Halo 3 Review

By Jason Nimer

If you are reading this, chances are that Halo 3 has at very least grabbed your interest. It is more likely, however, that you already have the game and your marathon Master Chief bender is still going strong on Mountain Dew, Hot Pockets and Viverin. Halo fan or not, it is no secret that Halo 3 and its midnight launch were a huge deal. Your local news covered it, commercials for it have been running every 30 seconds and fans were willing to stand in long lines for hours, just for a simple video game.

I have a confession to make - I was one of those fans/losers. I spent a good 45 minutes wandering the Wal-Mart DVD section just waiting for the clerks to break out the Exacto knives, despite the fact that I never really liked the first two games in the series. Hype can be a powerful tool, and Halo 3's ad campaign and buzz prompted me to leave my house at 11:00 p.m., mosey around Wal-Mart for 45 minutes and pick up one of the very first copies. For someone as set in their ways as I am, admitting that I was interested in the game was a big enough struggle; actually buying it was 100 times more difficult.

That is enough about me, but I promise I'm am going somewhere with this. What I'm attempting to clear up is that between not caring for Halo 1 and 2 and my deep-seated hatred of all online gaming, Halo 3 is a still a very, very good game that no 360 owner should be without.

Halo 3 has been getting great reviews from a ton of websites. If you don't believe me, go check out metacritic.com. Go ahead…. I'll wait. Back? Ok. Most reviews have extremely favorable, as you've now seen. They all seem to share the same complaint, though - the single player campaign isn't very good when compared to the online multiplayer or other games in the genre. For the purposes of this part of the review, I'll only be talking about the single player campaign. We'll get to the online portion in a little bit.

Even though we are pretending that the online features and multiplayer don't exist for this part of the review, the verdict is still a positive one. The third Halo game picks up where the last one left off. Master Chief finally makes it to Earth, but the Covenant are also present and accounted for. After regaining consciousness, Master Chief immediately gets back to what he is good at - splattering bad guys.

I won't mention anything more about the game's plot, but you can start the campaign knowing that all your questions will be answered (unless you've got some really bizarre or arcane questions, that is) and the same formula that made the previous games so popular is more or less the same. It is still just a matter of you versus the Covenant versus the Flood. The plot might not be Shakespeare, but who plays first person shooters for the story (aside from Prey and Bioshock fans)?

The graphics are well above average and nearly everything in the game is immensely detailed. The environment, the enemies, even the vehicles all look very sharp. The sound is top notch as well; I can't stress enough that you'll want to play Halo 3 on a television equipped with surround sound. Seriously though, did you really expect Halo 3 to look or sound any way but beautiful? Granted, we aren't talking about Bioshock sound and visuals here - Halo 3 is at least two steps behind the underwater adventure, but still looks and sounds great.

After the recent PS3 game Lair, most gamers came to realize that good graphics/sound and good gameplay aren't always mutually exclusive. Fortunately, Halo 3 manages to deliver on both sides of the spectrum. Most of the levels offer both challenge and enough fun to play through them over and over. The selection of weapons is even bigger this time, and using them is no less fun. The Gravity Hammer, my personal favorite, is a new melee weapon that is enormously powerful. One would think that the weapon would make the game easier, but in fact, using just the Gravity Hammer will get you killed… and fast. It is best to use a good combination of all weapons available, melee and otherwise. Halo 3 is balanced well enough to make sure no weapon is discarded as useless or revered as magnificent.

Halo 3 has two other strong points that set it apart from other games in the genre - the vehicles and, believe it or not, the jumps to third person perspective. The vehicular combat has always been a strong point for the series, and the third and final Halo doesn't disappoint. Aside from the usual vehicles (both human and alien), Master Chief will also get the chance to take the reigns of the Brute Chopper, which is essentially a West Coast Chopper motorcycle with a serious case of 'roid rage. Sure, the Warthog, the Ghost and the Scorpion Tank are still fun, but smashing through enemies with this thing rivals the Burnout games when it comes to giving nightmares to the good people at Geico Vehicle Insurance.

My only complaint with the vehicles is that if you want things done right, you have to do them yourself. If you choose to let another soldier control things while you man the turret, you'll end up flying off a cliff, going the wrong direction or killed instantly by enemy fire. It is a good think that Master Chief is on Earth's side; if the computer controlled troops are humanities best and brightest, the Covenant could take over the world with a paper clip and an unsharpened pencil. This seems especially painful on higher difficulty levels. Your enemies will flank you, hide when hurt and even run at you kamikaze-style with a grenade in each hand, but your human allies still couldn't pass an Alabama driver's test.

The occasional jump to the third person perspective really serves to break up the action. Even casual gamers have grown tired of the glut of FPS games hitting the market, especially for the 360. F.E.A.R., Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Far Cry, Perfect Dark Zero, Quake 4…if you are looking for generic, ho-hum FPS games, the 360 is the system for you. While Halo 3's first person action is easily better than all of these games, the third person action serves to not just blow away the competition, but steal its lunch money and stuff it into a trashcan at the top of a large, rocky hill… and everyone knows what comes next.

As Master Chief tears his way through levels, he'll occasionally come across a flamethrower or a plasma gun emplacement. With only a quick press of a button, the Chief will pick up the weapon and things will shift to a Resident Evil 4 over-the-shoulder perspective. The controls remain identical to the first person segments, but just the small cosmetic change really amps up the excitement. What could have been a boring walk through a long corridor instantly becomes an insane firefight where, finally, players are given a better view of just what it means to be a Spartan warrior.