Halo 3

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Halo 3
products by Microsoft
Platform:  Xbox 360  
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Adding to Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, the epic saga continues with Halo 3, the amazingly anticipated sequel to the highly successful and critically acclaimed Halo franchise. In this third chapter of the Halo trilogy, Master Chief returns to finish the fight, bringing the epic conflict between the Covenant, the Flood, and the entire human race to a dramatic, pulse-pounding climax.

Game developer Bungie announced that Halo 3 will be released for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 sometime in 2007. The game was revealed to the world at the Microsoft press conference held at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, CA in May 2006. To gamer’s delight, the announcement was a complete surprise. The rumors have been abound for the past year, as everyone wondered when the next installment would be ready. Bungie and Microsoft did a stellar job keeping their lips sealed, and fans benefited from their first glimpse of the hallowed third and final installment.

The short presentation was delivered in real-time on the Xbox 360 using the current version of the Halo 3 game engine. That’s right, no studio production video, Bungie and Microsoft delivered the real deal: what they showed at the announcement is what gamers will see when they play Halo 3 in 2007. The HDR lighting, self-shadowing, GPU-run particle system and many other effects are rumored to show up in full effect in the final game. Needless to say, the gaming community is salivating.

CJ Cowan, Bungie’s director of cinematics discussed one of the most startling moments of the presentation: the return of Cortana. “Given the variety of character and story arcs at the end of Halo 2, we wanted to boil down our announcement to a few key threads. Cortana and the Chief being a galaxy apart is a situation we haven’t seen before, and is something that is a powerful component to Halo 3. We are using her transmissions in the demo to give the viewer a few subtle clues to her situation and state of mind, without revealing any specifics we want to save for the game itself.”

Graphically, the game closely follows in the tradition of Halo 2, although it has been upgraded to take advantage of the Xbox 360’s more prodigious visual abilities. As art direct Marcus Lehto explained, “[The presentation] was intended to be an understated announcement of Halo 3 — the tone is that of mystery and suspense — the calm before the storm. I wanted to make sure that we reintroduced the Chief, showed that Earth was thoroughly conquered, with Covenant everywhere, and that there is a glorious, ancient artifact buried under the Earth’s crust which will provide Halo 3 with the epic journey which we all want.”

Taking full advantage of the power of Xbox 360, Halo 3 expands on everything that has made the franchise great, adding a wealth of technical and gameplay advancements. The game design has evolved with next-generation, high-definition visuals, enhanced A.I., an advanced real-time lighting engine, and, of course, new weapons, characters, and challenges. Halo 3 promises an unparalleled first-person shooter experience and, in the end, the most compelling and engrossing story in the franchise’s history. Last, but certainly not least, Halo 3 builds upon the unique social multiplayer experience and innovative, evolving online gameplay of Halo 2. Rest assured, you’ll still be able to run with your clan and battle with (or against) your buddies from coast to coast.

Campaign promises
Bungie Studios heard the collective “huh?” from the Halo Nation when a giant talking plant creature and a twisty storyline threatened to derail an otherwise fine piece of fiction in the second installment. The studio promised a more straightforward narrative in Halo 3, which we get for the most part, but it certainly won’t be drawing in any new fans to the series; there’s hardly any setup, recapping, or reminders of who the cast is (and if you don’t remember the events of Halo 2, you better read here for a refresher, because you won’t find much help in chapter three). The tale — one of life-destroying weapon-worlds, a fanatic Covenant alien race out to trigger them, the parasitic Flood who wants to gobble everything up, and the desperate humans (with our armored hero leading the charge) who want to stop all of the above — does wrap up nicely…but not necessarily in the feel-good fashion that most people would expect. So while Halo 2 left you with an Empire Strikes Back cliffhanger ending (OK, it wasn’t that monumental), Halo 3 finishes without the fairy-tale finale of Return of the Jedi, keeping the storyline sophisticated and respectable by videogame standards (just make sure to stay tuned after the credits are done rolling).

While the plot’s conclusion more than satisfies, the action is…well, it depends on how you come at it. Looking back at the first game, Halo: Combat Evolved, the series initially offered a sense of wonderment: A deep fiction, alien worlds, strange technology, and a haunting soundtrack introduced us to a new style of first-person shooter on consoles. Halo 2 further refined the gameplay: Dual-wielding of weapons, vehicle boarding, and better artificial intelligence improved upon an already strong foundation.

