Do We Even Have To Say It?
Let’s get it out of the way: Halo 3 is excellent and gets a perfect score. 100%. Five out of five. However you want to say it, simply know this: Halo 3 takes the cake. Then eats said cake. Then craps all over every first person shooter in existence. Go play it (who am I kidding, you’re probably playing it right now, while you read this).
Halo 3 is like the Super Bowl. You know it’s going to rock, even before it arrives. It is unabashed, blockbuster goodness wrapped in a replica of Master Chief’s helmet. I personally believe spending $130 on an edition of a videogame is ludicrous, but those of you who helped propel it to a record $170 million in first day sales must disagree. By the way, that $170 million is the highest first day gross of any entertainment product ever. Apparently, Bungie isn’t kidding in their bid for world domination.
But what does Halo 3 bring to the table that its predecessors, Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, didn’t, besides the overwhelming expectations of something bigger and badder?
Let’s find out.
That Ending Was A Joke, Right?
It had to be. There was no way Halo 2 just ended like that. I remember thinking, “I just whooped Tartarus’ albino ass as the undesirable Arbiter and I am about to fight the last mission with the Chief. Hmm…why is this mission taking so long to load? Oh, no. Is it really over? You’ve got to be kidding.â€
In all honesty, I was so turned off by the way the campaign ended in Halo 2 that I barely played multiplayer. The story was a step backward, Live was flooded with spoiled brats who found it hard not to express themselves without four-letter words—something just didn’t feel right about the second coming of John 117. In my opinion, the game was a tremendous disappointment. Despite all of this, the third iteration was my most anticipated game of the year, and it delivered on all fronts.
Chief And Arby, Sitting In A Tree…
Without a doubt, Sergeant Johnson is Halo 3’s unsung hero. Not only has he survived a quarter-century of intra-galactic war, he has even found time to convince the Chief and the Arbiter to work together, as allies. Throughout the series, Johnson provides levity and motivation; he is a fierce friend to the faceless Chief, and finally gets the respect he deserves in Halo 3.
As it turned out in Halo 2, the Covenant leader, Prophet of Truth, betrayed his longtime protectors, the Elites, and replaced them with the thuggish Brutes. Thus began a civil war within the Covenant ranks, which allowed humanity to reorganize the defense of a battered Earth in a last-ditch effort to stop the Covenant from uncovering the Ark, which is supposedly buried beneath the sands of Africa. What exactly is the ark? Only the control center of the seven halos, which have the power to destroy all sentient life in the good ole’ Milky Way.
Without spoiling any of the major twists, players will find themselves progressing through another halo structure, several spaceships, the badlands of Africa, and a Flood-infested city—typically with the assistance of the Arbiter. Overall, the plot is good and it is a far cry from the muddled mess that was Halo 2. It answers most of the questions lingering from its predecessors and should leave you feeling a sense of closure.
There are only minor changes to the campaign gameplay aside from the slight overhaul in the control scheme (no more white and black buttons, HELLO shoulder-button-reloads) and the major facelift in graphics, which are stellar. Halo 3 looks great, but where it really excites is in the scale of the battles, especially on Earth. Rather than simply throwing in a overlaid visual backgrounds of aerial dogfights between Seraphs, Banshees, Pelicans, and Hornets, as well as far-off massive land engagements, the developers at Bungie decided to insert the Chief in these war zones, which are exchanged in-engine. In other words, you really are only one soldier in the middle of a brutal war. Feel like shooting down a Banshee half of a kilometer away? No problem. How about swooping in with a Hornet (a new addition to the Halo vehicle line) to take down the Scarab wreaking havoc in the valley below? Why not? Granted, wide-open outdoor environments are staples of all Halo games, but they are taken to a whole new level in Halo 3.
Playtime, Chief
Some new goodies introduce themselves in Halo 3, such as a slew of weapons, both alien and human. There is the Mauler (one-handed shotgun) and Spiker (SMG), both wielded by the intimidating Brutes, and the death-wielding Gravity Hammer, which would make Thor himself blush. Then we have the Spartan Laser—capable of dealing death from long distances, to both infantry and vehicles alike—and the four mega-guns (flamethrower, missile launcher, mini gun, and plasma cannon), which refocus the HUD into a third-person view, behind the player, because they are too big and cumbersome for Halo’s traditional first-person perspective. Also, two new grenades surface, the spike grenade and the napalm grenade. Moreover, there are a few vehicles that make their debuts in Halo 3, such as the Brute Chopper (essentially, a wheeled Ghost), the Brute Prowler (equivalent to a Warthog), the Mongoose (ATV), and the Hornet (UNSC flier). Each new addition has its place, adding greater variety to the kill formula.
