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Regardless of how you felt about its cliffhanger ending, there's no
denying that Halo 2 was a gigantic success that raised the bar for what
we, as a game-playing society, expect out of a good console-based
first-person shooter. In the years that followed, plenty of games
attempted to duplicate the Halo formula, with varying degrees of
success. But there's still nothing quite like the genuine item. Luckily
for all involved, Halo 3 is a positively amazing package that offers
extreme satisfaction across all of its different parts. Maybe now you
can finally retire your Halo 2 disc and really move into the next
generation of games.
Halo 3 is an interesting mix of established protocol and intriguing new
stuff. For example, the gameplay doesn't stray too far from Halo 2,
which, in turn, didn't exactly reinvent the original Halo. Don't take
that as a negative, because it means that Halo 3 plays extremely well,
with the same types of light tactical considerations that have made the
series stand apart from other, faster-paced shooters. The balance
between your guns, your grenades, and your melee attack has always
given Halo a unique feel in the genre, and those same considerations
apply today, both in the campaign mode and in multiplayer. You'll also
have new weapons and items to consider, such as a host of Brute
weapons. One example is the spiker, which is an exciting automatic
pistol that fires quickly and decimates opponents, especially if you're
holding a pair of them. Another is the mauler, which is a one-handed
shotgun that can level enemies up close. You'll even find weapons so
huge that your movement speed slows when you carry them. When you use
these weapons, the camera pulls out to a third-person perspective so
you can see your missile pod, plasma cannon, or flamethrower as it
fires. And then there's the gravity hammer. Originally shown in Halo 2
(where it wasn't usable by the player), the gravity hammer is a large
melee weapon that will wipe out most regular enemies in one swipe.
Needless to say, it can be especially fun in multiplayer settings. The
end result is gameplay that feels wholly familiar without retreading
the same ground too heavily.
The campaign is structured in much the same way as past Halo
games, with multiple chapters and effective streaming that ensures
you'll see load times only between chapters. There are also lengthy
vehicle sequences to break up the on-foot action. You'll pilot the
classic Halo vehicles, such as the Ghost, a hovering one-person craft
that's fast and deadly, and the Warthog, a dune buggy with a turret
mounted in the back. You'll also see new vehicles, such as the Brute
Prowler, which is a two-person vehicle with turrets. Like in previous
games, the vehicles are fun to use. Also similar to previous games, the
artificial intelligence can't drive very well, so if you're playing
alone, you'll usually want to grab the steering wheel rather than the
weapons.
The concept of "equipment" is new to the series. These
deployable special items have a variety of effects. The most obvious
example is the bubble shield: You (and your enemies) can walk through
it, but bullets and explosions bounce right off. It's especially
entertaining when your enemies use it, given that you can just walk
through and bash them with the butt of your gun. You'll also find items
that make your shields regenerate more quickly, and others that drain
enemy shields and stop their vehicles dead in their tracks. These items
also show up in multiplayer, where they're a little more interesting.
Halo 2's ending was widely criticized for being too much of a
cliffhanger and leaving you with no sense of progress or resolution
whatsoever. It's good news, then, that Halo 3's story doesn't suffer
from that problem at all. It opens immediately following the events of
Halo 2: The Covenant is on its way to Earth, continuing its religious
zealotry and attempting to activate the floating space weapons known as
Halos, which could destroy civilization as we know it. The Master Chief
and the other Earth forces of the UNSC are in hot pursuit to stop them,
with newfound allies such as the Arbiter coming along for the ride.
We'll spare you the specifics because they're quite compelling and
should be seen firsthand. All you really need to know if you're on the
fence about Halo 3's campaign is that it's a delicate balancing act
that manages to provide satisfying closure for the trilogy, make
perfect sense of all the cryptic events in Halo 2, and leave you filled
with anticipation for more adventures set in the Halo universe. Not bad
for a game that will take most players between 10 and 15 hours to
finish on one of four difficulty settings.
But you'll probably go through the campaign more than once,
thanks to the inclusion of a strong co-op mode. Previous Halo games
have let two players go through the campaign; Halo 3 ups that number to
four players and lets you do the whole thing over Xbox Live, if you so
choose. This is a really fun way to experience the campaign's nine
chapters, and you can choose to go through them in any order, provided
you've already played through it alone. Furthermore, this method of
play (which you can also do alone) lets you turn on scoring in campaign
mode, in which you earn points for kills and lose them for dying. This
adds a sense of competition to the co-op, and there are also
achievements associated with finishing chapters with high point totals.
