Date: 2007/11/15
Platform: 360
My Specs: 360 Premium, 32" 1080i LCD TV, Surround Sound. Looks and sounds fine, no problems to report.
Genre: First Person Shooter ("FPS")
Official Site: http://www.halo3.com/
Played So Far: Completed Campaign
Does Halo really need an introduction? This is Bungie and Microsoft's smash hit. It is a first person shooter taking place in a futuristic sci-fi setting involving the clash of several factions. You'll play as "The Master Chief" a veteran soldier wearing special body armour making him tougher then your average soldier. Halo is also known for its in-depth multiplayer gameplay and this time they have a new multiplayer mode allowing for interactive level customization. You'll fight with various weapons, sometimes dual wielding, with vehicles on land and in the air, and with Halo 3 you will get a few new utility items like portable shields.
The graphics are good, but I have to say they aren't that great when compared with the competition (Gears of War last year, and now Call of Duty 4). The sound is decent, with some great music. Actually some of the comments and voiceover by the NPC's is quite entertaining (such as a grunt complaining "Oh man why do we even bother I KNEW this was going to happen" after I died).
The single player game is on the short side, maybe 7-10 hours. Overall the campaign was fairly average with a few neat spots thrown in (like fighting to take over a giant walker). The story was muddled, and the ending was a bit confusing, but FPS are more about settings than stories in my opinion. Don't buy Halo 3 for the single player campaign, well at least not this year with so many excellent FPS around.
The controls work really well actually. A lot of times a FPS can be difficult using a controller (at least for a PC guy like me), but for Halo 3 they must've did some voodoo or something as I was pulling off headshots and just generally having a good time with the controls. About the only thing that gave me problems was tracking moving targets, but even that was better than 80% of the console FPS out there.
So what do you get in this FPS? Well the main gameplay mechanic that Halo really started is the charging shield/health thing. Instead of running around trying to find health, you just need to stay out of trouble for a few precious seconds (I think maybe 10 seconds?) until your shields regenerate. Another Halo foundation is dual wielding. With some weapon types you can pick up one gun for each hand (and ditch the left hand gun when it's out of ammo or when you need to throw grenades etc). It's a neat mechanic and it works fairly well. Also as in other Halo's your guns are pretty much disposable. You can carry two weapons, but you're always picking up a new gun because one is out of ammo. Actually one complaint is that ammo is almost too scarce sometimes and I found myself without adequate munitions at times.
The other staple of the Halo series is also in place - vehicles. There are a few new land vehicles as well as aircraft. Throughout the single player campaign you'll be able to control just about everything from ATV's to Tanks to Dropships. The Scorpion tank segments are really fun, but unfortunately they don't happen often enough. The vehicles are all accessible, depending on the map in Multiplayer mode. You even get to pilot the massive mobile fortresses called "Elephants".
The main new addition are utility items. These have their own slot and include items such as invincibility powerups, deployable shields, and land mines. These items do add a new and welcome bit of variety to gameplay.
One occasionally frustrating mechanic is the checkpoint save system. On several occasions it saved my game at exactly the wrong time, often when I had almost no ammo or was basically in a bad situation. With hard drives and large memory cards these days, there is no excuse for save anywhere systems on consoles.
This is really the main event and the main draw for most Halo fans. Since the early days of playing split screen on the original xbox. Now we get a coop mode (with scoring!), and the new Forge mode. In Forge mode you can turn into a little hovering robot and you are free to delete and place items (tanks, scenery, weapons, spawn points) throughout a given level. You can actually do this in real-time during online gameplay. The only limits are that levels have a certain budget, so bigger more graphically demanding items like scorpion tanks will take up more of your budget then a simple pistol or ammo pack. You can then save your creations and share with friends, play online in custom games etc. You can even try and kill each other by dropping tanks and cargo crates on each other.
You also get unlockable armour pieces, various gameplay modes, and ranks to work through. In short Bungie has gone all out in supporting multiplay for Halo 3. The single player campaign is average, the multiplayer mode could give the game a spot on your shelf for a long time to come.
Halo 3 was definitely over hyped and given perfect scores almost automatically. Really you have to decide if you are going to be putting time into Multiplayer. If you just plan on playing through the campaign then Halo 3 will be only an average experience. If you plan on playing multiplayer, including coop mode (playing through the campaign with a friend) then you'll probably get good value out of the title. But as a 360 owner there are a lot of options out there (Gears of War, Call of Duty IV) so do your best to try it before you buy it.
Discuss in our forums.
Halo 1 & 2: Yeah if you liked Halo 1 & 2, the only excuse for NOT buying Halo 3 is that you don't have a 360 yet...better go buy one now! Halo 3 will not disappoint fans of the prequels!!
Call of Duty 4: Both are story driven first person shooters. COD4 is by far the better game in single player. I also think I prefer the multiplayer in COD4. But if you have COD4 and are looking for some more multiplayer it's hard to go wrong with Halo 3 and its huge following. Also the MP coop is good stuff and missing from COD4. If you have COD4, I can't help but think Halo 3's SP campaign will disappoint.
Gears of War: Both games have coop modes, Gears was a far more enjoyable experience. Be prepared for disappointing graphics in Halo 3 and a substandard single player mode. Again though, the multiplayer is extensive in Halo 3 and if you like that sort of thing Halo 3 will give you good value. You'll miss the cover system though!
Bioshock: They are both in theory First Person Shooters, but they are not even close to being the same type of game. If you are a Bioshock fan, you won't find anything remotely like it in Halo 3. That's not to say you won't like Halo 3, just that if you do it will be for different reasons.