Halo 3

"Good game? Yes. Great game? Absolutely. ZOMG ZOMG BEST THING EVAR? No."

The Halo series is something that I wrote off for quite a while solely based on the stupidity of the fanbase. Most of the fanbase that I talked to sounded quite a bit like what is seen in the title of this review. Defending Halo, referring to it as the best game ever without really giving reasons, stating that it was better than games they never even played, ect. and so forth. However, I highly recommend that anyone having these problems with the fanbase just ignore them and give the game a shot anyway. It's actually quite a good game.

Graphics: 9/10

Sure we've seen the 360 do better, but Halo 3's graphics are very satisfactory. Everything looks very nice and is really a good showing of what the Xbox 360 can do. The art style is fairly good with nice drawings of locations and enemies. The worlds look fairly realistic from the outset in an African forest, to the midpoint in a large city, to the climax on a snowy mountain. Overall I have nothing to complain about. Halo 3's graphics are very immersive and look quite nice.

Sound: 7/10

The game was largely silent. Let me repeat that. Large portions of the game were entirely silent. When music played it was either very good or you pretty much just didn't notice it. For example, hearing the Halo theme played on keyboard in story sequences was very nice. However, just hearing some random background track during a level was nothing special. After music, there's the sound. I have no real complaints with the sound. The guns sound like guns. The alien weapons sound like what I assume alien weapons should sound like. The human vehicles sound like human vehicles. And the alien vehicles sound like what I assume alien vehicles should sound like. The voice acting is also very well done in both story sequences and in-game teammate and enemy chatter.

Story: 4/10

It's an alien invasion. Largely unoriginal. Pretty much every story sequence is about how they're attacking or how you're planning to attack or something along those lines. A few "Deaths" of uninteresting characters that you didn't really care if they died or not. Maybe I'm just hardened in this respect because I've been playing a large number of RPG's lately, but Halo 3 just did not satisfy in story. On a positive note, the story moves forward at a fairly constant and quick pace. And for people who played the last two and wanted to know how it ended, you will get to see that. Whether it's interesting or not. Of course, that being said, you didn't buy Halo 3 for the story.

Immersive factor: 8/10

In the campaign, you often feel like you're actually a member of the futuristic marines fighting off aliens that want to invade your planet. Rather nice. This helped to make the single player mode feel a bit more interesting. Not really much to say here. On the higher difficulties when you die at the same point several times, or in multiplayer (cooperative or competitive) you may not feel the same immersion. However, Halo 3 still did pretty well here.

Innovation: 4/10

No. Halo 3 did not innovate. Sure it spawned multiple "Halo-killers", but it wasn't influential because it brought something new to the table. It was influential because it was just so basic that there wasn't as much room for screw ups as in other games that do something original and sometimes it doesn't turn out so well. It gets four points because of a forgiving trial and error system where your life meter depletes rather quickly, but fills itself back up given time. There was also a checkpoint system (and a rather faulty one may I add) that made the game very forgiving of mistakes and encouraged players more so than other games to keep trying. Because you've died the other fourteen times you've tried this part, but now you have a new idea for how to possibly succeed. And if it doesn't work then you've got nothing really to lose.

Variety: 6/10

It loses four points because it's constantly similar shooting. You usually use a vehicle in parts that were pre-determined to be vehicle parts and you walk in parts that were pre-determined to be walking parts. There isn't much variety in the fact that you are always just shooting and you will always be shooting. It gains six points thanks to the large number of weapons and vehicles. You can go at this part with a basic but efficient assault rifle, or you can stand behind your teammates and pick off foes with a scoped battle rifle, or you can stand way back and help out as a sniper, or you can get aggressive and run at your foes with an energy sword, so on and so forth. Vehicles this isn't so much the case for, but you still have the option of sticking with your vehicle or boarding your enemy's, both with different and distinct advantages and disadvantages.

Controls: 9/10

Not bad at all. You pretty quickly get the hang of these controls and are able to play with them. You have a dual-analog setup with right and left triggers shooting or throwing grenades and reloading or switching grenade types respectively. That's the bulk of what you'll be using, but there's also jumping, meleeing, switching weapons, and using equipment on the buttons which works quite well. No real complaints here.

Gameplay: 9/10

The big one. But there's single player and multiplayer that are both too different to put into one category. And as such, they will not be in one category.

Single player: 7/10

It's fun. It brings nothing new to the table but it's still fun. You shoot your way through some nice enviornments and it's fairly constant fun. There is four different difficulty levels ranging from "Sit back and watch your teammates handle everything" to "Give you a chance at beating us? Ha!". This is good because it gives all players a difficulty setting pretty close to their actual skill level. The checkpoint system is a little screwed up in that sometimes they will appear right at a place where you have no chance of winning (such as right after your vehicle crashes leaving you to take out 4+ choppers and two tanks on foot). And checkpoints can also not appear where they're supposed to (such as when you've finally completed that part that was troubling you so horribly only to find that a checkpoint didn't appear where it should have). This isn't a huge problem but it can really irritate. Other than that my only complaint is that the campaign was short at about half a dozen hours.

Multiplayer: 10/10

The reason Halo has become so famous. Matchmaking is quite simple and can get you into a game rather quickly and painlessly. There's a large variety of multiplayer matches to chose so that it doesn't really get old too much (I like team slayer myself). Voice chat works rather nicely (I'm assuming, I'm yet to get the voice chat set up on my computer). You can also play with you and three friends split screen, but it's not recommended as you may be out of the action for a while with only four people in a game. Added for this installment is four player cooperative. Now you can finally wuss out of the levels that you couldn't beat yourself! Hooray! (I kid, I kid). Cooperative is a fun alternative to competitive for anyone who feels like a good friendly game of campaign with a friend.

Overall: 9/10

First off, this isn't an average of all of the categories up to this point. This is the score I feel the game deserved. However, the final score is an eight rather than a nine because you don't really have much of a reason to buy this game if you don't have Xbox Live and aren't frequently visited by friends. The single player was good, but there are many other, better, games if a nice long single player shooter is what you seek.

Pros:
+Nice graphics
+Good music when it played
+Easy controls
+Decent campaign
+Fairly immersive
+Decent variety
+Amazing multiplayer

Cons:
-Not very innovative
-Could get repetitive
-Largely silent
-Not for anyone without Xbox Live or friends who don't come over constantly

Rent or Buy?
Rent if you want a single player game. But if you play Xbox Live alot or throw parties frequently, this is probably the mulitplayer game that people will be playing until the end of the 360's lifespan. So buy.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/12/08

Game Release: Halo 3 (US, 09/25/07)