Halo 3

In celebration of the release of the final Bungie addition to the Halo series, I've decided to review Halo 3; one of the most popular games on the Xbox 360 to date. Halo 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie for Xbox 360, and was released back in September of 2007.

STORY
Halo 3 follows on from Halo: Combat Evolved, and Halo 2; which tell the story of a SPARTAN super soldier, known as Master Chief, and humanity's struggle against the alien force known as the Covenant.
In Halo 3, Master Chief and the human forces try to stop the Covenant from activating all of the Universes Halo Rings, which would destroy all sentient life in the universe.
If you've never played the game series before, its a fairly simple storyline; though many things aren't really explained for newcomers. Characters such as Cortana would need explaining for someone who had not played through a Halo campaign before, but as its the third in the series, i wouldn't expect much explanation as it is.

The story as a whole is rather deep, though not the deepest I've experienced. It involves some excellent character development through Master Chief, and his Cortana flashbacks; and has some fairly unforeseen twists.

PRESENTATION
During gameplay, the graphics are quite impressive, with a wide range of colours that sets Halo 3 apart from so many other shooters these days. Chapters are fairly short which means environments don't get too repetitive, and there is quite a large amount of variation.
Cut-scenes, on the other hand, don't look as impressive; and the leap from gameplay graphics to CG cut-scenes isn't a noticeable one. This may be intended; though, i for one prefer my cutscenes to look good.

In game music sets the tone of each level quite well, especially during the huge, climactic battles that will be encountered. Along with this, the voice acting is fairly above average; although Master Chief himself sounded rather bland.

My biggest problem with the sound design, is that almost all the guns sound like shitty Mattel toys. If I'm firing an alien weapon that can explode a man, I want to hear how powerful it is! Kudos go to the gravity hammer for its powerful sound.

The dialogue is actually better than I expected, what with the Covenant sounding all high and mighty and biblical, while the humans are all quite boring; which is strange, because they're on the verge of annihilation.

GAMEPLAY
Halo 3 is your typical, non realistic, first person shooter; guns are over the top, jumping is like you're on the moon, and you have regenerating armour. Controls work well, and there are a variety of guns, melee weapons, grenades and equipment that can be utilized to take down your opponent. Alot of these guns are, frankly, kind of lame; but for every few of these, theres a gravity hammer or spartan laser ready for you to kick ass with.

Enemy AI is smart, to a degree, however enemies often neglect cover and charge your position. In fact, one of my biggest problems with Halo 3 is that the gunplay requires little, to no thought.
Cover is fairly useless, since enemies will charge you all the time, and your armour takes enough damage then regenerates fast enough, that you can just hide for a few seconds before killing everyone else.

That said, at the end of the day, halo 3's gameplay is still really fun. It's not the tactical shooter you may be looking for, but damn it's awesome to stick plasma grenades to what would appear to be midgets.

OH! And vehicle sections. Theres lots of cool vehicles to mess around with, from tanks, to the Warthog; Ghosts and Banshees, to the Mongoose and what would appear to be a VTOL (Helicopter thing). They're all cool, and mix up gameplay slightly, however the controls for these are a bit sloppy. Handling on the warthog is particularly bad, though they're apparently made out of cardboard, due to the ease of flipping it over.

REPLAYABILITY
Halo 3's campaign is extremely short. Like, so short, i finished it in less than a day; without finding it too much of a challenge.
The replayability of Halo 3 lies mostly in its multiplayer; however that's not to say that multiplayer is all there is. As well as multiplayer, there are the forge and theatre modes; which allow for some fun down time between fighting.

Forge is basically a level editor, and Theatre mode allows you to replay moments from both multiplayer, and the single player campaign. This is an excellent tool for Machinima directors, though I'm pretty sure the best already use it.

Along with that, there are a multitude of Achievements to be earned; and they range from simple, to frustrating; including Finishing the campaign on Legendary.

OVERVIEW
In summary, Halo 3 isn't the most complex game around. In fact, its one of the simplest shooters to just pick up and play. Couple that with a detailed story and somewhat believable characters, and you have a fairly good game. Not exactly the perfect game that so many fanboys rant about; but definitely a decent play.

I honestly had fun with this title, and I can't wait to try out Halo: Reach for myself, as it looks vastly better than this entry to the series.

So theres my Halo review. Pretty fun, but far from perfect. Next week I'll be reviewing New Super Mario Bros. Wii... granted, its not really New anymore.
Anyways, see you next time!