Halo 3 is and will always be one of the kings of first person shooters.

User Rating: 9.5 | Halo 3 X360
*** HALO 3 ***

THE GOOD

-Exciting story with 4-player option
-Excellent graphics
-Dynamic multiplayer
-Great selection of guns, vehicles, and support items
-Superb graphics and sound

THE BAD

-Lag is unbearable online sometimes at peak hours

OVERVIEW

HALO 3 is, without a doubt, an awesome first person shooter. All three of the Halo games will be role models for future first person shooters. The story finally comes to an end in this game as you play as Master Chief and the Arbiter. The game starts with Master Chief falling from the sky and landing in front of a human army squad. His armor has locked up but when MC gets his grip back he grabs the Arbiter by the throat (who happens to be with the group). Then Master Chief finds out that the Arbiter is still helping them and this is where the story starts. Later you find out more about what happened to Cortana, MC's AI friend from the first two games, and finish the story with the Covenant and the Flood. If you liked the story from the other Halo games then you will like this one. If you haven't followed the other games you will still enjoy the story but you might have some questions going through. I personally thought the story was very good and each of the characters played their roles really well.

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay for Halo 3 is excellent. Bungie took the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" approach with the gameplay. This might be a bad thing if they didn't add anything new but there are plenty of new things in Halo 3. Most of the same weapons and vehicles are back and the dual wield option still exists but one difference is that the "reload" button is now RB instead of X. They did this because they added support items, which are activated by pressing X, like a bubble shield, shield regenerator and some others. All of these support items can drastically change your fighting style. I have noticed that the sniper rifle and rocket launcher shoot slower but some of the guns like the Needler and Brute Shot had an increase in speed. Some of the notable new weapons are the Brute Hammer and missile pack (which shoots a bunch of missiles and can lock on to vehicles). The level design is very well done in the campaign mode and multiplayer mode especially because I have had some really intense games of capture the flag that have lasted for hours.

In Halo 3 you can play through the campaign mode (single or co-op) or multiplayer online mode. First, I'll talk about the campaign mode. What makes this game unique from the other Halo games is the 4 player campaign mode. You and 3 other friends can join up to "finish the fight". I mean don't get me wrong playing with another person in the campaign mode is fun but with 4 people altogether it is ten times better. There are still the same amount of difficulty types with "Legendary" being the toughest. Legendary is really fun with 4 people but can also seem not nearly as difficult as Halo 2's Co-op Legendary. In Halo 2 if you played co-op campaign mode on Legendary and if one player died you both had to restart at the last check point. In Halo 3 if one player dies he may respawn again if the other players move to a "non-combat" zone. This was a good choice to switch back to the Halo 1 days and not the Halo 2 days, in my opinion.

Multiplayer mode is where I think this game excels the most. A total of 16 players (8 max per team) can play together in a bunch of different game types. Some of the old game types are here like Team Slayer, Capture the flag, and Assault but now they have added a few more like VIP and Infection for example. In VIP each team has a random player chosen to be the VIP and it is the job of the other people on the team to protect their VIP and kill the opponent's VIP. Then once a VIP is killed another player becomes the VIP. In Infection, which is my new favorite, one (or more) player(s) start off as the infected zombie(s) and the others as humans. The zombies can run faster, jump higher and wield a covenant sword only. The other humans have to work together to stop the zombie but the problem is that they have limited ammo. Once the zombie kills a human they become a zombie and this goes on until all the humans are eliminated. Another great feature about Halo 3 is that if you don't like the way the game types are defaulted you can always change around things in them and save custom varients. The options are endless. Again, just like Halo 2, you have ranked and non-ranked matches. For ranked matches you level up based on how well your team performs and how you individually perform. This game is also a great team building exercise with your friends, with trying to come up with the unstoppable strategy. In summary, the online play is so much fun that you will find yourself playing until the morning hours.

GRAPHICS & SOUND

Are excellent, and if you are able to play the game in HD I highly recommend this because once you play in HD you won't want to go back. Graphics are one of the key ingredients to a good First Person Shooter and Halo 3 delivers.

Halo 3 brought back some of the old music from the other games but also adds some new music to the soundtrack. And who can ever forget the music in the opening of the game. Not only is the music great but the sounds effects are impressive. From the sound of the three round burst of the battle rifle to the engine of the Warthog you can't get much better then this.

CONCLUSION

Halo 3 is not only one of the best games for the Xbox 360 but one of the best first person shooters on any platform. I am sad that the Halo saga has come to an end but this game really went out with a bang, like sticking someone with a plasma grenade.