It's time to finish the fight. Was it worth the wait?
Halo 3. Is there any game more hyped than this? For the months preceding Halo 3's launch, practically every bit of gaming news concerned Halo 3. "Did you hear about the new four player co-op?" "How about that new Forge mode?" "omg lets kill stuff !!11!!! halo 3 = game of the decade!!!!11one!!!"
The question everyone was asking though was "Will this game be as great as it looks?"
The answer is an emphatic YES!
The first Halo game brought the Xbox out of the gates rolling on all four wheels of a warthog. The game's success was staggering, and the sequel broke all sales records and became the most popular multiplayer FPS on a console ever. Within the first 24 hours of Halo 3's release, sales records were broken AGAIN, with Halo 3 grossing about $171 million. Simply amazing.
Enough about sales though... I don't want to sound like Nintendo with my trusty sales charts behind me. The game deserves every penny that it made, and Bungie has crafted an amazing end to a beloved trilogy. Remember the annoyance/pain/hatred/all of the above you felt at the end of Halo 2? Don't be scared: Halo 3 definitely finished the fight, as has been promised for over two years.
Basically, Halo 3 is... well... Halo. The single player campaign is about 8-12 hours (much shorter than that, though, if you get a group of 3 skilled buddies to help you take down the baddies), and the ending is very well crafted. Just make sure you watch the credits for the entire ending. Those crafty Bungie employees needed SOME way to make you read their messages at the end to their family and friends!
Over the course of the campaign you will be shooting up baddies with and without friends. Marines are little more than cannon fodder in this game, however. While they can surprise you sometimes, you're better relying on your trusty assault rifle then on your five Marine friends who are running off into a barrage of hunters. You'll be fighting practically the same enemies you fought in Halo and Halo 2, but this time they seem to mean it so much more. They are very tough, and it seems like all the work Bungie DIDN'T spend on Marine AI they put into Brute AI. These guys are tough, especially on Heroic and Legendary. The game forces you to smartly use cover, and you'll notice that only through a smart usage of grenades, weapons, and the new deployable items will you progress through the game with minimal casualties.
Depolyable items? New stuff? What's this I speak of? Yes, as we all have no doubt heard, Bungie moved the reload button to the RB and that freed up the X button to be used for deployable items. These include the fantastic Bubble shield that is seen in one of the first trailers for the game and other items such as deployable cover and energy shield regenerators. There are several of these, including two new types of grenades to mix up strategy even more. My favorite is the new incendiary grenade which lights anything it touches on fire. Mmm... fire...
With all these new items you'll be tasked with... well, saving the Earth. One disappointing thing I found in the campaign was that you're fighting the same exact guys all over again that you did in the previous Halo games. Yes, this includes bosses. Heck, sometimes you don't even have to fight them: the cutscene will kill them off for you. While I didn't mind resting my fingers for a few minutes, it was disappointing. Along those lines, there is no real final boss. What replaces it is one of my favorite parts EVER in a game, no exaggeration. I wont say anything, suffice to say it was the most fun I have ever had in a Halo game, and probably unrightfully so. It's not spectacular, and it's not even revolutionary... I just had a lot of fun with it. Still, despite that, I wish there was an "end boss" that I could fight and feel like I accomplished something.
Now, on to the Multiplayer. This is the staple of what Halo has become. Competitive multiplayer. No console game can ever hope to match this (despite Gears of War's best efforts!) while Halo is still alive. The gameplay is still the same as before, but with the addition of the new deployable weapons, grenades, and of course, new maps.
If you've played any Halo multiplayer before, you know what to expect. Team Slayer, Free for all Slayer, Objective matches, etc. All this goes together with Bungie's amazing matchmaking system to provide a great multiplayer experience for newbies and pros alike. The one thing that veterans will not like about the multiplayer is that the Battle Rifle has been toned down considerably. While I love this change, I'm sure a lot of Halo 2 vets whose skills have been lowered due to relying on that weapon will be disappointed, albeit temporarily.
Along with the single player and multiplayer staples of Halo, Bungie has added a Theater and Forge mode to the works. The very cool Theater mode records videos and lets you share them with friends. You can even edit them! Awesome! My favorite part about the Theater is that it automatically saves your last 25 multiplayer matches (and campaign checkpoints too, apparently). This is great for studying last matches, and will definitely be useful for clans trying to figure out their opponents tactics. You get full control of the camera and you get to see from the point of view of every participant, so there's no hiding in Theater mode. This is great for when you are getting destroyed by one player and you want to figure out how he does it. I've learned a ton about my playstyle and the playstyle of my enemies by watching videos, so I LOVE this new feature. If I had to pick my favorite new addition, it would be this.
Forge adds a bit of custom map making that PC users have been enjoying for years. However, with this editing you cannot change the terrain, but actually the items that appear. You can change the quantity and location, and that's about it. Don't think this is simple though - you can create some amazing map edits with this... just don't expect to create your revolutionary maps as you can only edit the preexisting ones, and even then you can only edit the items inside of them. Still, I'm sure this will lead to a lot of fun and games as people make custom games with 50 Banshees to recreate the Battle of Britain or something.
With all those features bundled into one package, it's easy to see why Halo 3 is definitely worth the wait. The new Forge and the amazing new Theater mode join the ranks of Halo and make it even more of a complete game than the previous two. The single player finishes the fight in a great and effective way, and the multiplayer will lead to many sleepless nights as you try to level up and become the best Halo player ever. If you're not a fan of FPS, then this game probably wont turn you into one. However, if you are and you have played the previous two games (I definitely recommend playing those two before this one), this game should already be in your collection. Everything comes together so well that it's hard to find faults. This is the most complete Halo game yet, and one of the best in the Xbox 360 library. This is the definition of "must own."