Bungie hyped and Bungie delivered. Halo 3 is absolutely amazing
Playing through the campaign feels like Halo, just as it should, but there’s one big difference between Halo CE/2 and 3… Halo 3 has a crap load more Brutes. Hated going up against those steroid using gorillas in Halo 2? TOO BAD! After the events of Halo 2, you’re not going to be fighting those good old Elites like you’re used to. You’re going to be fighting tons and tons of brutes, along with the ever funny grunts, the other aliens in the covenant that no one cares about, and the ever annoying flood, oh yeah did I mention there are now flood infected Brutes? Those are NOT fun to deal with. But still, for the most part you’re going to be fighting Brutes, who are annoying, yet have more variations now. Some are easier to kill than others and some are harder than the ones in Halo 2. The AI is no push over either; on harder difficulties those big son of a guns will start storming you at any given time. The same can’t be said for your teammates, but for some reason it’s like this in every game, your teammates are just useful punching bags to draw fire away from you in a pinch. Another great addition to the campaign is Co-op. Up until about a month ago there were all these rumors that there wouldn’t be online co-op for Halo 3, hell even Bungie played jokes on us and gave out quotes like “oh well, the Xbox live architecture for co-op is hard, we might miss launch and it might be downloadable later.” Yeah, Sony fans latched on to that for awhile until Bungie comes out of nowhere to announce four player online co-op. This is obviously a huge improvement on the local 2 player co-op that Halo 2 had. For one, it’s online, and two, it makes sense. In Halo 2, you were both Master Chief, which didn’t make sense in regards to the story being that you’re supposed to be one of the last Spartans yet there are two of you, and then in cut scenes the second one is gone! This time around, one of you is Master Chief, one is the Arbiter, and the other two are Elite soldiers. You can play the entire campaign on each difficulty online, and with four people, legendary is a lot more do able than it was by yourself.
With Halo 3’s ending, there are some twists that come off other twists, but you will be satisfied with the ending, no “Well, let’s go start another fight” or some BS cliff hanger like Halo 2 had. Before I get to multiplayer and other additions such as the forge, let’s go over the additions. First off are the new weapons. Most of the new weapons in the game come from the Brutes. The first and possibly coolest is the gravity hammer, which was used by the final boss in Halo 2. There is nothing more fun than grabbing this puppy and just smacking the crap out of grunts just to hear them scream… yeah it also is really effective against pretty much anything you come across on the ground. It also can deal damage to vehicles pretty easily, in multiplayer if someone is trying to hit you with an atv, just smack them with this and watch them die. Next is the Brute Mauler, this is the Brute’s version of the shotgun, but the twist is that it’s dual-wieldable. It’s less powerful than the UNSC shotgun, but it makes up for that in its ability to be dual wielded and it has a pretty good melee attack.
The Brute grenade, or Spiker is much like the plasma grenade, but it will stick to ANYTHING, and then blow up in a fury of spikes. If you throw one of these well, you can stick it to a wall next to an enemy in cover and then the splash damage will cause them to get damaged and probably come out… it’s also really funny to stick grunts with them. But let’s just be honest, killing grunts is just funny.
The spiker isn’t the only new grenade from the brutes. Next we have the Brute Firebomb, which is pretty self explanatory it’s the equivalent to pocket napalm or a Molotov cocktail. When you throw it, it will blow up and set everything around it on fire… grunts on fire = funny
The last brute weapon is the Brute Spiker, which was the brute handgun that was featured in the beta. With only one of these you can’t do a whole lot, but two of them at close to mid range will tear through enemies like paper.
Most of the new UNSC weapons are old favorites. The original pistol is back along with the Assault Rifle which pretty much makes the sub machineguns pointless. A somewhat new addition is the flamethrower which appeared in the PC port of Halo: CE. This baby is pretty self explanatory, it is a flamethrower, it sets people on fire. While using it you’ll be in third person, much like another new weapon the missile pod launcher which is ideal for getting rid of vehicles at a distance.
The main new UNSC weapon is the Spartan Laser, which can get you killed while waiting for it to charge, but if you are patient enough and lucky enough to have some poor sap in the wrong place at the wrong time, the Spartan Laser will pretty much destroy anything in its way, be it human, alien, or vehicle.
