The 3rd title of any trilogy, in games or movies, has the difficult tasks of raising the stakes, tying up loose ends and meeting fan expectations. Bungie really rose up to those challenges and created this absolute gem of a game. It has a solid story on its own and satisfying conclusions for all major plot threads we had since Halo: CE. There are great callbacks and parallels to the previous games, that work nicely like rhymes in poetry. Some of the action scenes, comical bits and emotion-filled character moments would live rent-free in my head till the end of time.
Finally, everything comes back in full circle (like a halo!) to conclude this trilogy with a beautiful ending, but leaves the door open for more.
The gameplay is as good as it gets. There are some new weapons and vehicles to spice things up. The only issue for me was the enemy AI. In my Halo: CE review I mentioned how great the AI was, and that it was beyond its time. But in Halo 3 it seems to have been dumbed down. The enemies don’t respond and adapt as quickly as they used to. Sometimes they don’t even fight back when I’m right in front of them. I never felt the need to strategize as I did in Halo: CE.
Shoutout to Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori; they went above and beyond with creating THE holy music.
This game deserves a proper remaster, it’s unfortunate we didn’t get one with MC Collection. Seeing some of the gameplay moments and cutscenes, I was thinking to myself “This would look majestic if it had a Halo 2: Anniversary treatment”. Ah well, maybe in 2027.
Rate: 8.5/10