Halo 3’s most inventive additions, however, are neither weapons, nor vehicles, but “equipment.†Now that the reload action has made its way to the shoulder buttons, Bungie needed to add something flavorful to the vacant ‘X’ button. They came up with a set of items that might help tip the battle. By hitting ‘X’, you might deploy the Bubble Shield, through which no projectile can penetrate, or the Portable Gravity Lift, which can be placed anywhere on the battlefield in order to help you scale a wall or have a few laughs. The rest—Power Drainer, Trip Mine, Radar Jammer, Flare, [Health] Regenerator, and Deployable Cover—are somewhat self-explanatory. The jury is still out on the usefulness items, but they sure do make things more interesting.
Marty O’Donnell, Halo’s musical composer, configured the songs, infusing previous Halo melodies with new life and character. In fact, Halo 3’s soundtrack would put most movie counterparts to shame. The sound effects bring the battle to your ears in a potent and impassioned fashion. They are so immersive that hearing is almost as good as seeing when locating an enemy, due to the click of his boots, the thwack of his rifle, or the howl of his screams.
Time To Finish The Review
Nearly every aspect of Halo 3 goes beyond the intended purpose of making the game an intense and fun experience. With an impressive variety in the single player campaign, Halo 3 has created a new benchmark for story-driven shooters that few games, if any, will reach.
But What of the Multiplayer, You Ask?
While Halo’s single player campaign has always been considered top-notch, the series has always shined on the multiplayer aspects. Not only does Halo 3 meet the bar set by Halo 2’s match-making and party system through Xbox Live, it fully goes leaps and bounds beyond that, making its multiplayer component unmatched by anything else.
Obviously, you’ll find a standard lobby with up to 16 people for participating in both ranked and social matches. The game now tracks your skill level (tracked only in ranked matches) as well as “experience” earned through successful matches in either ranked or social. If you lack any friends, you can go Lone Wolf for some ranked play, or join up in a number of social large group or team events; take a buddy and you can do some 2-player team matches as well.
Got a large group? Party up and take the whole team to match up with other groups. This is exactly the way any online matchmaking system should work, and beyond some initially stumbling blocks with odd map and gametype rotations that have since been fixed, this mode is well-suited for when you’re in a more competitive mode.
My House, My Rules
However, you’ll likely find yourself spending a bit more time in the new Custom Games lobby. Here, you can party up with friends or others and control how matches are selected, using the basic ten gametypes on the 10-odd maps within the game. Gametypes range from your standard Slayer deathmatches and Capture the Flag, to new modes like Infection (zombie-based game) and VIP modes. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg; each gametype has a large number of options that the host can tweak to alter aspects of the game, from fixing the number of weapons, forcing certain vehicles on the map, and several others. With these, complete new gametypes can be invented and shared with others.
For example, a mode called “Rocket Race”, not shipped with the game, has been spread around like wildfire, despite the fact it’s a just a variation on VIP mode. Not necessary every change is for the best, but there’s enough in these options to tweak to design the perfect new game mode to play.
This is accompanied by Forge, Bungie’s tool for altering the existing maps to either change the challenge of each more or to work better with a new game type. Forge allows you, even while people are playing the map, to remove and add new objects to map. Each object has a dollar cost, and you have a limited budget depending on the map, thus preventing you from excessive filling of the map with clutter, but this works well to be able to add new vehicles, alter spawn points, or place territory or waypoints for game modes. Since you can do this with live test subjects, this is a nice sandbox approach for really tightening down a map for a specific gametype.
Sharing the Wealth
Of course, if you had no way to offer your creations to others, it would all be for naught. Fortunately, it is very easy to share your new gametypes and maps with others. Halo 3 keeps a small store of your most recent performances in both multiplayer and the campaign, and from those you can save out modes and maps created by others, but a more permanent location for these files is offered by your personal File Share through Bungie, which you can expand at the cost of a few Microsoft Points if you need more space. Once you’ve uploaded your maps, files, or movies there, you can then points your friends there. You’ll also be able to find Bungie favorites that you can then download yourself.
Besides maps and modes, you can also share your films or film clips with others in the same fashion. There’s even a Theater game mode that allows you to get just the exact angle on that awesome takedown so you can save it for posterity.
A Little Help From My Friends
Halo 3’s multiplayer cannot be considered complete without talking about the co-op mode through the campaign. You can take up to 3 of your friends along throughout the entire campaign chapter-by-chapter, with the game teleporting you to the rest of the party should you die. This gives the campaign a whole additional layer of gameplay, allowing to coordinate flanking attacks and take out your foes quickly. Needless to say, this helps a whole lot working your way through Legendary, and makes it a fun yet still challenging experience.
Halo 2 may have set the bar for multiplayer back then, but Halo 3 has throughly exceeded in making an online experience as diverse and entertaining as possible. No other game even comes close to implementing matchmaking or offering a huge array of options, and the addition of co-op campaign and massive customization is something that unlikely will be exceeded by any game in the near future.
Primotech Rating: 
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