Halo 3’s campaign is better in every way imaginable. Subtly beautiful, rich and lush graphics, a heart-pounding orchestrated score, new weapons, vehicles, and enemies…and even better enemy and teammate A.I. Everything is now pretty much a known quantity, however, and a bit of going-through-the-motions gameplay numbs the excitement (it doesn’t help that some repetition and backtracking still taint this series, though they’re not as bad as in the predecessors). Here, you won’t recapture that feeling you got when you first met and fought the Flood, first drove a Scorpion tank, or first played as the Aribiter.

No one is saying that we should go back to the game designs of either of the first two titles — everything just looks and feels so good now. But in Halo 3, the big “oh wow!” gameplay moments just aren’t there, although some bits are still memorable nonetheless, like fighting the Scarabs, at least one (that we’ve found) off-the-beaten-path joke scene, and a frantic stage at the end that’s clearly a throwback to something everyone loved in Combat Evolved.

No surprise
So depending on your mood, campaign mode either delivers what’s expected or delivers that very well, but anyone would be hard pressed to call it mind-blowing. The same goes for versus multiplayer. Like campaign mode, it’s also really refined and built very well from top to bottom, but it doesn’t hold any big surprises for fans of the last two titles (those come later).

Of course, online play will give Halo 3 a longevity that’s the envy of every other console shooter out there, and that’s never a bad thing. New modes like the zombie-survival Infestation and twists on old favorites — like the new Mad Dash, where the designated “Juggernaut” must touch certain objective markers to score — combine with way more customization options than in previous games to provide a seemingly infinite amount of ways to play.

The maps are all over the place (in a good way), so you can leap around on the pristine platforms in the sky-high towers of Construct, fight in an expansive desert in Sandtrap, or go for something more green and brown and organic like the Flood-infested Isolation (which, by the way, has an area that disturbingly looks like the tail end of Gravemind’s digestive tract). One old, popular map (Zanzibar) gets a gorgeous 360 remake (Last Resort), so we hope Bungie will consider reviving more classics when fans inevitably petition for them.

(Quick disclaimer: Matchmaking wasn’t available in time for reviewers, so our multiplayer playtests were all done in custom matches, which played very smoothly for us.)

Playing nice… and not so nice
Where Halo 3 does surprise, however, is in the other modes of play, stuff that may not seem like that big a deal on a bulleted list on the back of a box. A map editor? Co-op play? You’ve been there — but you haven’t done that.

Forge is a map editor, not a map creator — you don’t craft any levels or alter their geometry; you only modify the contents within them. The Halo 3 difference, however, is you can actually play scored multiplayer games while doing so. This leads to all sorts of impromptu madness, like matches that simulate sports (try playing baseball with Gravity Hammers and Rocket Launchers), free-for-alls where new weapons and powers are constantly materializing out of thin air, or…well, you should just experiment with this mode to see all the insane possibilities.

Co-op play starts off as another known quantity, but turn on a new feature called campaign scoring, and all of a sudden, the main story-driven game becomes an arcade-like experience. Campaign scoring lets players work together and pool points from kills (with bonuses for headshots, grenade sticks, etc.), or they can compete by going for individual high scores (but they still must work together since team kills deduct points). The campaign game takes on an entirely different, faster-paced vibe when everyone’s racing to take out Covenant forces before their teammates can nab those precious points. Further adding to the replayability are the hidden skulls. Each of these, when activated in a solo or co-op game, increases the difficulty of the gameplay in a certain way. For example, you can make enemies luckier, or you can turn off your aiming cursor and weapon graphic. Mixing and matching these skulls increases the scoring modifier and thus, the possible high score. And the point of all of this? What’s the prize? Achievements and bragging rights, of course. With so many possibilities, no one, including Bungie, knows what the high-score cap is on each campaign chapter. But a lot of players are going to have a lot of fun trying to find out.

Halo 3 gets extra life with campaign scoring alone; it’s so energetic, playing without it seems almost boring and pointless. The only drawback is every co-op game we’ve played over Xbox Live, whether it’s two, three, or four players, has been fairly-to-incredibly laggy.

Finishing the fight… and this review
It’s hard to imagine a feature of this game that someone won’t love (we didn’t even get to talk about the robust file sharing, where you can swap gameplay screenshots, edited game films, game setups, and maps). Or you can just look at it as a sum of so many quality parts, that value-wise, Halo 3 is as sure a thing as it gets. Sure, no one aspect of the game is life-changing on its own, but perhaps the package as a whole is. After all, Halo 3 has enough content to keep you stuck to your controller for weeks, if not months or even years.

Fun:

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.

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.

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.