Along with new weapons, there is the equipment. Most of these have been seen before in the beta, like the power drainer, the bubble shield, trip mine, and the portable gravity lift, but there are quite a few more to play around with. There’s a radar jammer that’s pretty useless in campaign being that the enemies don’t use motion radar. There’s a sort of flash bang grenade called a flare that just blinds you for a second or two, which again is sort of pointless in campaign. Opposed to the power drainer there’s a regenerator that heals you and your shield but can also do the same for any enemy. There are portable shields which are sort of like smaller, destructible bubble shields, except they only protect you in one direction. There is apparently a personal shield that makes you invincible for a short time, but I have not come across that yet. Another small addition to the arsenal is the ability to pick up stationary turrets and move around with them, the only downside to this is you’re very slow while using them. But if you’re in a narrow corridor, and there are enemies coming from one end with a turret at the other, well it goes with out saying, you know what to do.
Halo is also known for its vehicles, and in Halo 3, all the old ones are back along with a handful of new ones. First up is the Brut Chopper, which is a single wheel motorcycle like machine with blades on the front, it’s pretty much the Brute version of the ghost except a lot more hulking. Next is the Brute Prowler which is the Brute equivalent to the Warthog. One person can drive, another can be up on a turret, and two more can be on the sides (one on each).
The UNSC has some new rides too. One we’ve seen in the beta, the Mongoose, a two person ATV made for getting around quickly. The next is the Hornet which is the UNCS’s banshee; it’s basically a big attack helicopter. The final new addition to the UNSC’s vehicles is the behemoth that is the Elephant. The Elephant is a huge ground vehicle that can transport many infantry units and one or two Mongooses. It comes in handy for taking cover so basically it comes in handy A LOT. Now that all that is out of the way, multiplayer is next. There is officially no need to hold on to Halo 2 anymore. Halo 3’s multiplayer took the core of Halo 2, and made it so much better. I won’t explain the multiplayer really, because it’s Halo, the end. But there are three things that make the multiplayer better in Halo 3. The first thing is armor. There are now a bunch of different armor variants for your Spartan or Elite character. They all have their own attributes like the ability to take fire, but to keep balance they have their weaknesses. Some look sort of dumb, but others like the samurai just look awesome. In fact the samurai armor was rumored to be designed by Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive creators Team Ninja, who if you remember, had Bungie make a Spartan for Dead or Alive 4. Next is saved films, no longer will you have to listen to your frat boy buddy’s made up stories of how he totally owned last night with just a plasma rifle. With saved films, you can watch any match over and over again in multiple views. You can stay in first person mode, third person mode, over head view, or free view. You can pause at any time to fly around the map to look at an awesome explosion. You can also see what the opposite team did to sneak into your base and steal the flag. After you save a film, you can upload it to Xbox Live for other people to view, much like Skate’s system where you can upload videos of yourself. Next and possibly the coolest is the forge. Where it isn’t really a map editor, you alternate in between being a Spartan/Elite and one of those Prophecies or whatever that were in Halo 2. When you’re a little floating robot, you can spawn items, weapons, and misc. stuff like crates, or move any existing thing on the map. This doesn’t sound like much, but when you get down to it, you can totally change how the map is played just by doing a few minor edits, or you can create your own game mode, save it online, and possibly have it show up on bungie.net for the whole world to download. (you’re maps will be able to download to the whole world to begin with, but bungie.net will give you a boost) One of the cleverest things I’ve seen people do is in Territories, play baseball with a rocket launcher and gravity hammer. Yes it is possible to deflect a rocket with the gravity hammer, and on the honor system you run around to territories as if they’re bases. But if you get killed by the rocket, that counts as a strike out. Another fun thing to do is spawn tanks and drop them on each other, but hey that’s just me.
Over all Halo 3 just delivers, plain and simple. I could honestly ask for no more from Bungie (except for a few more maps which, will be done most likely.) They hyped, hyped and hyped some more, and unlike most developers, Bungie delivered and then some. Between the single player, all the new conent, the multiplayer, the forge, save films, I couldn’t be more greateful that they packed all this in for $60. Halo 3 is a perfect package to complete an amazing trilogy, there’s no getting around that.
Oh and PS… in campaign, if you kill a Brute that is leading a bunch of Grunts, the Grunts will freak out, pull out two plasmid grenades and go kamikaze. Also if you shoot the grunts methane tank, they’ll start attacking their allies. HILARIOUS.