Halo 3 - The Review

Possible Spoilers ahead. I'll try to be sensitive to those who haven't played through it, but some images might give things away. Just a warning....

While most posts will be somewhat random, I wanted this initial one to simply review the Bungie's Halo 3. Like millions of other fans, I had played the first two Halo games into the ground. I held Halo parties back before Xbox Live was a reality, where we would hook up 4 Xboxes on four TVs and have 16 player Team Slayer matches. I played through both campaigns, carefully watching the cut scenes and plot development. I remember being blown away by Halo: Combat Evolved. The graphics were incredible. And they were. Halo 2 picked up where Halo left off - improving things, deepening the storyline, adding online multiplayer.

Fast forward to September 2007. I have held off buying a $400 Xbox 360 for two years. I never paid for Xbox Live for my Xbox. I've never played Halo with people I didn't have to share my TV screen with. But I knew I had to have one. So on 9/24/07 I bought my 360, opting for the green Halo 3 edition. I actually like the white ones better, but the Halo version has the newer hardware, complete with more reliable heatsinks. I set it up and picked up Halo 3 the next afternoon when I got off of work.

I was eager to play the Campaign mode, which is Halo's genius. Multiplayer works better than any other FPS (first person shooter) multiplayer I've seen, but the storyline is what makes Halo what it is. The story was very polished, with Hollywood quality camera angles, lighting, and voice acting. While I was one of the few who actually liked playing as the Arbiter and learning more about the Covenant Civil War in Halo 2, it was good to see he is still around for the finale.

I played through campaign in several days, sneaking in some social online play here and there, hoping no one would spoil the ending. I won't spoil it here, but I need to say something about the writing and imagery that Halo is built on.

I am a published writer, genre is science fiction. So I can tell you with some authority that creating a marketable, interesting, and original sci-fi story is very difficult. Creating one that rivals Star Wars and the like is next to impossible.

The campaign mode has a lot of replay value built in, due to the hidden skulls, which create new options, meta games, which utilize the skulls and points to make it more challenging, and the cryptic eyeball-shaped Terminals, which hint that more flows under the surface in this game than meets the eye.

The levels are interesting and varied, and I was impressed with how organic everything looked. There's a level where you are inside a Flood infected vessel, and it feels like you are inside someone's large intestine. Pretty gross, but perfect for the stage in the game.

The second part of Halo 3 is of course multiplayer. After two iterations of Halo multiplayer, Bungie has pulled out all the stops. Custom game types, map object editing (called Forge), multiple armor types, more effective weapons, and new vehicles make for hundreds of hours of game play. Add the fact that you know receive rank and experience, which helps determine who you play, and you've got the complete package.

My favorite part of Halo 3, however, came as a surprise to me, and will probably form the foundation for most of this blog's content. It is the Theater Lobby. This lobby stores the last 25 full matches you played in Multiplayer, including any Campaign Levels.

In Theater you have control of the camera in the scene. You can pause, fast forward, move around the level, and for multiplayer, rewind. You can record clips, render screen shots, and even save the whole battle. These files appear on your Xbox 360, on Bungie.net, and can be downloaded to your home computer. I've looked at these image in Photoshop, and they are rock solid. Better than other game's cinematic cut scenes, Halo 3's lighting code is for real.

Is Halo 3 the best of the three Halo games? Yes. Is it perfect? Not really, but you have to split pretty fine hairs to have a problem with Halo 3. The game does have a learning curve, but there's nothing stopping you from playing ranked matches every free moment you have to improve. While you're at it, review the matches in Theater Mode to watch what you did right and wrong. Better yet, keep the camera trained on the guy who won the match, especially if he won big. It might help your strategy the next time you're on the map.

So yes, I bought a Halo 3 Edition Xbox 360, and Halo 3, and accessories all to just play Halo 3. And it was worth every penny. Halo 3 exceeded - and continues to exceed - my expectations.

- Solstice01