TRUE SCORE: 9.3 out of 10 Halo 3 is finally here, but is it worth the play?
Game-play: 9 out of 10
Many gamers say that Halo 3 brought nothing new to the table. While this is partially true, Bungie has re-delivered the Halo experience fans know and love. While this can be a good and bad thing at times Halo 3's game-play does not "fail" and is quite the experience for anyone that is into first person shooter games. It's easy to learn and pick up to play, so many newcomers to the series feel right at home. People who don't play First person shooter games can find Halo 3 a nice way into the genre.
Halo 3 plays excellently with the Xbox 360 controls, as the original Xbox was purely made for first person shooter games, Halo being the main one. There isn't much strategy and tactics apart from the communication with team-mates, grenade placement and shot placement so Halo 3 is mostly just a run and gun experience, but hey! This doesn't detract from the fun! It feels very similar to Halo 2, but that's exactly how sequels are supposed to work, the same game elements bringing new content, and features to the table. Halo 3 is a great example of that, containing new weaponry, vehicles, game-types, features, and better graphics. Pretty good eh?
Let's talk about the new weapons in the game. There are quite a few, each serving new purposes. I'll only have time to talk about a few, but these are the most commonly used new ones. The Spartan Laser, which is one of the most powerful weapons in the game, not to mention; it's portable! Although it takes 20 percent of its 100 percent power per charge, it's devastatingly powerful, with the ability to take down numerous foes, a few armoured vehicles, all with one shot! Sounds over powered? It's not. The Spartan Laser takes quite an amount of skill to operate, with the 3 seconds of charge before it shoots which can give enemies enough time to move if you can't aim, plus a noticeable red line of light, giving away a shooters position. Killing foes over half way across the map will be difficult even with the scope equipped with it. Missing is easy, especially if your fingers twitch, but even so this weapon is easily the most powerful thing in the game.
The Brute Gravity Hammer is another welcome addition to Halo 3, and it's exactly what it sounds like! It's a Hammer that can make you float on a wave of "anti-gravity" for a short period of time. It has massive splash damage, and the melee is devastating. Wrap this all up to make a worthy weapon. Incendiary grenades, or flame grenades for the less intelligent, Brute Nail Grenades or just "spike" grenades for short are both other welcome Brute technology. They're both immensely deadly as if you stay in proximity to a spike grenade, it will kill you! It's very powerful but has a longer detonation timer. The Spike grenade also has sticking capabilities, plus it can stick on anything imaginable. The Flame grenade is a simple grenade, filled with flammable gas that explodes into a fiery rage on detonation. It explodes on contact with anything and if you happen to "stick" a person, they will die. That's really all it's good for, the flame patch it creates is far too small, and lasts far too short!
Some of the new vehicles include my favourite; the Hornet, which is one of the most dangerous vehicles in the game, and the most enjoyable to pilot. It serves as the counterpart to the Covenant Banshee, and is somewhat superior to the Banshee in all forms, except for speed. It's highly maneuverable very powerful, and can destroy other vehicles in seconds! It contains a Machine Gun, and vehicle-tracking missiles. This vehicle isn't currently in any multi-player playlist, but recent Bungie updates have stated that it will be available in future playlists, but with no missiles, and a less powerful machine gun. Despite these downgrades, a skilled pilot could still easily mop up the competition. The Hornet can seat 3 people, one driver two passenger who can do nothing but shoot their gun.
The next vehicle I'll talk about will be the Elephant. There was much news about this one, being the largest vehicle. Technically this is a mobile base, with the ability to carry troops, a tank, a warthog or two mongooses, which are basically ATVs. If you don't include the Scorpion tank, the Elephant can carry many more vehicles. It has 2 detachable turrets; one mounted AA turret and the ability to carry many troops. Fully indestructible and can be flipped in certain situations which aren't possible during normal game-play. This can be fun when using it against the enemy and they have one too!
