The last Spartan gives us his last hurrah as Bungie sends of its signature franchise with trademark prowess, unwavering
This is in many ways a halo game for halo fans. All that was despised about Halo 2 has been removed and all that was loved about the original has been shoe-horned into just about every conceivable orifice of Halo 3's campaign structure. Fan-service it may be, but when the latter levels of a game have you thinking idly back to 2001 rather than screaming in awe at the Television screen, you know they've gone too far. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing; the set-pieces chosen and the level designs that were picked were some of the best from Halo's grand single player campaign and they still should bring a smile to every players face. For the most part, the rest of the single player is also exceptional. It is loud, confident and ambitious, and it ends, in many ways the only way Halo knows how to; grand, over the top and furiously heart-pounding, and when you're finally able to breath, once the ending has revealed itself in all it's post-credits glory, you will feel more than satisfied. It feels much like what we thought Halo 2 would feel like when we saw the games setting for the first time, and although the image of a broken population is not always present (your squad marines are far too upbeat for their own good) the battles you face along the way, combined with some genuinely brilliant artwork create the background to something truly epic, and the eventful movement to somewhere outside of Earth now feels deserved rather than meaningless.
Not that it is fully understandable. Much of Halo 3's story is nonsensical and those who have not played the previous 2 games will be utterly lost. Even those with prior knowledge will be probably flummoxed by the beginning of the 5th level. Perhaps the demands of the fans have created a dent in the story. The Arbiter, a character who now has no play time, was intricate to much of Halo 2's most interesting and obscure sub-plot, the covenant political system and subsequent revolution. This has now been fully sidelined only to pop up in occasional brute dialogue and the story now feels far more basic and linear, but somehow manages to be equally confusing. Cut-scenes don't help, given the excellence of the voice over's during gameplay the dialogue in the cut-scenes is rather disappointing with the story being overly told but still not being understood, it comes across as vaguely annoying with only the Master Chief's simple sentences being somewhat understandable.
It is truly fitting to say then that the gameplay more than makes up for it. This is without question one of the most balanced first person shooters you will ever play. Every weapon has been perfectly calibrated, with no one weapon feeling overly powerful and even though there are a host of incredibly potent super weapons, you will never go into a fight knowing that you are going to lose. There are some superficial updates though. The weapon roster has been added to so that every human weapon now has an alien equivalent, with the needler being the only weapon with its own category. It's a somewhat unnecessary move adding perhaps too much choice to a game that famously limits you to only 2 weapons and it will have some yearning understandably to the originals roster of simple but iconic weapons. The equipment feature attempts to mix things up a bit by adding additional features to a battlefield already well trodden since 2001. They are perhaps more of a multiplayer feature than they are a single-player one. Even on the hardest difficulty settings the enemy AI seem to use the equipment fairly haphazardly, the most obvious example being the fact that brutes, who have no use for regenerators, still seem to use them whenever they get the chance. In multiplayer of course this makes very little difference and this seems to be a running trend throughout halo 3. It is very much a multiplayer oriented game.
The multiplayer will initially feels instinctively recognizable. For those of you who were fans of Halo 2, you'll feel instantly at home. Though distinctly familiar, the additional content more than adds to an already generous package. On their own, the updates don't seem to amount to much. The forge mode initially feels like a fairly basic map editor, while the video playback seems to lack the features that most other games seem to offer. Combined with the overall experience however, and it all adds to an experience that you can truly get a lot out of. Forge is an unequivocal joy to play with, combining physics, weapons and vehicles to create either an entirely new front line or a wonderfully exploitive playground. The ability to edit the maps while a match is ongoing makes the experience all the more fun, allowing for the outcome of a match to bounce cheerfully between teams as each alters the playing field in their own way, with the opposition immediately countering, creating a constant momentum of steadily increasing mayhem. The video playback is also impressive, though more conservative than forge, it's a simple yet robust system that instantly allows players to create their own videos and snapshots. Every moment of gameplay is automatically saved be it campaign or multiplayer and as the file sizes are so small that limitless records can be kept detailing the highs and lows of you in game combat.
