I know I’m late to reviewing Halo 3, but I finished it only a few weekends ago and I was reluctant to review it without giving it a complete play through. So here’s my take on one of the most popular games on the Xbox360 ever.
Halo and Halo 2 were games that pushed the graphical bar on the original Xbox. They also pushed the game industry forward in other ways. One of my favourite parts about the original Halo was the AI – unlike other games, where computer controlled characters bored directly into your path of fire and were dispatched with a few seconds of button mashing, Halo gave us great opponent AI, with enemies ducking behind shelter, flanking in both directions and even working in teams to ensure that players were challenged and had to think. However, after I played Gears of War and Resistance: Fall of Man, I was not sure what unique tricks the Bungie team would have up their sleeves to make Halo 3 seem fun the same way that the original Xbox Halo was. Halo stood out because it was far ahead of anything on the Xbox in terms of graphics; Gears of War made every Xbox 360 game seem like so many jagged polygons.
Luckily there were a few things that stood out sufficiently to make Halo 3 my favourite game of the year.
First, the visuals aren’t up to par with Gears of War, or even, in some respects, the original GRAW, to say nothing of the sequel, GRAW2. Resistance too shone on the PS3 and Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction is so pretty that it could be a self-directed Pixar movie. But where Halo 3 shines is in its level variety. After several hours of playing Gears of War, the bleak gray hopelessness of the war really got on my nerves. The dominant hues – gray, brown, black – shared visual space intermittently with dark gray, dark brown and octarine. Resistance had greater visual variety, but it too started using the standard mustard yellow-brown and gray by the time the third level rolled around. But Halo 3 mixes levels with bright green-blue shades with yellow and shimmering purple, white and red, and yes, even gray-brown. The overall effect is subtle, but it makes the game much more playable for extended periods of time. It’s no where near as dreary as are the other games, nor as monotonous as games such as, say, GRAW.
Second, where Halo 3 shines is in its cooperative multiplayer. Since The Outfit came out nearly 18 months earlier, there had been a dearth of Xbox titles that could be played together by more than two people. So instead of playing the game with just one of my friends, my Russian buddy, my Polish buddy and I played the game together across three timezones. It was easily the best online experience I’ve had. Giving instructions, following orders, and just plain charging across the environment with two of my best friends was about the best gaming experience I’ve had, at least, when we were not being sniped across the map (and really, even that was fun). While there were the occasional slow downs (and one instance of being abruptly kicked out of the game), the game gave us an euphoric experience that I will likely remember for a long time. At the Normal level, we finished the campaign in about four hours or so; playing on Legendary will likely take about an hour a level, so ten hours or so spread across our weekends.
Third, there was significant level variety. Mixing up time spent on vehicles, on foot and even in the air, I found Halo 3 to really push game play forward. And especially when playing online, there was a tremendous amount of fun in running alongside a vehicle or jumping out of a vehicle to fight on foot.
Finally, unlike many games, where it seems like you’re the only person in the war worth fighting (and thus are disproportionately targetted) Halo 3 gave me the first experience of what it might be like to engage in a “real” war. Shots were fired at me, but they were also fired behind me, and over me and in the opposite direction. One level in particular – near the end of the sixth, where you are tasked to take out two Scarabs simultaneously) stands out in my mind as the best possible illustration of this chaos. Flying in to drop onto the deck of the Scarab, I could see tanks grinding forward, jeeps laden with troops rolling just behind and infantry chasing hard behind. Playing that level the second time, in cooperative multiplayer simply bolstered that image for me – individual soldiers were running to join in combat or defend vehicles in groups and the chaos of war was evident everywhere. I’ve never seen a game quite like that, excepting a short, short section in Call of Duty 2 during a run across the desert supported by heavy vehicles.
As always, Bungie has pushed the bar on online play. I fondly remember playing the original Halo with my cousins on a local network, playing Halo 2 online with friends and with Halo 3, playing online has been elevated to an art. Despite the inevitiable clogging of the network around Christmas time and the rather juvenile players there (playing on Xbox Live is not recommended for those of you not willing to put up with at least some amount of rude language), it was fun to pit your brains against something other than a computer. The difficulty there is significantly harder, but the chances of your winning are much more varied – other people are as likely to screw up as you. One problem I ran into – and Bungie has acknowledged and scheduled a patch for – is the up-close melee. I found it bordering on the impossible to time two hits quickly enough to finish them off. Particularly when playing a smaller map, where spaces are limited and passages confined, I found it increasingly hard to play against people who had mastered the art of meleeing. It was not fun, and I’m glad Bungie has acknowledged this problem.
I would say this is one of the best party games that currently exist for the Xbox 360 – or, indeed, any console at all. I enjoyed my first playthrough on Normal, and am loving going through the game at Legendary. A note to those who play on Legendary - the Covenant Carbine is a seriously undervalued weapon. I initially found that it was an uneasy compromise between accuracy and fire-rate; after playing on Legendary, I found it easily the best weapon against all manners of attack. It was effective both as a melee weapon and as a long range weapon, particularly against computer-controlled snipers; coupled with grenades, and the quick use of cover, it made for an excellent short-range weapon as well. It may well become my favourite weapon in time – replacing the original Halo‘s pistol, and Halo 2‘s Battle Rifle.
If you want to play against me, feel free to send me a message; I’m usually home after about midnight GMT and can fire up the Xbox to play, or perhaps some time over the weekend works better. I usually play in short bursts for not very long since I can take a break from researching or applying to schools or jobs and play as a break. Sunday afternoon, however, there is usually a three time-zone party, so by all means, feel free to join in then!