Another one of Halo 3's features is the ability to use "Equipment". These things are potential game changers in combat, and the result in the game. The Shield Recharger for one can regenerate shields automatically, but the regenerator device that it emits from is destructible, and one simple grenade can destroy. Nonetheless it's very useful, and can keep you alive. Another useful piece of equipment is the shield drainer, which is the exact opposite of the regenerator, and when destroyed it explodes dealing little damage. The third piece of equipment that is probably going to be commonly used is the bubble shield, which is a portable shield that can be deployed to block anything for a short period of time. Although it lets things go inside, any projectile or grenade will be stopped in its wake. All these things are pretty useful, especially when in fierce combat.
Another up is the ability to "detach" turrets and missile pods seem like a great idea, especially the power you get from it but the mobility is definitely decreased, and the ammo is lessened but you'll have a great time with it, especially since you'll mow down a bunch of people. Either way most of the new features in Halo 3 are pleasantly welcomed by many.
The bad parts of Halo 3's game-play are that some weaponry and equipment get phased out a bit, but that's partially due to the storyline basis of the game. You hardly see any Elites, excluding the Arbiter so you won't see many Plasma Rifles in the game, and even though you see many Brutes, you hardly see the fun to use Incendiary in the campaign, and is not in the official multi-player playlists which is kind of a down. Halo 3 also ships with the not the best selection of maps, but with many DLC on the way this seems to be dissipating rapidly.
The story of Halo 3 is probably what's going to be played through your first time, seeing as though everyone wants to see how the trilogy ends, especially with the cliff-hanger of Halo 2. Basically in Halo 3, you're playing as the Master Chief only, on Earth and fighting against the Covenant who is in search of yet another Forerunner artefact, except this isn't any sort of artefact. The Ark is a mysterious artefact believed to be imbedded in the Earth somewhere in New Mombasa and can detonate all 7 Haloes. The Covenant, ignorant to the fact of Halo's real capabilities is easily defeating the UNSC and the Covenant Separatists who are commanded by the Arbiter and his Elites. The Master Chief lands back on Earth and prepare to fight the Covenant on all fronts, and will learn the secret of the universe, and the Ark's true intentions, with some help with a familiar icon.
Halo 3's campaign plays exactly as the other Halo games did, but it really doesn't feel like a supreme struggle against the clock to get to the Ark first. The battlefields aren't as loaded as they could have been, the objectives and levels could really have needed some work. Despite all these issues, it still manages to be fun in all respects. The Scarab fights are pure battle especially since those things are massive, and its pretty fun on how to take them out.
Many, many games are focusing on Co-op nowadays and Halo 3 isn't going to be left anywhere in the dust. A stunning 4 player co-op on Xbox LIVE and collectable skulls to make the game more challenging and even more challenging on the Legendary difficulty. You're going to have an even more enjoyable experience with friends on Xbox LIVE. If you don't have Xbox LIVE however, don't fret because you can still have 2 player co-op here, which is still a whole lot of fun. Added replay-ability is added with the meta-game, which essentially is playing for points. Everything you do can earn you points, and get multipliers which can be further increased by turning on Gold Skulls. It can be on the free-for all mode where you competitively fight for the kills as you try to oust your friends, and escape with the most points and bragging rights. There is also the "team" mode where you and your buddies just fight together to earn as many points as possible.
When you're done with that, you can try out the Theatre Mode which allows you to view your last 25 films in either campaign or multi-player which allows you to take screenshots which would upload to your Bungie.net profile where you can download it to your PC. Now you can share all your cool pictures with friends! You can also take videos with theatre mode, but then you can't upload them to the PC which really sucked for Machinima makers. Another great feature is the Forge mode, which allows you to change the product placement in maps, a forge some scenery to play around with friends. Then you can save the game and make a custom set of rules to play. You can't alter the geography of the map though, and you have a limit of how many objects you can put on the map and the each item costs a bit which goes on your budget for the map. This can make some pretty cool stuff, so let your creativity run wild! After you're done you can upload screenshots, map variants, and movies to a place called your fileshare, where other people can download from. Your fileshare has the limit of 25MB on it, but that's plenty enough for a couple of videos. The only down side to the Theatre, and Forge aspects of Halo 3 would be that the Film clips don't go onto the computer and in Forge, you can have a hard time trying to place the objects without them falling.