It's fitting to describe Halo 3 has great value package, especially seeing as you've just an entire paragraph dedicated to only the minor parts of Halo 3's multiplayer offerings. Ironically though, there's very little to say about the multiplayer. It's incredibly balanced, very well designed and a whole lot of fun. There are 9 maps in total, which is perhaps the most disappointing feature. The "veto" button enables players to decide against playing on the map currently selected, skipping to another one. This inevitably leads to the same 3 maps being picked over and over again, with only the speciality game modes allowing you to see the full reaches of the multiplayer levels. The game modes themselves build on the established brand of Halo nuances and the inclusion of custom games add to an incredible array of variety that is only hindered by an online community who still have yet to grow up.
Halo 3's value lies in its multiplayer and though much has been hyped of its single player equivalent, the careful balance between quantity and quality seems to have only been held up on the multiplayer side of things. Sadly, neither quantity nor quality exudes from Halo 3's campaign, which is really its biggest flaw. It is clear that a lot of effort has been put into making the campaign as top-notch as possible. But it just doesn't do enough. It doesn't feel criminally short, but the 9 chapters ultimately leave you wanting more. Looking at it objectively, it's a horribly off-balance adventure. The learning curve is unpleasantly high, with the first 3 levels being far harder than all the others. The pacing of the game is often woeful, with difficulty spikes grinding what should be a fast-paced shooter into a tedium of restarts. Major set pieces often break up the action, but inevitably end up being either too easy or too difficult, not leaving you satisfied with either outcome. Worst of all however is the game's ability to quickly dash your hopes of having a grand ending by giving you one of the worst levels in the series' history, a level before the game ends. Exasperatingly, this comes after perhaps the games best level, which delivered everything you wanted from the game; scarabs, hornets and "on a pale horse" fully orchestrated. It's a horrible revisit to what ruined Halo from being perhaps the finest shooter of all time; repetitive level design, a constant slew of enemies, a severe lack of purpose. None of it is forgivable and it nearly ruins what was otherwise a brisk, flawed, but entertaining campaign.
Judged squarely as a stand-alone game, Halo 3 is an exceptional achievement. Pound for pound it's worth every penny. It goes beyond what most games offer, delivering not just a solid single player and an excellent multiplayer, but it also gives players the tools to refine and develop both areas to create an experience tailored to them. Bungie remain one of the few companies who openly acknowledge the fact that their community of players can improve on what they themselves have made, and they remain the only company who explicitly focus this idea into the games own development. Judged as the end to a trilogy however, and it can't help but disappoint. Not enough is done to reinvent the series into the next generation. This is not a dig at the graphics, which are consistently vibrant, detailed and as iconic as they ever were. It is the fact that very little of the game has really changed. Yes, everything has been fixed and made to work absolutely flawlessly, but nothing new has really been added. This remains a very similar game to the xbox original released back in 2001 and in a way I'm now coming full circle with this review. In a similar way that Twilight Princess was marked down for a lack of creativity, so must Halo 3. Like Twilight Princess, Halo 3 uses much of what made the previous outing so excellent and tries to incorporate this into its campaign structure, but by doing so it doesn't successfully create a new experience that many of us were hoping for. Halo 3 is its own game and as such it shouldn't have to rely on past experiences to wow us once more. However, Halo 3 is one of those annoying titles that manages us to love it despite its flaws. The sheer perfection it offers in terms of gameplay more than make up for the numerous misgivings that can be found when being over-analytical over the game. The reason it's one of this generations finest titles is not because it offers anything new, but because what it offered before was so excellent, that merely perfecting it was more than enough. So what is Halo 3? It is effectively the perfection of what Halo 2 was trying to achieve and what Halo: CE was always aspiring to be. It is loud, confident and ambitious and no amount of multifaceted pretence is going to convince us otherwise. This is a game that although flawed has managed to improve on the controls of a series that I initially said were "perfect". As such this is not a game that will be remembered for being original, but for being self-assured. It has mastered the one area of game design that has always mattered, and it will always be remembered because of it. This is Halo: Combat Refined, Combat Perfected, but not Combat Evolved.