Halo 3

The Good
Halo 3 emerges you in the Halo universe with its sci-fi plotline and weaponry. Being a hero who defies odd's beyond comprehension is pretty cool. Halo 3 has beautiful visuals and a control scheme that is both natural and easy to master. Halo's story is one for the hardcore player and though you don't need to have played all three halo's to have figured what the heck is going on, it helps. Multiplayer online is widely considered the best online game ever and I agree that if you get the right people, Halo 3 really is an emphatic online experience. No wonder MLG run multi-thousand dollar tournaments on this game.

The Bad
Halo's single player campaign felt underwhelming, its actually not that great when you consider. It doesn't have the grittiness of Gears Of War and the plotline will be more difficult to pick up than other FPS games. Halo 3 failed under its own hype but get passed the single player campaign and you have a cracking game.

The Bottom Line
No holds barred out and out action that is outlandish and out of this world. The halo universe is both colourful and full of foes. For a sci-fi FPS this game is up there with the very best. To really experience the campaign mode, you need to play it online, rather than having clunky, dodging AI with you throughout the game. Halo 3 is a great game and can be completed in under 10 hours, but the multiplayer adds to the life span considerably.

The Good
I'll get the obvious thing out of the way first. Halo 3, despite the amount of hype, is not a good game. Unless, of course, you sit at home playing by yourself and you don't know what the word 'internet' stands for. If you do, then thankfully Halo 3 raises its bulky frame high and stands proudly among the rest of the first person shooter genre.

I've always considered the Halo series to be one fairly stock standard in its single player form. It isn't bad, compared to most others, but since the first game it hasn't really built upon the possible story angles that could have been developed. Having said that, at its highest difficulty setting, playing by yourself can be a challenge.

But where Halo really shines is the ton after ton of online and multiplayer additions. The single player campaign takes on a much more enjoyable form when playing with a friend, and even more so if you turn on the many additional challenges (though it all depends on how good your co-op buddy is, which in my case means I normally come second in the points ... not that I mind too much).

Outside of the single player options, it's the frag fest slayer that will take up most of your time, and the options continue to increase when you look closer. Play capture the hill, maybe a little one on one, then change to swords or shotguns only, or go all out in a 16 a side battle. It really is endless, and I doubt anyone will get tired of taking your fellow players on, and on, and on...

I'll give credit where credit is due, Bungie has designed the simplest and easiest to use xbox live system to date. Most others will base their design on this system for games (and perhaps consoles) to come, but the ease of which to find others players the world over, combined with the number of options to choose from, make it a highly worthwhile gaming experience. And with Microsoft behind it, the extra content should continue on until there's nothing left to give, which could be a while yet.

The Bad
Something I mentioned before does stick out. If you took out all the multiplayer options, there isn't much left after that. The campaign won't take up much of your time, and it's clear from the options at the main menu that Bungie put far more though into the multiplayer options. That isn't a complaint, since the effort paid off, but many die hard fans, I guess I can say I'm one of them, were all expecting a little more from this final chapter in the Master story. The script seems fairly loose, the level design isn't all that different from Halo 2 (the really good parts are few and far between) and the voice acting can be a little too funny than what they probably were aiming for.

The one thing I will say was slightly surprising is in regards to Halo 3's visual performance. It won't go down as one of the Xbox 360's best, especially if you compare it to Gears of War or Call of Duty 4. I say it's a surprise since Halo is the Xbox flagship series, so expecting more visually should never have occured in the first place. The giant leap in presentation from Halo to Halo 2 was probably never going to happen here, but the console can perform even better than what's on display.

The Bottom Line
Halo 3 raises the bar in terms of multiplayer options, and in this day and age, that makes a huge difference in terms of how much time you'll put into it. Having said that, it feels as if the single player campaign has been left by the wayside, which was the chief (no pun intended) reason why gamers played the original Halo. Yes, it has its annoying moments, but there's nothing like taking down wave after wave of creatures on Legendary.