Wonder where to play some custom games? Look no other than the Custom Games Lobby where you can play for fun with none of the online ranking system in the way. You can just about tweak every rule, every trait, and anything in the game to your liking. Then invite up to 16 friends to have a custom battle, where anything goes!
Obviously with any First Person shooter game and especially the Halo franchise, the Campaign isn't going to be the most played. I mean wouldn't you want to fight it out online with as many of 16 players? I know I would! Halo 3 uses a matchmaking system where you try to get into a match as quick as possible without you choosing. This is quick, but when it boils down to choice, you have little say, or do you? When you get into a match, you have the ability to "veto" which starts out a counter. When the majority players in the lobby have vetoed it, a new random map will appear. This really gives you a sense of choice.
What really steamed Halo 3 fans was when Bungie announced that there wouldn't be a Custom Games matchmaking list. The fact that you couldn't play online with a server list was kind of upsetting but some people have gotten around it. A few people have made websites in where you can register your game so other people can see them and people can join from there. You can set the time to meet on Xbox LIVE which is convenient. The sad part is that these websites aren't very popular, and games are still hard to arrange.
Even with no Custom Games Lobby, just play the regular online, where your stats are registered onto Bungie.net. The ranking system is pretty basic in Halo 3, with different ways to get to a rank. The ranked playlists each have a Trueskill rating for each which you can increase when you play a great match and win! It can also go down if you play a bad match, and winning also makes you receive EXPs. To get promoted, you need an amount of EXP and Skill rating, but you can promote without skill but it takes an increasingly long time.
Each Ranked Playlist has its Social counterpart, it's just a matter if you feel like playing competitively on Ranked or play socially on Social. An advantage on Social is that you can play with the Guest system, where if you have a Gamertag with Xbox LIVE, it can have a maximum of three guests. Theses guests don't rank up or get EXPs, and the stats don't register on Bungie.net. On Ranked you can't play with Guests, but can play with up to four different Gamertags on the same Xbox 360.
In Multi-player there are 11 default maps, and unfortunately almost none of them are Close Quarters maps. With the releasing of DLCs Bungie is trying to cure the problem, but the maps cost Microsoft Points, which is online currency for purchases on Xbox LIVE. Each map can only play certain game-types. The Big Team Battle playlists consist of only 3 maps, but they are the biggest and allow some Big Team Battling. Big Team allows the 8 on 8 action that we've seen in past Halo games, and it has the up to 100 kills Big Team Slayer and some objectives, which is really fun! Some of the other game-types include Team Slayer, which is a 3 to 5 team game depending on Ranked or Social on all maps with default settings. Free for all which goes up to 6 players on all maps is a mash up of slayer, oddball and King of the Hill. You can medals like in the previous Halo games, and your entire trophy case will be located a Bungie.net That's only a few of the possibilities on Halo 3 Online Multi-player which will have you addicted!
Tired of that Mark IV look that you get? You now have multiple armour permutations that can be unlocked by doing certain things. They have no effect on game-play but it will have a psychological effect on all players. You can also change which colour detailing you have, and what free for all colour you've got.
The achievement set is based off the campaign and multi-player achievements and isn't that hard to get but does take some skill and luck. It's not the easiest 1000 you'll ever get but it's not the hardest either. Getting all 1000/1000 unlocks a special chest armour permutation that proves to people you got 1000/1000 gamerscore on Halo 3. For all achievement collectors out there, get Halo 3!
Halo 3 has been criticised for bringing almost nothing new to the FPS genre, but it does a damn good job of making what we currently have in FPS innovation and making it fun! It's pretty solid but could use some tweaks.
Graphics: 9 out of 10
Halo has always been a graphically proficient game, meeting standards a potentially raising a few and Halo 3 does no different than that. Bungie uses the new Halo 3 engine and with the resources on the Xbox 360 makes a pretty good looking game. Awesome looking water, realistic fire, detailed looking trees that don't look like a mess like Halo Combat Evolved, and pretty much everything else looks decent.
Graphical fanatics have seemed to have uncovered that Halo 3's resolution is 640P but is up scaled by the Xbox 360. Bungie has stated that it's a new graphical strategy and it doesn't matter much because the Xbox 360 has up scaled it. Even though, Halo 3 looks graphically impressive, and meets today's standards, although it has a few issues.