Fun:

Halo 3 does get a boost in that it is released for the 360, so you get an automatic upgrade in abilities there. We’re playing on a high end HD TV, and yes, it looks really nice. The backgrounds look like a painting in motion, with swirling clouds and dancing dust storms. From the light glinting off the metal surfaces to the detailed shadows in the rocks, it can be really gorgeous. Is every detail as beautiful as every detail in, say Gears of War? Maybe not. Different developers focus on different items. There are always trade-offs for speed and visual appeal reasons. For a Halo world, I think they did a good job.

The sound and dialogue are really great. I like the background music, and I find much of the dialogue hilarious. There are some conversations that have me laughing out loud. This is a good game to play with your surround sound stereo system hooked up, and of course the subwoofers.

I hated the ending of Halo 2. I dislike it when a story finishes with a “and now wait a few years to find out what happened.” They can at least have you feel like you achieved something, and ended a chapter. For that reason alone it’s good to have Halo 3 here to wrap everything up.

Unfortunately, with all the time they spent in development, this third outing is a bit predictable. I really enjoyed the multi character play in Halo 2. I thought that was a great touch. They completely removed it for Halo 3, setting you back into a Master Chief only mode. To be honest, I really thought we’d get THREE races this time around, and get to play as the Flood too. Why reduce ourselves to just one?

Also, while there are a lot of “missions”, some of them are maybe 5 minutes long. That’s a bit on the short side. I realize you can go back and replay on harder and harder levels to challenge yourself - but they could have put more depth into the basic story line.

Now, all of those things being said, the key to any game in modern times is its multiplayer ability. No matter what single player game you play, it’s pretty much a limited time game. Multiplayer is completely unlimited - and you’re not stuck with the formulas built into the AI brains. Halo 3 is definitely the best multiplayer experience of the three games - the most balanced, the most fun, the best graphics. You could literally play this for years and not get bored of it.

So to summarize - if you don’t have XBox Live, you could rent this game for a week, get through it and have a lot of fun. You’ll be able to see how the story ends, get your Halo fix in and be happy. But if you do have XBox Live, you’ll want to own this. Between replaying the base game on harder levels to improve your skills, and playing multi-player in a variety of maps and set-ups, you’ll be happy for a long, long while.

There are many games we write a walkthrough for that we have to push ourselves to get through, but when we did our walkthrough for Halo 3, we really did have fun So that’s always a good sign!

Fun:

(This is my dads account on here, not mine, still don’t have a credit card =P.)

This game has been criticized by some, loved by many, and accepted by the gaming community. Then why are there all these bad reviews?

1. Graphics: 9/10
I am sick and tired of hearing people say that this game’s graphics are horrible, or bad compared to other games. So what? Some say that it’s just slight improvment over Halo 2. If you say that, please, get your old xbox and a second tv out and look at the ddifference. It is phenomenal. So is the lighting and overall look at the game. Sure, if Bungie had released a month later due to more graphical improvements, but hey, it’s not a bad looking game.

2. Sound: 10/10
The Sound of this game is one of it’s biggest strong points. Almost everything that happens has a unique and wonderfully realistic sound in it. From the battle cries to the sounds of gunfire, this is amazing. And the soundtrack of the game is also incredibly good, setting the mood just right. I like how Bungie made it so everything you hear is real time, of real conflicts happenning somewhere in the game.

3. Gameplay: 9.5/10
I hate whenever people compare this to the original Halo’s gameplay and say it is crap. This game retains the same basic Halo gameplay, just with newer features. Gameplay is solid and versatile. The vehicles I found incredibly amazing to drive and shoot, and the weapons are perfectly balanced out. Everything feels just right for this finale of a series. And instead of just menial gameplay modes such as capture the flag and deathmatch, like COD4(I’m probably gonna get a lot of bull crap from this, but Halo 3 has way more flexibility) Halo 3 expands it’s multiplayer by adding many gametypes such as Oddball and Infection. Then, you can tweak the gamemodes to make it even more fun. Forge is also one of the best things in this game also. Create your own map, then share it with the Gaming World as whole. Theater is also cool, as you can see just how awesome that kill you ade was or whatever you want to do.

4. Story: 8/10
This is Halo 3’s weak point. Halo 2 added an overwhelming number of characters and plots that confused players. Halo 3 took Halo 2’s horrible eding and twisted everything up nicely into a neat finale.

5. Multiplayer: 10/10
This is everything Halo 3 is about. Halo 3’s multiplayer is better than anything else I have played. Even when compared to Call of Duty 4, there is almost nothing that compares to it, besides World of Warcraft. I have spent over 1000 hours playing and have not considered it old. If you have Xbox Live, this game is a must have.

Buy Halo 3