Halo 3 Review from Long Time Bungie Fan
1 10 2007As 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.
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.