You can also customize the experience a bit by turning on a series of
unlockable modifiers that open up as you collect hidden skulls. The
skulls are stashed around the game, and some of them do things such as
increase the amount of damage you'll need to deal to take an enemy
down, remove the heads-up display and make your weapon invisible, and
so on. This gives the story-driven section of the game some more replay
value, although it doesn't get significantly more difficult as you
scale up the number of players. Consequently, finishing the game on
legendary difficulty is a breeze if you're rolling through with three
experienced fellow triggermen.
In addition to the four-player co-op action, you can also play
competitive solo and team-based multiplayer matches with up to 16
players on 11 different maps. There's a lot of depth to the multiplayer
modes, ranging from simple stuff such as deathmatch and team deathmatch
(still referred to as slayer and team slayer here), to more
objective-based gameplay such as capture the flag. Another similar mode
is called territories, in which the two teams fight to defend or attack
various control points around the map. You'll also find a mode called
infection, where a percentage of the players start as sword-wielding
zombies and must convert the members of the other team by killing them,
until only one non-zombie remains. Each of the maps can handle any of
these game modes.
Like in Halo 2, you can customize these game types, and there's
more to customize this time around. You can change things like starting
weapons, the weapons that appear on the map, whether the motion sensor
is active, the force of gravity, the game speed, whether the players
all have active camouflage or not, and much, much more. The multiplayer
is as strong as it has ever been thanks to the addition of new weapons
and tweaks to old ones. Swords have been made much more interesting
this time around: If two players run at one another with energy swords
and attack at the same time, the swords clash and the players bounce
off one another. This makes all-swords matches totally wild. The
gravity hammer is also big fun in multiplayer matches, both because it
crushes enemies that are foolish enough to get too close, and because
you can smack incoming rockets to bat them away, which makes for an
interesting game of baseball.
The weird thing about this last concept is that, with the addition of
the Forge, you'll actually be able to build some sort of crude baseball
variant if you want. Forge mode is a map editor, but not in the 3D
modeling sense that you're used to seeing in PC shooters. You can't
edit level geometry with Forge, but you can spawn, remove, and move
objects and items around the level. All of the editing is done in real
time, and you can pop in and out of edit mode by pushing up on the D
pad. You can also play this mode with other players, letting everyone
run around in edit mode to spawn Warthogs, rocket launchers, and
whatever else is already on the map. On the surface, that doesn't sound
so exciting. But in practice, it's a weird and potential-rich addition
to the game because there are a ton of little secrets and tricks you
can use to manipulate the objects in ways the developers may not have
intended.
For example, take the fusion core. It's Halo's version of the exploding
barrel, and by default, it blows up when you shoot it or drop it from a
significant height. It also takes 30 seconds to respawn. You can modify
it to respawn every 10 seconds and, with help from another player's
rifle fire, you can coax it into respawning in midair, where it tumbles
to the ground and explodes every 10 seconds. Naturally, if you surround
that spot with more stuff that explodes, you'll have a fun little
physics-based bomb that respawns and explodes every 10 seconds. If
you've ever messed around with Garry's Mod, a similar physics-based
toolbox for Half-Life 2, then you'll recognize this as a simplified
take on that idea when you start using it for more than simply adding a
few weapons to a map or moving spawn points around. Though many players
probably won't get hooked on Forge tinkering, it's an extremely
powerful addition that may just take over your life.
You'll be able to easily share your Forge creations with other
players via a handy file-sharing system that lets you quickly send map
configurations and gameplay types to your friends. You can also set a
certain number of items as publicly shared, and users can go to
Bungie's Web site to browse and rate the shared items. Additionally,
you can flag items for download on that Web page, and the next time you
fire up Halo 3, it'll download the items you've marked. It's a very
slick interface that makes moving stuff around very easy.
You can also use the file-sharing options to send screenshots
and saved films. Saved films are replays of action from any of the
modes in the game, from campaign to multiplayer to Forge sessions. The
game automatically stores the last 25 or so sessions, and you can
choose to save them more permanently from there. Once you've got them,
you can edit them down to key kills, weird single-player behavior, or
the strangest Forge stuff you can come up with, and then save them for
sharing, just as you would with a map or game mode. Much like Forge,
the saved-films feature doesn't really sound like much, but Halo 3 is a
very replay-worthy game, and you'll probably run into plenty of little
moments that you'll want to save for posterity. Another nice touch is
that the films aren't locked to one perspective. You can detach the
camera from your player and fly anywhere on the map, or change it to
any other player's view, as well. The only real issue is that rewinding
and fast-forwarding are a little clunky. So if you've got something you
want to save that's at the end of a 45-minute session, you'll have to
hold down the fast-forward button for a long time to get to that
moment, and if you miss it, rewinding can be a real pain, too. Once
you've figured out the little idiosyncrasies of footage manipulation,
it's not so bad.
