almost every change, from weapon tweaking to the new control scheme (which feels very weird for the first few hours, but makes sense after that), is geared towards the fast-release, twitch-kill nature of the multiplayer arena.

And in this area, HALO3 absolutely rocks. To be honest, HALO2’s multiplayer was pretty terrible in terms of balance and level design. It was simply the only HALO that went online, so people played it. Now that HALO3 is here, there isn’t literally a single reason to play HALO2 (except maybe the map Lockout, which sadly wasn’t included).

From items that you can deploy, like Bubble Shields and Radar Jammers, to more balanced weapons (the battle rifle is no longer quite so dominating, and the classic assault rifle from the first game is much better suited for creating a nice balance between gun, grenade, and melee attacks), HALO3 is noticeably more even and polished. The maps, in particular, are a serious step up from the dredge offered last time around.

Almost every single map is more interesting, more complex and more fun to play than anything has given us before. Coupled with the weapons tweaks and new deployable equipment, HALO3 rises up as the premier multiplayer console first-person shooter. Forget RESISTANCE, QUAKE4, or CALL OF DUTY. In multiplayer, this game owns.

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Ironically similar to MARATHON:
INFINITY, HALO3 is a disappointment from a single-player standpoint, and wouldn’t stand out at all were it not for the franchise name. Still, with the addition of the Forge Editor (which allows players to create custom game modes and make changes to the maps) and the replay theatre (which allows you to share and re-live your greatest game moments) atop of all the necessary, but subtle, improvements to the overal online mechanics, HALO3’s lasting appeal is almost infinite. It really is a great game.
So long as you have people to play it with.

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