Halo 3 Review
First of all Halo 3 is everything it was expecepted to be and more. Campaign: The campaign mode has nine chapters that are playable on four different difficulty settings; Easy, Normal, Heroic, and Legendary. Depending on the difficulty the campaign can take from ten to fifteen hours to finish. The campaign is the final part of the saga and it answers the questions Halo 2 left you with. The graphics aren't the best on the platform, but it runs an amazing physics system and has dozens of enemy on the screen with out dropping the frame rate. The enemy AI in Halo 3 is amazing, they are always trying to get an angle on you and start to run when they know they are beaten. In contrast your allies can barely shot strait. Don't even think about letting them behind the wheel of a warthog while you man the turret. The Orbiter is more helpful be not significantly. During the game the brutes have taken the place of the elites in leading the littler Covenant against you. After all of the credits at the end of the game there will be an extra video. (You will want to see it!) There will also be an alternate ending if you finish the game on legendary. The campaign is not one of the longest first-person shooter campaigns out there, but the great thing about the Halo 3 campaign is the replay value. You can play these levels over and over and still get enjoyment out of them. There are thirteen hidden skulls that are hidden throughout all of the level that can either make the game harder or easer. There are also seven terminals hidden throughout. One of the new features is you and three of your buddies across Xbox live can get together and can play one of the campaign levels on Xbox live. Weapons and Vehicles: All of the weapons and vehicles from the past two Halo games are in Halo 3. There are several new weapons including the gravity hammer (brute weapon powerful enough to takeout the strongest enemies in a few hits), spiker (very rapid firing brute weapon), mauler (brute handheld shotgun, not as powerful as the UNSC's shotgun), spike grenade (fast fused grenade), firebomb grenade (small area bursts into flames), flamethrower (strong flame, but overheats fast), missile pod (tracks vehicles, land and air), and spartan laser (powerful laser blast, but takes awhile to charge). The gravity hammer was seen at the end of the last game but you never got a chance to use it. There is also the addition of something called equipment like the bubble shield (a round shield that lasts for a short time), energy drain (drains energy shields and stops vehicles within it range), Gravity Lift (portable gravity lift), auto turret (laser auto turret), and more. Here are the new vehicles Mongoose (fast defenseless four wheeler), Hornet (hovering plane with tracking rockets and machine gun), Elephant (large mobile base with three turrets and a mongoose onboard), Prowler (brute version of the warthog), and Chopper (one man brute bike with turret). Bungie File Share: Bungie file share lets you post pictures, videos, custom levels, and custom games for other halo 3 player to download to their Xbox 360. You can only post 6 files at a time without pay a yearly fee for Bungie Pro, which lets you post 24 videos or 512 MB at a time. The bad thing about it is hard to find other players with content. Forage: forage is a built in map editor. You cannot change the terrain on the levels; all you can change is the vehicles, weapons, equipment, and objects that you can interact with. This is defiantly not the first or the best level editor out there but the map editors from a few year back were to complex and a little to hard for the average gamer to use. Halo 3's map editor is very simple and crude you cannot do to very much, but there will still be thousands of new levels variants made by Halo 3 players. Theater: The theater mode automatically saves the last twenty-five games you have played including campaign, online multiplayer, forage, and custom games. You can save the videos from the last twenty-five video list to your hard drive. If you are watching one of your last or saved games you can take screen shots and save small snippets of video to send to your friends. One of the bad things about the theater mode is that you cannot mix video clips together. Another bad thing is when you post videos on Bungie file share you cannot turn them into a computer format to save them on your PC without a lot of work. Online Multiplayer: The online multiplayer graphics have improved since the beta. You and up to sixteen of your friends can get together on Xbox live and play any of a verity of game types. One of the main problems in the first few weeks has been that over a million players have been online at a time so not to many more can play on matchmaking. With eleven levels, and thirty-five types of games to play like slayer, oddball, king of the hill, assault, territories, VIP, infection, juggernaut, and more, you will not get board. Your online player is a ranked by a system that is defined by how much experience you have earned. There are 47 ranks that range for recruit to general. You can play ranked games to play with people your skill level or play social games with anybody. You can also customize you player with by changing you armor, name, species (Elite or Spartan), and emblem. Custom Game: The custom game lobby is where you can make custom game types. You can make all kind on alterations like how powerful your shield and how fast it recharges, what weapon you have, and many more, It is also where you and several friends can play custom maps and game types or just play normal maps and games. You can start a local game, invite only your friends, or you can set it to allow anybody to join freely. Overall: Bungie did a good job of adding new weapons and vehicles and making the maps large without dropping the frame rate. The story keeps you guessing and makes you want to 'finish the fight". Halo 3 may not seem like much, but all of the different types of games and campaign put together make a game you will spend hour upon hours playing. Do what ever you have to get the money, Halo 3 is defiantly worth sixty dollars
Story 9.5
Gameplay 10
Presentation 9.5
Design 10