Review: Halo 3

At 11:30 PM on Monday September 24th, 2007 I waited in line for what is the most anticipated game of the year. Wal-Mart was playing Halo 3 videos on every TV screen they had on the showroom. While I stood there, I thought to myself "if this game is less than amazing, I’m going to regret this." Four days later, I have a review ready for the world to read. My opinion may be disputed over by every fanboy from every corner of the globe. Halo 3 didn’t meet up to the hype, but it did meet my expectations.

Bungie has laid the game plan down for any developer looking to create a great online experience. Xbox Live is great, but lets not shy away from our roots. Single player campaign is what I’m interested in. I want to learn about a game and a storyline, almost like reading a book. More games are focusing so much on multiplayer its almost depressing to see the campaigns that are out there today. Games like Bioshock and Oblivion that were built around single player action are blockbusters. Gears of War shines in both departments showing off single player, co-op, and Xbox Live multiplayer. The Halo 3 campaign is a long and confusing one for me. I can understand the general idea of the game, but I feel like without doing proper research or reading the books I’m missing the rest of the story.

It’s not a very long campaign but in the time it will take you to beat it, you’ll look back and realize that they crammed more action into a 10 hour campaign than you can shake a stick at. You really never find yourself in a dull moment while playing, but rather it seems like your being stringed along until the end. Typically you’ll have one or two small battles, a medium sized battle, and then a "boss" towards the end of the mission. Repetitive, yes. Maybe I’m being harsh but I felt more obligated to complete the missions than interested in them. I never wanted Bioshock to end. Such a great storyline and a creative one at that. Like I said before, the game was built around that, Halo 3 wasn’t.

Introducing four player co-op over Xbox Live or just 4 of your buddies on one screen is what actually made this interesting. If it wasn’t for that, I don’t really think I would even waste time going through it. I can’t really say this is a "ground breaking" feature in the game since it has been placed in games before. Still, it’s a great feature and with multiplayer scoring turned on it’s still competitive instead of you and a buddy running through killing anything that moves, including your allies.

                   

Moving on from the campaign mode, you’ll find yourself a little curious about what’s going on Live. This is where the game shines and introduces some great features that pave the way for any game looking to be "the next great online game." Forge, Bungie’s rendition of a map editor, the theatre where you can view, edit, and store game clips, game types, and maps, co-op online which was already discussed, custom games, and of course matchmaking. Lots and lots of goodies can be found here. Though, I believe the ranking system is a little hard to understand at times. Unlike Halo 2 where you ranked up according to how many wins you had and not experience. The number next to your name may change after two or three wins in a row but the rank class only goes up after a certain experience point (exp) mark is reached.

Forge and theatre go together like peanut butter and jelly. Everyone from Halo 2 talked about what they would change about certain maps in the game and now they have their chance to do that in Halo 3. I don’t believe enough playing time has been put into the game to jump in and change things right at this moment, but down the road people will eventually get bored with playing the same map and will look to spice things up. Even creating custom games is even more customizable now. Huge bonus! The theatre is really something that grabbed my interest after getting my share of campaign and matchmaking. It will store up to your last 25 games in its library and at anytime you can go in, view the game find what your looking for and edit it. Take a hi-res screenshot and post it on Bungie or take a 10 second clip of you no scoping a guy. Find your file share location and upload them to your network. Everyone who views your file sharing network can now see that sick dome rocker you had the game twelve games ago. Great little feature that I think  a lot of people will have fun with.

We’ll wrap this up with graphics. I think I’m sort of torn between saying that the game looks great and it looks mediocre. Gameplay rules over graphics, but I believe graphics can make or break a game. The standards now are set ridiculously high that anything less than Oblivion-esque, is considered horrible looking. At times the game really looks great and at other times you might wonder if your playing the same game. It’s really back and forth but for the most part, I would say the game looks okay. Gears of War and Bioshock look better, but with the way Halo 3 plays it doesn’t really matter.

After its all said and done, Halo 3 met my expectations. It might run away with Game of the Year this year for many people, but it’s still in a race with the rest of the great games that launched this year. Thankfully, multiplayer and all of its components will keep this game fresh and not so repetitive for two or three years. I Finished the Fight and now I’m ready to start it all over again. It’s been a great journey and a great way to end the series.

Pros

• Multiplayer is better than ever before.
• Co-op campaign with campaign scoring is fun.
• Forge and the theatre are two components that will fuel this game for  awhile.

Cons

• Short campaign
• Game modes in matchmaking need some toning
• No Clan Support

Overall Score

9.5/10
–backdraft123