For cut-scenes, Bungie has decided to use Halo 3's in game engine and doesn't look as good as it could be. Don't get me wrong, Halo 3's cut-scenes look good, but it's just using the normal graphics engine and hasn't really been shined up, which would have been great to look at, since Halo 3 looks pretty good in all respects for cut-scenes.
The gun models are pretty good too, none look too blocky, and all the textures are perfect. The Multi-player Spartans look pretty good, and the Master Chief has got to be the best looking character model in the game, but hey he's the main character! The Arbiter looks decent, but his armour could have used some more work. The Marines(excluding Johnson) look a bit unpolished and could have used some work. The Marine's faces look too pale, and their armour looks bland. The Covenant have gone through some slight makeovers, and they all look pretty good, especially the new Gold Brute Chieftains. The Brutes in general don't have the beard set up they did in Halo 2, but mostly a clean shave plus aesthetically pleasing armour. The Grunts have a distinctive new look, with the methane breather on the mouth really stands out.
Some of the vehicles look very good; especially the Covenant ones, but the Human ones could have used some shine. If you're an explosion fanatic, this game will do well to please you, with great looking Covenant explosions, and Human explosions. The armour permutations that can be unlocked in Multi-player a spot on, especially the Hayabusa armour set, which is based off of Ninja Gaiden's Ryu Hayabusa looks really good!
There's one thing that you'll probably notice that in Halo 3, Bungie has toned down the blood content in most levels, and almost completely in multi-player. This may be due to realism because how much blood is going to escape Spartan armour, but the Grunts barely bleed in some situations. This game could have been Teen rated if Bungie did not add that little amount of blood.
Graphically, Halo 3 meets market standards, and breaks a few but it's not really oh my god it looks so real good. Good job Bungie!
Sound: 9 out of 10
Halo has always aced with the music, the original theme being remade in Halo 3 with some Piano effect which is really nice. The soundtrack of Halo 3 builds off of the last Halo games, but there are classic moments where you get some of the original track from Halo Combat Evolved. The music really sucks you into the game, especially during the larger battles. It's great to have classic soundtracks like this, but the Halo 3 theme plays way too much and there isn't much variety in it but you'll get a kick out of this one!
The voice acting is spot on too; the diverse Marines actually have some accents and contain loads of audio files during combat which sometimes are humorous. The Elites contain that accent that makes them really sound alien-like. The Brutes growl like the Brutes they really are, the Grunts sound the cowardice that they fight with and much more!
Halo 3's sound effects are superb, each gun having it's distinct sound, and the equipment all contain there whirrs and effects, but Halo 3 could have used some completely brand new tracks in it, it's decent though Bungie!
Value: 9 out of 10
For the retail value of 60 dollars, Halo 3 is certainly one of the most content packed games that you'll ever play. There's always some reason to come back to the game, whether it be the Campaign, or the multi-player or just letting your creativity run wild on Forge. You'll certainly always have something to do in Halo 3, but it's just a factor of you wanting to come back to the game. Halo 3, and any other game suffers from being repetitive, especially Halo because they all feel so similar in game-play. If you're a die-hard Halo fan, you'll have no trouble coming back to this baby, but if you're just a FPS fan, you'll be alternating between a few other games and then come back to play this one. Its content packed, and completely worth the 60 dollars you pay.
Tilt: 10 out of 10
Come on, it's so obvious why Tilt would get a 10. I'm such a Halo die-hard fan, but I'm a long way from what you would call a fan-boy and I've tried to make this review as truthful as I can. Halo 3 was obviously the most anticipated game of 2007 for most Xbox 360 owners, and after going through a few years of waiting and a multi-player demo, I'm glad to say that Halo 3 does not disappoint the fans and get's 9.3 out of 10. It's not the most revolutionary shooter out there, but this one is pretty damn fun, and addictive as hell, and it certainly doesn't deserve most of the flak it gets from gamers out there,although it was certainly over hyped a little bit, but nonetheless, Halo 3 did well.
True Score: 9.3 out of 10