Halo: The third coming
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This was a huge week for gamers everywhere. The biggest game series, probably in the history of gaming,released it’s third and final game to the masses as we let out a collective “nerdgasm” at 12:01am Tuesday morning. Since it’s launch, I’ve completed the campaign on Heroic and logged well over 50 multi-player battles over Xbox Live. I figured I’ve had enough time with the it, I might as well reconnect to the world and share my thoughts on Halo 3.
Now the entire series is one that is near and dear to my heart. Even when compared to the the entire Final Fantasy franchise and World of Warcraft, I’ve spent more man hours planting bombs, stealing flags, sticking nades, and eating bullets than I have on any other game. Not surprisingly, the ramp up to Halo 3′s release was long, tiresome, and full of excitement.
In the hours before the midnight launch, I set up my master command center in the living room. I moved our dining table in front of the couch, set up my Xbox 360 connected to a Dell LCD monitor over VGA, and connected up a pair of Triton AX360 5.1 Surround headphones to improve the game experience (if you’ve never played a game in surround, do it! You’ll be amazed at how much your experience improves when you can just close your eyes and hear where the enemies are coming from). Once everything was set up, it was time to head out for the launch.
The midnight opening was insane. There was easily several hundred people lined up around the GameStop and you could easily feel the excitement. As you might expect at a like minded event such as this, I began chatting with the people in line around me and we quickly became friends and started exchanging our Gamertags so we could meet up in “the game world” when we all returned home later. After the hour and a half of waiting, I got my copy, raced home, popped it in my 360, and dove into a 12 hour marathon of gaming goodness, during which I completed the game on Heroic and tested the waters in multi-player.
So how is the game? In short, the game is absolutely amazing. While it’s not the 10 out of 10 that I’d have liked it to be, it’s damn good, clearly worth the three year wait, and makes my purchase of an Xbox 360 completely worth it. Since the good far outweighs the bad, let us start with my complaints.
Now I love video games, but more importantly I love a good story. Some of my favorite games of all time (Final Fantasy VII, Xenosaga, KOTOR, etc.) are those where the story takes center stage over the gameplay itself. The Halo series, though it does have a really good story, doesn’t go into it very deeply. We’re given the story through a series of cut scenes, but with each of the games it feels more like the cliff notes than the full story. This feeling was further exaggerated by a series of interstitial flashes which never really get resolved and feel almost gimmicky. In fact, the game doesn’t really provide any new information to the story at all. It simply exists in the world and plot-line that was previously established. Though the trilogy does come to a somewhat satisfactory end, I was left wanting more.
My only other complaint about the games was it’s second to last level, which was completely broken in my opinion. Though I was playing on the Heroic difficulty (one step above normal), the level seemed almost impossible to beat at time. You face hordes of enemies in very tight passages and you literally have to change your play style from aggressive to completely passive. You find yourself constantly out of ammunition with no hope of resupply, picking up the almost useless weapons from the few corpses that carry them, and constantly heading backwards in the level desperately searching for a clear room to let your shields recharge. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say that 90% of my deaths in the campaign were direct results of this level. It just felt so ridiculously out of balance from the rest of the game that it truly took be out of it for the time I was stuck on it.
Even with the above mentioned problems, the game is amazing. First off, the environments you’re set in are simply beautiful (with the exception of the above mentioned level). Unlike many of the small and locked down levels of the previous games, Halo 3 features large open environments the really give you the feeling of isolation and a real sense of fear for earths survival. When you combine this with intense battles, such as those with the scarabs (large quadruped machines standing several stories tall), you’re simply left in awe.
Though the campaign is amazing, every die-hard Halo fan knows that the multi-player is where it’s really at. I still remember the feeling I had when I played my first Halo 2 game and then attempted to go back and Play Halo: Combat Evolved, and this is no different. Having played all the games online that I have, I don’t know how I could ever return to Halo 2. The onslaught of new weapons and equipment mix the game up so much that each game feels fresh, new, and different. From the very first time you jump in an enemy bubble shield melee you opponent to death to the first time someone sets off a flare and you watch your screen go bright white just before dying, this game is just amazing every time. In Halo 2 there were only a limited number of encounters you could enter. You always knew or at least had a good idea, based on the weapon combination you and your opponent were holding, what the outcome of that event was going to be. Now, with all the combinations available to the players, every situation changes and it’s almost impossible to guess what piece of equipment is going to be thrown down or where the enemy is hiding. This almost makes it impossible for teams to camp on top of “the best” weapons on a map and dominate.
In short (lol, as if I hadn’t rambled on already), this game is simply amazing. If you own an Xbox 360 and haven’t purchased this game, you should. Everyone else who doesn’t own an Xbox 360, should pick one up with a copy of Halo 3.
posted by Christopher Schnese
