Bungie, You Rock
I can safely say with zero doubt that Halo 3, when played with 3 other friends, is one of the best gaming experiences money can buy...assuming you didn't buy the Legendary "My Gato's a Spartan" Edition. I have no clue how it stacks up in single player, but the co-op is fantastic.
Much like the Halo 3 adversarial multiplayer, the Halo 3 campaign is the version of the three that is just right. Almost every aspect feels tweaked and refined and the number of awesome moments can be contained in nothing short of a large excel spreadsheet. The monotony and repetition of Halo:CE's Library, or a good percentage of Halo 2 is long gone. The game contains nine missions that feel just right in length. The pacing is finally spot on and we never found ourselves saying "ugh, another group of brutes?"
Speaking of which, the Brutes are the coolest enemy in any of the Halos and probably my favorite overall addition to Halo 3. I'll fight Brutes any day over Elites. Now that they are armored and armed with projectile weapons, I found them far more enjoyable. Instead of the brute force rush tactics of Halo 2, they'll fight like elites, only more pack like. I really enjoyed taking them down. If anything, I'll replay this game multiple times just to master killing the Brutes.
The vehicle segments were incredible and they honestly seemed to be designed with four players in mind. I have no idea how you'd play them solo, or perhaps they just can't be enjoyed as much. Cruising along a destroyed highway in a convoy of Warthogs is great, especially when you get the controls down and have a good gunner. When Keyes lands the frigate and hands over four scorpion tanks I was simply delighted. A tank for everyone! Taking down the scarab walkers was continually fun, especially the time I jumped off the wing of my friend's VTOL fighter, landed on the scarab and took it out from within. That's just good game design. I don't think I can spend a paragraph on it, but I loved the visuals. I think it's the best looking game on the 360, or at least tied with Bioshock. Plasma rifles and alien armies get me every time -- I just love the sci fi.
I also think Bungie finally nailed the Flood. They varied their units by adding these wall crawling, morphing units that can turn into ranged turrets. They also added a few more lumbering brutes and varied the weaponry of the typical units. The Flood came into the story exactly when the game needed a change of pace, then stepped aside for the Covenant again. I hated playing the Flood levels in the first two Halos, but I really enjoyed them here.
Halo 3 does have a few things that could have been ironed out or changed for the better. The storytelling mechanic with Cortana or the Gravemind constantly interrupting the game has got to go. It's disruptive and nothing they said was interesting or worth noting. I don't know who thought the mechanic would be cool, but man they were wrong. The online connection with other people can be frustrating. I know Bungie isn't responsible for everyone's online connection, but if one player gets disconnected from a co-op mission it shouldn't kick EVERYONE out of the game. If you cannot change that, at least let us start at the save point again. We had to play the first level 4 times -- unacceptable.
I also find it interesting that Bungie has created several of the same levels for every version of Halo. Defending the ship, I mean base, driving the warthog off an exploding Halo, exploring a long winding level full of snipers, crusing along a road network in Warthogs -- I love these levels, but we've seen them before. Then again, how do you improve a fantastic formula? Does the mouse trap need to be replaced?
I guess that last line sums it up. How do you improve something that's been pretty good all along and has now finally reached the epic level? Halo 3 is great. Everyone at Bungie deserves a long vacation and a new franchise to totally rock. Just don't make a mini-game compilation. I'll kill you all.
Note: The storyline for the series is actually really cool, but it's sometimes hard to understand from the cutscenes. Check out this thread. It presents a summary of all the books, plus a compilation of all of the Halo:CE and Halo 2 cutscenes.
(posted by grant at 10/01/2007)