Halo has always had a very strong artistic vision, and the
graphics have always been just good enough to convey the necessary
imagery without becoming huge technical powerhouses. That's not to say
that the game isn't technically impressive, because it maintains a
smooth frame rate throughout, and looks very sharp overall with plenty
of great lighting and other nice effects. But the visual design
overpowers its technical side and really stands out. Given that the
game takes place in a wider range of locales than the previous two
games, you'll see a lot of different, colorful environments, including
deserts, snow, jungle settings, great-looking building interiors, and
more. The enemies, many of which are returning from past games, also
look great.
The sound in Halo 3 is a good mix of old and new, much like the rest of
the game. You'll hear the familiar Halo theme music and variants
thereof. You'll also hear plenty of great new music, including one
suspenseful track with a heartbeat-like sound that manages to get your
heart pounding as well. Most of the voice cast from Halo 2 returns to
voice their respective characters, and they again turn in terrific and
believable performances. You'll also hear a ton of combat dialogue,
both from the marines that fight by your side as well as the enemies
you're fighting, who don't seem to appreciate it when you kill one of
their comrades. Our favorite line from the Covenant was probably
"You've killed my brother for the last time," which is pretty
hilarious.
As games start to consider user-generated content, it's
becoming clear that more and more games will be ready to give you back
just as much as you're willing to put into them. On the surface, Halo 3
is every bit the sequel you would expect it to be, in that it delivers
meaningful upgrades to both the story-driven and competitive sides of
the package. However, it's the addition of the Forge level editor and
the saved films that give the game an even longer set of legs, legs
that will probably keep you running at full speed until Bungie figures
out where, exactly, to go from here.
Satisfying storyline that simultaneously provides closure while making you wonder what will happen next
Four-player online co-op is a lot of fun
Forge mode map editor lets you do some extremely crazy and unexpected things
Web integration makes sharing new maps and custom modes easy.
Rewinding saved films doesn't work quite like you'd expect it to
AI-controlled Marines can't drive to save their lives (or yours)
Inevitable flood of prepubescent online players sure to hamper your enjoyment of the online modes.
Regardless of how you felt about its cliffhanger ending, there's no
denying that Halo 2 was a gigantic success that raised the bar for what
we, as a game-playing society, expect out of a good console-based
first-person shooter. In the years that followed, plenty of games
attempted to duplicate the Halo formula, with varying degrees of
success. But there's still nothing quite like the genuine item. Luckily
for all involved, Halo 3 is a positively amazing package that offers
extreme satisfaction across all of its different parts. Maybe now you
can finally retire your Halo 2 disc and really move into the next
generation of games.
Halo 3 is an interesting mix of established protocol and intriguing new
stuff. For example, the gameplay doesn't stray too far from Halo 2,
which, in turn, didn't exactly reinvent the original Halo. Don't take
that as a negative, because it means that Halo 3 plays extremely well,
with the same types of light tactical considerations that have made the
series stand apart from other, faster-paced shooters. The balance
between your guns, your grenades, and your melee attack has always
given Halo a unique feel in the genre, and those same considerations
apply today, both in the campaign mode and in multiplayer. You'll also
have new weapons and items to consider, such as a host of Brute
weapons. One example is the spiker, which is an exciting automatic
pistol that fires quickly and decimates opponents, especially if you're
holding a pair of them. Another is the mauler, which is a one-handed
shotgun that can level enemies up close. You'll even find weapons so
huge that your movement speed slows when you carry them. When you use
these weapons, the camera pulls out to a third-person perspective so
you can see your missile pod, plasma cannon, or flamethrower as it
fires. And then there's the gravity hammer. Originally shown in Halo 2
(where it wasn't usable by the player), the gravity hammer is a large
melee weapon that will wipe out most regular enemies in one swipe.
Needless to say, it can be especially fun in multiplayer settings. The
end result is gameplay that feels wholly familiar without retreading
the same ground too heavily.