As a total package, Bungie completes the trilogy nicely, with months of content and some well designed functionality. It may not win any awards like its older brothers, but in terms of making the most of the online world as of today, it hits the right note. It's just a shame that the campaign couldn't have been more ... exciting.

The Good
Driving around with the vehicles is pretty nice and I managed to master some of them, together with my cousin we were unstoppable. You got a wide variety of cars and things that look like cars to drive in and they are very easy to control, they are also very different and choosing which one to take can be an important choice; Some of them have guns the driver can use, others have guns that other players can control and some are completely unarmed. They were certainly my favorite part of the multiplayer and singleplayer.

Looking for the skulls is very hard, but also quite rewarding. The idea is that there are skulls hidden throughout the story and you have to find them to unlock achievements. Once you have the skulls you can go to a menu where you can activate a new rule like "you can't respawn" or "you have to hit enemies in order to regenerate your health". Some of these rules are helpful, but most of them make the game a lot harder. Turning them on gives you more points though.

The level design is pretty nice and I never really got lost when I was wandering around, the maps look pretty impressive as well which is always a plus. I have played a lot of shooters where you just have the same areas over and over again, but Halo mixes it up pretty well with levels that take place in spaceships, snowy mountains, meadows and military bases. A nice change after playing too much Half-Life and Portal. I also like some of the secrets you can find in this game, they were a lot of fun.

I played an insane amount of Forge and I must have made at least a hundred maps, most of which had to be removed because my hard drive didn't appreciate it. In Forge mode you can play level designer yourself and place items all around the map, this can lead to an evening of throwing explosives around or an actual map that is worth playing on, I have even seen maps made in Forge in real matches which must have been an honor for the creators. This is a nice feature to have around and I wish more games would have it.

The Bad
The story only lasts four to five hours depending on difficulty setting and personal skill, the only setting that made this game reach the eight hour mark for me was the highest one, Legendary, but that was still incredibly short. This is not the same case as Portal though, where the game has no padding and there is nothing in the game that doesn't have to be there. In a mission nearing the end of the game I had to take down a few towers that were exactly the same and took twenty minutes each to finish for example.

The multiplayer is nice to have around on parties and while playing with friends, but when playing it online it becomes a torture. Not only is the community just as terrible as the one in World of Warcraft and are hackers & cheaters waiting around every corner, but the matchmaking also tends to assume new players will have a fair go against five-star generals. The multiplayer as a whole is just a test to see how much frustration one can put on a person, I have never enjoyed playing it because if I wasn't the one getting ticked off it was the person sitting next to me or some British kid yelling into a microphone. It was just a terrible thing to experience.

It's very annoying that the tool used to share files (maps, pictures and movies) only has six slots available, but you can get more if you pay for an extra service from Bungie. This is something I hate in a lot of games, I bought the game, so give me all the content. In Team Fortress 2 and some other games the only items you have to pay for are just cosmetic extras, but here it is the tool used to share maps and pictures with friends! Are we reaching some kind of turn where you have to pay for each individual feature the game contains, do I also need to start paying to use guns in the campaign or watch my own recordings?

A lot of the achievements appear to me as bait used to make people obsess over the game, there is one where you need to use a laser gun to kill two enemies with just one shot, this doesn't involve skill, you just need to play the game silly until Lady Luck has mercy on you and you get the achievement. There is also one where you need to play the game on a very specific day and one where you need to play the last level with four players over xbox live while disabling spawning. I can understand you want achievements to be hard, but these are achievements for people who spend day and night playing the game.

The Bottom Line
Bungie is very close to their fans and by Christ do most of them not deserve that kind of treatment, the way the community of Halo 3 behaves is my biggest complaint and removing all the annoying people would certainly add another star or two to the score it has right now. Besides the community there are also problems with the length of the campaign, the multiplayer and a bad move from Bungie.

Like I said earlier: I could never enjoy Halo 3 because there would always be somebody going into a rage and that made me very uncomfortable. The campaign is the best part because you can't anger anybody there, but sadly that only lasts a few hours. If you're a die-hard Halo fan, this game is worth checking, but outsiders should probably stay clear off it.