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Halo 3

Reviewed on: Xbox 360
Available on: Xbox 360

Is Halo 3 a carbon copy of the previous two then? Halo 2 with a lick of paint? Well, yes really. Is that such a bad thing? No, not really at all.

Players: 1 - 16 Players (xbox live)
Genre:
Release: 2007-09-25

Developer: Bungie
Distributor: Microsoft

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I admire the Germans. Not for their efforts in that sort of 1940s era, but a bit later. See there was this bloke named Ferdinand Porsche, he designed this little car you might have heard of called the Beetle which had the motor at the back. In fact Ferdinand was so adamant that putting the motor at the wrong end of a car was the right thing to do, he went off with his son and they started their own company. You might have heard of it.

I hate to bore you with an annoying discourse about cars but bear with me, there�s a point here. Somewhere.

Now Porsche came up with a revolutionary looking car with round headlights and a sloping back that he named the 911. Early 911s are known to be tricky things, difficult to drive with a tendency for the rear end to break away in corners but over time German science has refined and refined and refined the concept down to today where the Porsche 911 is pretty much the best and most capable sports car money can buy. It�s still a flawed car and it still has the engine in the back but stubbornness and development has produced something amazing. The current model doesn�t even look all that different to the original, just refined and polished over time. Call it design by evolution.

In many ways Halo 3 is exactly the same as a Porsche 911. It�s flawed like the original and the first sequel, yet polished and refined over the two prior. It doesn�t look very different, it doesn�t feel or sound or smell any different. It�s just more modern and polished. Like comparing a 1960s 911 to a current model. Not dramatically different but newer.

Is Halo 3 a carbon copy of the previous two then? Halo 2 with a lick of paint? Well, yes really. Is that such a bad thing? No, not really at all. As a result, Halo 3 sure has its fans. It certainly has its anti-fans too, just like the 911. It�s either a love or hate game with very little middle ground. So, as someone who liked and enjoyed the previous two games, I�m coming from the positive camp. Am I positive about Halo 3?

Yup.

First impressions of Halo 3 are pretty lukewarm really. You�ve crash landed to Earth near an installation which, of course, is under attack from the Covenant soon after you get there. Needless to say I was underwhelmed. The early missions seem to have no or very little relevance to the story and seem to serve as a means of becoming re-acquainted with the Master Chief and co. I honestly found it frustrating. For all the hype and brouhaha (I slipped it in, woohoo!) I didn�t expect to be carrying out tedious missions to escape from and destroy a reasonably insignificant base in the jungle. I�m playing as the Master Chief dammit, hero for all humankind et-cetera, et-cetera yet there was no saving of anyone yet, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bah.

Thankfully, not long after escaping a very familiar structure appears off the side of a broken highway, it�s the big structure thingy from the announcement video. Finally, the story can continue! From there on it�s all pretty predictable really. The story is solid and much better than Halo 2 but there�s very little in the way of twists or turns.

While the story side of things is really neither here nor there, thankfully the gameplay of the series has remained almost unchanged. The Elites from the first two have been swapped for the newer Brutes, but they really don�t play dramatically differently. You�ll still find yourself coming up against squads of a few grunts, a couple of scouts and a brute. The �Brute Pact� stuff that the development team talked about in the lead up to the game seems pretty much nonexistent. Supposedly they�re meant to work together, react to each other and sometimes do the same things and actions yet I saw none of that at all.

The two lower difficulty levels seem pretty pointless, both are a stroll in the park compared to Heroic and Legendary. I spent most of my time playing the game in Heroic and for the slightly-more-often-than-casual gamer, it was a solid challenge. I found the Legendary mode to be extraordinarily hard, although it does feel like it was designed for co-op play. That AI has taken a step up, although Grunts and Scouts are still as dumb as ever. Brutes will make an attempt to strategise and quite often I was caught off guard by a flanking manoeuvre I didn�t see coming.

As with Halo 2, the major differences to the way Halo 3 plays are in the weapons and vehicles. There have been a few additions of weapons for Halo 3 including a couple of specific Brute weapons, a sort of explosive shell launcher called the Brute Shot and a rapid fire hot spike gun called the Spiker. Neither really changes the balance of the game at all and you�ll tend to find yourself gravitating back to the classic Covenant weapons and the human weapons over the new ones. They just seem to be out of place compared to the weapons we know and love. One weapon you�ll see a lot less of is the Needler, which has been re-adjusted a bit and is much, much more damaging now than it has been before. As a result it�s rarer. Pity because it�s now really good fun.

There are several new vehicle additions in Halo 3 and while a couple seem worthwhile, others seem pointless. For instance the Hornet, which is a Human equivalent to the Banshee. It�s a good little thing but it feels a bit too much like it was added just so that Ensemble Studios would have some units to work with in Halo Wars rather than to improve gameplay in any discernable way. There�s also the Mongoose, which is a quad bike and while it has infinite cool value it really is just a mini Warthog. The only time it�s really effective is when you can get an allied soldier to jump on the back armed with a rocket launcher. That doesn�t happen very often. When presented with the choice between Mongoose and Warthog, I found myself picking the buggy over the quad every time. Everyone was expecting Halo 3 to look and sound brilliant. Well, it does. The graphics are sensational, there�s no other word for it. The textures and effects have really stepped up the look for the game and Bungie�s boffins have worked their magic with some beautiful High Dynamic Range lighting, which filters through jungle canopies, just like real light does. This is easily the most realistically lit game I�ve ever seen. One of the most spectacular moments is taking down the Covenant�s monstrous walking Scarab tanks. After smashing the on board reactor and jumping free, you turn, only to see one of the most spectacular explosions I�ve ever seen in a game. The legs fall away from the white flash and debris and embers fly around the devastated tank. In fact that�s just the big bangs but even the little ones, smoke trails and smaller explosions look brilliant too. Halo 3 is set in many more wide and varied environments than the previous two games, so there�s none of that tedious repetition from Halo 1 or that lack of sense of progress from Halo 2.

The soundtrack is classic Halo fare, although the piano from the announcement trailer has been worked into sections of the game. There are also a couple of new suspense tracks which really help to build urgent and uneasy sense and help to really get the heart pounding. The dialogue is pretty much the same as before, the Soliders and Grunts love to have a good old chatter. If there�s one thing that can be drawn from this, is that Bungie really knows how to produce a really well polished game.

I think the buzzword for this review might as well be polished. Because that�s what Halo 3 is. The campaign is nothing revolutionary, yet it�s a very solid single player or co-op first person shooter. It takes what was great in the previous games, adds more diversity, which it needed, and sharpens up the presentation. It�s not oddball like Bioshock, its pretty mainstream in terms of what you should expect from a modern non-corridor FPS. But is that a bad thing? No, not at all. Call it design by evolution. It worked brilliantly for Porsche, now Bungie is taking the same steps with Halo and the result is nothing short of magnificent.

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Final Verdict

Halo 3 is game design by evolution. Take 2 Halos, add some new weapons, vehicles, environments and a story that doesn�t suck then polish to a shiny shine. The result is brilliant.

Pros
A story that doesn�t suck! New weapons, vehicles, environments and visuals added to a proven formula which is already superbly balanced. Tricky upper difficulty levels keep the game challenging and co-op means you can play with friends (if you have any)
Cons
It�d be nice if the story was a bit more imaginative, useless lower difficulty modes devalue what should be a challenging game. Brutes don�t play any differently to Elites, if you�re going to swap a character, make them different.