The campaign is structured in much the same way as past Halo
games, with multiple chapters and effective streaming that ensures
you'll see load times only between chapters. There are also lengthy
vehicle sequences to break up the on-foot action. You'll pilot the
classic Halo vehicles, such as the Ghost, a hovering one-person craft
that's fast and deadly, and the Warthog, a dune buggy with a turret
mounted in the back. You'll also see new vehicles, such as the Brute
Prowler, which is a two-person vehicle with turrets. Like in previous
games, the vehicles are fun to use. Also similar to previous games, the
artificial intelligence can't drive very well, so if you're playing
alone, you'll usually want to grab the steering wheel rather than the
weapons.
The concept of "equipment" is new to the series. These
deployable special items have a variety of effects. The most obvious
example is the bubble shield: You (and your enemies) can walk through
it, but bullets and explosions bounce right off. It's especially
entertaining when your enemies use it, given that you can just walk
through and bash them with the butt of your gun. You'll also find items
that make your shields regenerate more quickly, and others that drain
enemy shields and stop their vehicles dead in their tracks. These items
also show up in multiplayer, where they're a little more interesting.
Halo 2's ending was widely criticized for being too much of a
cliffhanger and leaving you with no sense of progress or resolution
whatsoever. It's good news, then, that Halo 3's story doesn't suffer
from that problem at all. It opens immediately following the events of
Halo 2: The Covenant is on its way to Earth, continuing its religious
zealotry and attempting to activate the floating space weapons known as
Halos, which could destroy civilization as we know it. The Master Chief
and the other Earth forces of the UNSC are in hot pursuit to stop them,
with newfound allies such as the Arbiter coming along for the ride.
We'll spare you the specifics because they're quite compelling and
should be seen firsthand. All you really need to know if you're on the
fence about Halo 3's campaign is that it's a delicate balancing act
that manages to provide satisfying closure for the trilogy, make
perfect sense of all the cryptic events in Halo 2, and leave you filled
with anticipation for more adventures set in the Halo universe. Not bad
for a game that will take most players between 10 and 15 hours to
finish on one of four difficulty settings.
But you'll probably go through the campaign more than once,
thanks to the inclusion of a strong co-op mode. Previous Halo games
have let two players go through the campaign; Halo 3 ups that number to
four players and lets you do the whole thing over Xbox Live, if you so
choose. This is a really fun way to experience the campaign's nine
chapters, and you can choose to go through them in any order, provided
you've already played through it alone. Furthermore, this method of
play (which you can also do alone) lets you turn on scoring in campaign
mode, in which you earn points for kills and lose them for dying. This
adds a sense of competition to the co-op, and there are also
achievements associated with finishing chapters with high point totals.
You can also customize the experience a bit by turning on a series of
unlockable modifiers that open up as you collect hidden skulls. The
skulls are stashed around the game, and some of them do things such as
increase the amount of damage you'll need to deal to take an enemy
down, remove the heads-up display and make your weapon invisible, and
so on. This gives the story-driven section of the game some more replay
value, although it doesn't get significantly more difficult as you
scale up the number of players. Consequently, finishing the game on
legendary difficulty is a breeze if you're rolling through with three
experienced fellow triggermen.
In addition to the four-player co-op action, you can also play
competitive solo and team-based multiplayer matches with up to 16
players on 11 different maps. There's a lot of depth to the multiplayer
modes, ranging from simple stuff such as deathmatch and team deathmatch
(still referred to as slayer and team slayer here), to more
objective-based gameplay such as capture the flag. Another similar mode
is called territories, in which the two teams fight to defend or attack
various control points around the map. You'll also find a mode called
infection, where a percentage of the players start as sword-wielding
zombies and must convert the members of the other team by killing them,
until only one non-zombie remains. Each of the maps can handle any of
these game modes.
Like in Halo 2, you can customize these game types, and there's
more to customize this time around. You can change things like starting
weapons, the weapons that appear on the map, whether the motion sensor
is active, the force of gravity, the game speed, whether the players
all have active camouflage or not, and much, much more. The multiplayer
is as strong as it has ever been thanks to the addition of new weapons
and tweaks to old ones. Swords have been made much more interesting
this time around: If two players run at one another with energy swords
and attack at the same time, the swords clash and the players bounce
off one another. This makes all-swords matches totally wild. The
gravity hammer is also big fun in multiplayer matches, both because it
crushes enemies that are foolish enough to get too close, and because
you can smack incoming rockets to bat them away, which makes for an
interesting game of baseball.
