It’s here: the game Xbox 360 was made for. The not-so-secret-weapon Bill Gates had in his back pocket just waiting to spank the competition is finally upon us. Halo 3 has arrived and it’s time to finish the fight. Could it be everything you hoped for?
In case you have been living under a rock for the past six years, Halo is the story of Master Chief essentially leading the entire planetary marine corps against the onslaught of two alien races bent on either our destruction or even worse, the destruction of the entire multiverse. If you follow video game history however, the Halo games tell the story of the evolution of the console gaming community. It’s with this we look at the impact of Halo 2, which will be remembered for launching Xbox Live into the stratosphere, helping evolve online multiplayer console-gaming. Unfortunately, it will also be remembered for its system streamlining and shaky storyline. This divided legions of Halo fans into the hardcore, who sacrificed a personal life for online glory, and the jaded, who sat and stewed for an indiscernible period of time.
"It’s here: the game Xbox 360 was made for."
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In this chapter of the story, Master Chief attempts to reclaim his partner and companion Cortana while dealing with the alien menace. He has teamed up with the Arbiter, a member of one of the alien races who was outcast from his own kind for thinking blowing the universe up might be a bad idea. In any event, teaming the Chief up with the Arbiter means no separate storylines, thus eliminating a point of contention between the two aforementioned groups.
Now, the 360 is a capable system, and Halo 3 looks good, but not entirely great. For continuity sake, the folks at Bungie were unable to alter the character designs. While the character models might not be as fresh as those found in a brand new IP, the animation is well captured and the details are more deeply defined. This is not to say that Bungie skimped out on looks — far from it in fact. If you look at the level of detail added into the environments, the amount of characters on screen, and the background painting, you can see the level of care put into the game. Also, it’s wroth noting that Bungie has finally brought their cinematics up to the point they should be. The angles, acting, and scope are beyond anything I can ever remember seeing in a cutscene. If you can’t make it interactive, it better compete with similar stories across different mediums, like Hollywood movies or television. The good news is that Halo 3 does just that.
Those looking for a completely new experience may go home feeling short-changed. There is no revolution here, only evolution. This is still Halo, and not much has changed. When you are on foot you have close range combat. When you start to crave something different, you get long range combat. When that isn’t enough you have land vehicle combat, air vehicle combat, and new vehicle combat. Also, there’s combat against everything, where its just how it sounds — you fight everything with everything. Bungie made subtle tweaks here and there to refine the style giving fans of either of the previous chapters something to love. You don’t need to dual wield, but it won’t kill you if you do so thanks to independent reload buttons. The magnum is not a sniper rifle in handheld form thjs time around, but it can kill people without a sight this time. Smacking someone in the face means something again and a well-placed grenade is your best friend. Thankfully, playing on Legendary won’t limit your lives this time but it will hurt if you play it alone.
"In this chapter of the story, Master Chief attempts to reclaim his partner and companion Cortana while dealing with the alien menace. "
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Then again, who wants to play it alone? Halo has always been about the multiplayer. This time around you can choose from an overwhelming amount of things to do with your friends. New to FPS online console gaming is the introduction of a four-player co-op campaign. You can grab up to three friends and finish the fight together. When you get tired of your friends taking your weapons before you respawn and feel its time to kill them, you might consider taking them out in Halo 3’s extensive battle mode, lest you experience our overcrowded prison system.
You choose from a variety of matches across ranked and social (unranked) planes. The game includes every man for himself, team slayer, team objective, doubles; they’re all here and then some. If you don’t want pre-pubescent kids swearing up a storm in your headset, invite up to fifteen of your closest friends and play in a custom lobby. If you can’t find a game type you like, why not make your own? You can create custom gametypes not just editing base character traits but objective ones as well. You can change weapon strength, shield size... hell you can change the entire map in the new Forge mode. Your friends can even help so there’s no excuse for not living your dream of waterfalls raining explosions.
The music is epic and the audio Balancing is top notch. The SMG still sounds like popcorn and you can still hear individual needles. With a mix of electronica and orchestral arrangement, Marty O’Donnell completes his entire Halo opera, and introduces new themes which bring out the conflict within the characters wonderfully. A mere thirty seconds on the start screen shows this, and it’s found throughout the entire game.
For all my Halo love though, the game is not perfect. The story mode is a scant 10 hours — a small scope for an "epic" game. The new online co-op mode suffers from lag every now and again. Rarely is it enough to kill your buzz, but it happens enough. Custom game types cannot be introduced if your group of friends are in social matchmaking. It doesn’t even have to be player created gametypes but what about the ones Bungie have marked as favorites?
"So it comes down to this: There is no revolution, but there is evolution."
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So it comes down to this: Bungie did not reinvent the wheel, however, they have refined the wheel to last quite some time. If you are Halo crazy, you can fork out an extra ten dollars for a tin case and bonus features disc which holds a feature-length making of documentary on the game. If you are Halo obsessed, well, there’s clinics for that sort of thing... or you could drop a staggering $120 on the collector’s edition which includes the game, the content from the tin, and a disc of all the cinematics from the entire Halo series (though not remastered not in HD; don’t be fooled!) all in a collectible but un-wearable Spartan helmet. Whew. Isn’t it time you reconnected with an old friend?
