- Master Chief Comes Full CircleThere is no reason to state the amount of hype attached to this game, so I'm not going to. Let me say I've hardly ever seen a game that lived up to its hype completely. Many of the greatest games were sequels in an already polished series. The third and final installment of Halo (or so Bungie says) encompasses everything the game developers were looking to add to the second one. And in my opinion, they executed this very well. Here is a short mach up of the game's main parts:
Gameplay 9 of 10: The mechanics feel very good and a lot of the game resembles Halo: Combat Evolved. Everything is intuitive, no drastic changes but many small beneficial additions. Many of the serious physics problems from Halo 2 were addressed. I will say it is my favorite of the three in terms of pure gameplay. There is constant action and variation. The Arbiter is taken out of the gameplay for the most part. Many people complained about ending Halo 2 as the Arbiter. Now, only as a cooperative partner can the Arbiter join in. My favorite feature of the game is a great deal of the enemies have changed. To begin with the Flood is only in two complete levels if I remember correctly.
Nobody I know likes fighting them. The developers took this to heart. A few things I've noticed about them: if you shoot the Flood part of the "infected" they go down easier, they are now able to be beaten into their constituents and they're just quite simply not as difficult to kill. In fact the difficulty levels are a step down from the first two games. Normal seems like an enhanced easy. Brutes are considerably weaker. A few shots to the chest now destroy their armor. Skulls however, make the game more like the legendary setting of old.
There are 13 skulls that can be found in various secret places in the game. They add things like: grunts throw many more grenades, all enemies have extra health, you have to hit enemies to get shields back etc. Four of the skulls allow you to change your armor on xbox live. These also add multipliers to the Meta-game. In the Meta-game you are given points based on how and who you kill. Brutes obviously net more points. This is a fun way to compete with others via xbox live. So many features have been added to this game, it is hard to list them all.
Graphics 8 of 10: Very good visuals stand out even from other next generation games. Lighting and reflection is greatly superior to many other current games, weapons look more realistic than anything in the game. Much more time was spent on the textures and close up visuals. Colors are vibrant, everything has sharp and crisp lines as long as you have HD or I prefer S-video (because I'm lame and have a CRT). If you don't, Halo 3 will resemble an enhanced Halo 2 visually.
Controls 8 of 10: Controls take an evolutionary step, with only a couple of buttons moved out of necessity for the special items. The basics are the same as first and second game and as always have little to no learning curve for a person familiar with FPS. There are more options on the personalization of the controls now. In my opinion Halo 3 has the best controls for a shooter game and has been copied before.
Music / Sound Effects 7 of 10: The music is just brilliantly done, now with a full orchestra. And the original soundtrack has been considerably enhanced and expanded by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori (the composers for all three games). With an orchestra in the background, the game just feels more epic and gives a human quality to the story. The sound effects on the other hand are nothing new or really better than ok, even with the volume way up it is hard to get the full experience. Many of the weapons seem to be toned down literally.
Weapons 8 of 10: Many, many weapons were added. Here is a full list: http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Weapons There are probably more weapons in this game than the first two combined. Unfortunately, many go by the wayside because of there ineffectiveness against enemies-especially on multiplayer. If you remember those large energy shields you always see the covenant standing behind and always wished your own, Halo 3 gives you the option to do so along with a bunch of other new special items: energy drains, deployable cover, trip mines, bubble shields, flares, invincibility, incendiary grenades and a few more. The bubble shield is quite impressive-throw this out and a large sphere will encapsulate you and keep out any and all weapons fire including explosives. However, anyone can walk in.
Vehicles 8 of 10: A very well done fleet of both human, covenant and brute vehicles, quite a few new vehicles on every side along with mostly improved versions of the old ones. There are multiple versions of the Warthog. The Mongoose--is a small non-armored ATV capable of very fast speeds. A new bunch of Brute vehicles such as the chopper enter the fray. And if you hadn't guessed, the Scarab is back. In fact you'll get to destroy four within the game. Phantoms are now destroyable. The tank now houses a separate gunner for the machine gun while some speed is added and evens out the slower rate of fire.
A full list of the vehicles: http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Vehicles
Story 6 of 10: I must say my views on the plot surrounding Halo 3 are blurry. I've played through the game a few times now and cannot understand where it is going. It seems to be overly complex without explain much. The story centers on the Master Chief losing Cortana. About halfway through I really lost interest in what was going on with Gravemind and the Flood and said forget it. Maybe a primer should have come with the game or it did and I failed to read it. Honestly, if someone can give me a synopsis of the storyline I'd really appreciate it. Unfortunately the Halo books have not progressed thus far and I'll have to wait to find out just exactly how the game ended.
Multiplayer 6 of 10: And now for the thing that made Halo famous. Multiplayer has to be separated into two distinct parts: the gameplay and the matchmaking system. Let's discuss the bad first. Quite obviously the matchmaking system....which can be livable at best. In the past the worst parts about matchmaking was the wait times, constant restarts and even complete loss of games because people quit or lost their connection. In retrospect they weren't that bad compared to the most recent additions to the game. In fact getting into a match is now very fast (about 2 minutes on average) However, Bungie feels it is necessary to now change fundamental parts of multiplayer. Just last weekend I noticed that something was seriously off. While attacking a person I took his/her shield down and meleed only to find it wouldn't kill him/her. I was also getting killed by things that shouldn't have killed me. Plasma grenades would explode 5-10 feet away-killing me. It wasn't the case before. This wasn't a singular phenomenon. My friends noticed the same problems. Nothing is consistent anymore. Also supposedly less than 50,000 people were online.
If you haven't played before these things might not bother you. To me it seems as if the programming is now favoring the weaker players. It's kind of like studying for a history exam and then somebody hands you a math test instead and takes it away halfway through the allotted time. I've really lost interest in the game since this occurred. Aside from that there are tons of maps and a decent amount of game variants. New map packs come out about every 3-4 months for a price. As is the case, they are made free months after they've come out. I'm not sure what to think about multiplayer now. There aren't superior multiplayer infrastructures in terms of scope for xbox live. But at the same time when you're not sure what the physical rules are, how can I feel anything but disillusioned.
Conclusion
A very well thought out and truly fun game-which is something lacking in these next gen games. "Over-realism" is not fun. Videogames are meant provide an escape. Halo has this in spades. A genetically enhanced super soldier that fights aliens in a half ton cybernetic suit of armor-brilliant. And you get to play as him. Overall this game is the best Halo for your money. If you own an Xbox 360 I wouldn't think twice about purchasing this.
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