Halo is one of them games that will live in legend for decades to come, it shares its status with Gods and Kings and every single time its name is mentioned or its presence felt a sense of belonging goes through the room. Halo is one of the reasons people start gaming and one of the reasons people love gaming. Its predecessors have sold in the millions and made the Xbox a must have console, now the time has come for the saga of the Master Chief to end and to finish the fight.
When the Xbox360 was released many expected Halo 3 to be a release title and have a fairly small waiting time from the agonising cliffhanger of Halo 2. However Bungie teased us again and again with screenshots and trailers but yet no game until 2007.
The game opens with John falling from the sky with Truth's forerunner ship falling in flames behind him, Cortana giving a voiceover of why she picked John over all the others, John crashes into the forest and the screen fades to black. The next scene sees Johnson and the Arbiter over Johns body attempting to get him up again, just as all hope is lost he gets up and you set off into the forest. This opening cutscene boots up the game and gets us ready for the 6 hour thrill ride that lay ahead....or does it?
The mission isn’t even over and the gunplay feels old, outdated and tacky. The enemy A.I is dumb and slow not to mention that the game looks like Halo 2 in HD. The level design is poor and most of the time it sends you on meaningless tasks before getting to the good stuff in the missions.
Halo 3 isn’t all bad though, the story is a strong as ever, perhaps at its strongest throughout the entire series and really pulls at the heartstrings from the beautiful scripting, voice acting and music choice. Many faces from the previous two games return and aid John in his attempt to find the Ark and activate it. The only time the story fails itself is at that particular point, John is on a journey to activate the Ark but doing so will kill all sentient life in the galaxy so in the last 2 missions of the game it changes from activating to destroying the Ark.
The ending is cheap but effective and leaves the door open for yet more Halo games even though this was supposed to round off the series.
Enough of that time for some good news, the multiplayer is back and better than ever. Bungie provide you with an extremely social & community focused multiplayer with guest availibility and custom games. The game modes are great and includes some new ones that are welcome and play great.
The only major addition to multiplayer in Halo 3 is Forge. Forge is a level creation tool where you take one of the maps, strip it bare and rebuild it however you like. The map structure will stay the same but the routes can be entirely different. You can then play these maps in custom games and upload them to your File share, if your map gets enough hits other Halo players from around the globe can download it from Bungie favourites, this is a genius idea from Bungie and should definitely be used in other games.
So Halo 3 wasn’t all it was made up to be but still worth it even if its just for multiplayer, The campaign will last you around 6 hours and the multiplayer will last for years, now just to wait for Halo 4.
Halo 3 – 7/10
+Its Halo
+Amazing Multiplayer
-Crap Finale To An Awesome Trilogy
-Never Lives Up To The Hype