The weird thing about this last concept is that, with the addition of
the Forge, you'll actually be able to build some sort of crude baseball
variant if you want. Forge mode is a map editor, but not in the 3D
modeling sense that you're used to seeing in PC shooters. You can't
edit level geometry with Forge, but you can spawn, remove, and move
objects and items around the level. All of the editing is done in real
time, and you can pop in and out of edit mode by pushing up on the D
pad. You can also play this mode with other players, letting everyone
run around in edit mode to spawn Warthogs, rocket launchers, and
whatever else is already on the map. On the surface, that doesn't sound
so exciting. But in practice, it's a weird and potential-rich addition
to the game because there are a ton of little secrets and tricks you
can use to manipulate the objects in ways the developers may not have
intended.
For example, take the fusion core. It's Halo's version of the exploding
barrel, and by default, it blows up when you shoot it or drop it from a
significant height. It also takes 30 seconds to respawn. You can modify
it to respawn every 10 seconds and, with help from another player's
rifle fire, you can coax it into respawning in midair, where it tumbles
to the ground and explodes every 10 seconds. Naturally, if you surround
that spot with more stuff that explodes, you'll have a fun little
physics-based bomb that respawns and explodes every 10 seconds. If
you've ever messed around with Garry's Mod, a similar physics-based
toolbox for Half-Life 2, then you'll recognize this as a simplified
take on that idea when you start using it for more than simply adding a
few weapons to a map or moving spawn points around. Though many players
probably won't get hooked on Forge tinkering, it's an extremely
powerful addition that may just take over your life.
You'll be able to easily share your Forge creations with other
players via a handy file-sharing system that lets you quickly send map
configurations and gameplay types to your friends. You can also set a
certain number of items as publicly shared, and users can go to
Bungie's Web site to browse and rate the shared items. Additionally,
you can flag items for download on that Web page, and the next time you
fire up Halo 3, it'll download the items you've marked. It's a very
slick interface that makes moving stuff around very easy.
You can also use the file-sharing options to send screenshots
and saved films. Saved films are replays of action from any of the
modes in the game, from campaign to multiplayer to Forge sessions. The
game automatically stores the last 25 or so sessions, and you can
choose to save them more permanently from there. Once you've got them,
you can edit them down to key kills, weird single-player behavior, or
the strangest Forge stuff you can come up with, and then save them for
sharing, just as you would with a map or game mode. Much like Forge,
the saved-films feature doesn't really sound like much, but Halo 3 is a
very replay-worthy game, and you'll probably run into plenty of little
moments that you'll want to save for posterity. Another nice touch is
that the films aren't locked to one perspective. You can detach the
camera from your player and fly anywhere on the map, or change it to
any other player's view, as well. The only real issue is that rewinding
and fast-forwarding are a little clunky. So if you've got something you
want to save that's at the end of a 45-minute session, you'll have to
hold down the fast-forward button for a long time to get to that
moment, and if you miss it, rewinding can be a real pain, too. Once
you've figured out the little idiosyncrasies of footage manipulation,
it's not so bad.
Halo has always had a very strong artistic vision, and the
graphics have always been just good enough to convey the necessary
imagery without becoming huge technical powerhouses. That's not to say
that the game isn't technically impressive, because it maintains a
smooth frame rate throughout, and looks very sharp overall with plenty
of great lighting and other nice effects. But the visual design
overpowers its technical side and really stands out. Given that the
game takes place in a wider range of locales than the previous two
games, you'll see a lot of different, colorful environments, including
deserts, snow, jungle settings, great-looking building interiors, and
more. The enemies, many of which are returning from past games, also
look great.
The sound in Halo 3 is a good mix of old and new, much like the rest of
the game. You'll hear the familiar Halo theme music and variants
thereof. You'll also hear plenty of great new music, including one
suspenseful track with a heartbeat-like sound that manages to get your
heart pounding as well. Most of the voice cast from Halo 2 returns to
voice their respective characters, and they again turn in terrific and
believable performances. You'll also hear a ton of combat dialogue,
both from the marines that fight by your side as well as the enemies
you're fighting, who don't seem to appreciate it when you kill one of
their comrades. Our favorite line from the Covenant was probably
"You've killed my brother for the last time," which is pretty
hilarious.
As games start to consider user-generated content, it's
becoming clear that more and more games will be ready to give you back
just as much as you're willing to put into them. On the surface, Halo 3
is every bit the sequel you would expect it to be, in that it delivers
meaningful upgrades to both the story-driven and competitive sides of
the package. However, it's the addition of the Forge level editor and
the saved films that give the game an even longer set of legs, legs
that will probably keep you running at full speed until Bungie figures
out where, exactly, to go from here.
could have guess you would say that james 
