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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CAMPAIGN:
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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GOOD:
- Four-player online (or offline) co-op Gameplay allows two; three, or four players play through the game from start to end. A co-op player can come into the game at any time and leave at any time (note only one of you will play as the Master Chief, while another will play as the Arbiter, and the other two players will be Elites that work with humans)
- Great looking graphics and animation, that look even better then Halo 2, F.E.A.R. and just as good as Bioshock, while these graphics might not look as good as Gears of War do to some people these graphics still are some of the best seen to date.
- Intense multiplayer action online through Xbox Live with matches as small as one on one and as big as 16 players (and offline with out using Xbox Live using either spilt screen, or system link). Halo 3 is set up similar to Halo 2 in the sense that you’re given a rank when you play multiplayer (this rank can go up or down at any time) this rank is representative of your skill and your matched with others of your skill type, that way new unskilled players and hardcore veterans will not often play against one another, unless they make a special match themselves that ignores rank.

BAD:
- Confusing plot to new players of this franchise - Playing Previous games and read the Halo Novels will fill you in on the details, if you are incline to learn them.
- No Clan Support (like in Halo 2) - This might get fixed in a future patch
- Game is considered short to some (Campaign Story Mode).

IF IT FITS YOUR TASTE:
- A Sci-Fi First Person Shooter with quick pacing and vehicle combat.
- Co-op and online versus/team games is the big draw here.
- NEW MODE: Forge is a mode that lets you edit all the maps in Halo 3, while you cannot rebuild the maps themselves you can in this mode, add and take away any and all of the objects from vehicles and guns to spawning points and flag zones. This is all done in real time and you can invite friends to this mode while your customizing the map(s), they can play a multiplayer game while your doing this (instead of just waiting for you) and if you want you can forgo editing the map and join the game at hand as either a player or the map editor (who looks like 343 Guilty Spark), while playing as the map editor you can still add and take away any and all objects from vehicles and guns to spawning points and flag zones any time you want.
- NEW MODE: Theater Mode is a video editor that lets you record and play back any and all matches from Campaign, Multiplayer, and Forge modes from the point of view of any player either in first person or third person (even in a orbit-cam where the camera circles around the player) all in real time (you can also pause this at any time as well as fast forward and rewind), even use your camera to fly around the match and see the match from any angle you want, Don’t forget you must save your videos before you turn off the game or you will lose said videos. Also you can take a picture at any time and save it to your Xbox 360 then download your picture at Bungie.com.

GAME ITS MOST ASSOCATED TOO:
- Halo 2 (Xbox)
- Halo (Xbox)
- Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3)
- Bioshock (360)
- Gears of War (360)

ADDITIONAL NOTES:
- There are bonus items scattered through the Campaign Story Mode called Skulls getting these “Skulls” will make the game harder (by doing things like turning off radar for the rest of the Campaign Mode your playing it) but will also greatly increase your meta game score for the Campaign Mode.
- There are two different limited collectors editions of this game. One is called the limited edition, which comes in a metal tin and has a bonus disc (with behind the scene videos and such) and also comes with an art book. While the other limited edition (called Legendary edition) you will find an art book a mini poster two bonus DVDs (with behind the scene videos and such as well as a collection of all the cut scenes form Halo and Halo 2 and themes you can download to your 360) And the it comes with a plastic Master Chief Helmet to keep your DVDs in (Helmet as big a volley ball).
- At Bungie.net you can sign up and pay a small fee to upgrade your Halo 3 account (default is free) to hold more space on their serves for your videos/pictures/clips that you made.

Review by: Michael Corona - THANKS!

I initially planned on my first entry being the only one until the actual release date, but I just had to discuss my excitement with someone…even if that “someone” is my word processor and a non-existent fan base.

To put my excitement in perspective, let’s all try to paint a mental picture of a model employee. Always does his job well sporting his khakis and polo shirt he bought from Target, never calls in sick and never takes a vacation.
Well…I’m totally that guy; feel free to start hating me. The only thing that can cause me to shed my brown-nosing façade should be pretty obvious to anyone who can read the URL listed at the top of your browser.

I didn’t take vacation time for thanksgiving last year, I was in the office for Mother’s Day, and hell…I even worked on Christmas day. Not September 25th though, that’s the day I have marked on my calendar as the day I start neglecting life and all its responsibilities.

Hopefully I don’t wind up like this guy, but the likelihood is hard to ignore. The amount of hours I will hole myself up in my “gamer zone” may just result in a rare yet possible case of carpal tunnel at the age of 24. By the way, I know how dorky the term “gamer zone” may sound to some, but if you saw my “gamer zone” you would be impressed…don’t worry I’ll upload pictures of it soon enough. And I’m currently accepting nickname suggestions for my “gamer zone”; I just couldn’t come up with anything better on the fly.

So not only will I be waiting in line at midnight for the release of the game, but I’ll also be spending the following two days doing nothing but eating, sleeping (a little bit) and blasting heads online (a lot).

I will be bringing you my initial thoughts about the campaign and multiplayer modes within the first few days of the release, but I’m not giving an exact date because I don’t trust myself to make any kind of deadline. Until that time, check this out and see if you still think Bioshock is winning Game of the Year.

~Joey~

What a huge week for Halo Fans around the country! With the airing of the first commercial on Monday Night Football as well of the launching of the Halo3.com and the Beta Tester Sign-up, we have sure got a full dose of Halo 3 fever.

If you are interested in becoming a Beta Tester, registration began today at the Halo 3 Web site. The beta will initially be open to North American gamers, and not everyone who applies is guaranteed a spot. To participate, gamers must have: a) An Xbox 360 with a hard-drive; b) A valid Xbox Live Gold subscription; c) A valid Microsoft. NET Passport account with a Xbox Live GamertTag linked to it. More details on the beta-sign up can be found on halo3.com.

In case you missed it, a new 60-second ad for the game will air during the Monday Night Football matchup between the Philadelphia Eagles and Carolina Panthers. The ad was a mix of computer graphics and live-action, and will air on television only once. If you missed it, the ad is available on Xbox Live Marketplace and Xbox.com.

The Halo 3 product page on Amazon UK lists the Xbox 360 Halo 3 release date as November 3, 2007.