Halo 3 is a very good game, but it’s not perfect. I was happy with it throughout and felt satisfied with the ending. While we'll see more games in the future, this current story arc is finished.

Halo 3 picks up right where Halo 2 ended. You crash land on earth and prepare to save the world yet again. The core gameplay of Halo is unchanged. Almost everything that was introduced in Halo 2 was carried over. You can still duel wield, the Arbiter is here and new weapons have been added. The one major change is the new equipment system. If you played the Beta earlier this year, then you know what I’m talking about. Some examples are the bubble shield, gravity lift and the trip mine. When you pick up a piece of equipment, it gets mapped to the x button. When you are ready to use it, just press the x button and you will deploy the piece of equipment that you currently have. You can only carry one piece of equipment at a time, but the game does allow you to swap out one for the other if you find one that you want. Here’s the problem with the equipment: I really didn’t use it that much during the single player campaign. I’m not saying that it was a bad idea or anything, but I just didn’t think to use it very much. I will say right now that you will find much more use for equipment in multiplayer because there are some items that can be really helpful. You will just have to decide for yourself.

The game is comprised of nine levels and they vary greatly. The levels themselves are designed well and at no point did I feel like I was getting bored or annoyed by them. I was happy with them all. Most of the missions take place on earth, with some taking place elsewhere. I don’t want to ruin anything for you.


There are a few issues that I did have with the gameplay itself that I should talk about. I love a good story in a game, and was really excited to play Halo 3 to see where the story would go and how they would tell it. I was disappointed to see that this game, compared to Halo 2, has much less storytelling than I would have liked. Halo 2 opened with a great story about the Arbiter and was told with cinematic qualities. With Halo 3, it wasn’t until the fourth or so mission where we get our first big story telling sequence. The problem with doing this is that they set this bar for themselves in Halo 2 with wanting to tell the story in a way that the player felt like there were watching a movie. Now enter Halo 3 and they aren’t telling us anything. You crash, pick up a gun and go. Not to mention the whole Arbiter story arc is completely gone. No explanation, it's just gone. He is there shooting beside you through most of the game, but it’s like everything that Bungie did in Halo 2 to expand on his character is completely gone. This may be a small complaint to some, but his story was a part of Halo 2 and the best explanation we get is a short two page write up in the instructional booklet.

There is also the issue with the difficulty setting. I’ve finished both past Halo games on the standard difficulty setting and on Legendary. The weird thing about Halo 3 is that if you play the game on the standard difficulty setting, it’s actually pretty easy. Take this bit of advice: If you know what you’re doing in first person shooters and you’ve played the past Halo games, play Halo 3 on Heroic setting first. It’s a much more enjoyable experience. The AI will react differently in the more difficult settings and you will find that parts you may have walked through on easy without breaking a sweat will now become choke points causing you to use lots of foul language.

Since we’re on the subject, let’s talk about AI for a minute. Here’s the good and the bad of it: The enemy AI on the higher difficulty settings is very good. There are points in the game that I found myself amazed at how they worked with each other and were able to flush me out of an area. The enemies are very smart when it comes to weapon usage, using cover, driving vehicles and even deploying equipment. I would reload certain levels and play through them again just to see how differently the AI would react and I was very pleased. Not once did the AI do the same thing. It was very reactive to where I was and what I was doing.

Now let’s talk about the friendly AI. I’m talking about the Arbiter and the Marines around you. It’s a mixed bag here. Sometimes, they are very good at what they are doing and other times, they just stand there and get shot at. I’m not joking. I stood and watched the Arbiter stand there and just take damage. There were other times when I was progressing in a level and the Arbiter would get stuck or just stop following me. I wish I could say that this was a rare occurrence but it happened a lot during the single player game. Next is the Marine AI. You know what? Just re-read the Arbiter part above and you’ve got the idea. Here’s another piece of advice. Always drive….always. It might just be me but the AI apparently doesn’t know how to drive. It’s too bad that the enemy AI is extremely good, and the friendly AI is just pretty good. Take it for what it’s worth. It would be nice to have had a better balance but this is what we got.


The two newest additions to the Halo experience is the Forge and the Theater. The forge is basically a level editor. You can go in and load up a multiplayer maps and drop in items. This mode is extremely fun and just works for Halo. Considering how huge Halo is on Xbox Live, get ready to see some interesting custom maps.

The theater is another interesting feature that allows you to save a film of your gameplay. Once you save it, you can edit it, take screenshots, and share them with friends. Now you can prove to your friends that you got that triple kill while using the Spartan laser.

This game is beautiful. Everyone was really excited to see how Halo would fare on a next-generation system and we got what we asked for. Now, is it the best looking game on the system? No, absolutely not. The truth is that games like Gears of War and Bioshock have raised the bar not only on what the system can do, but in what we can expect from developers from an art standpoint.


The levels look very well done and there are a few parts where I just stood and stared out into the distance thinking, “Wow.” I did get some slight slowdown but this was very rare. The character models are a mixed bag. Master Chief’s model looks great and some of the enemies are excellent but then you get to the cut scenes and they are just okay. You will sometimes see a model and wonder what happened to him. Thanks to the power of the 360, we now have enemy encounters of epic proportions. It’s very common to have over 15 enemies on screen at any one time. This helps to convey the idea that earth is making its last stand and the Covenant are not going down without a fight.

Whoever did the sound on this game deserves a raise. The sound is crisp, clear and breathes life into the great visuals. I was extremely impressed with every aspect of the sound and felt satisfied after every play session. Another thing I want to talk about for a minute is the dialog. There was an insane amount of dialog recorded for this game and it is great. This includes both friendly and enemy. The music is also beautiful. I was a fan of the Halo 2 score and I was equally impressed and happy with the entire Halo 3 score. I immediately got chills when I started up the game and heard the chanting that we all are familiar with. If you have a good sound system, crank it up. You won’t be sorry.

The games control hasn’t really changed so there is not much to say. I will say that for me I felt that I was turning too slow so I immediately went into the settings and bumped up the sensitivity to 5. I did say that I wanted to talk about the control and equipment. Bungie saw fit to change some crucial button configurations that we have come to know from the past two games. The biggest complaint that I’m hearing about is that the x button deploys the equipment and the right bumper reloads your weapon. This is a problem. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a fire fight and wanted to reload my weapon and I deployed the damn gravity lift. Other than this minor complaint, the control is the same as it ever was.

So there it is. Overall, I was happy with Halo 3 and I was satisfied with how the single player campaign ended. It was a great ending to such a powerful and influential game. The obvious lasting appeal here is the multiplayer. You can play 4 player co-op over Xbox Live and you can of course take the fight online. I’m going to guess that Halo 3 will be the big hitter on Xbox Live until God knows when. Halo 4, maybe?

Halo 3 is a great game. The extra features are huge, the multiplayer rocks and you won’t be bored anytime soon. Go out and buy it. Once you're done with the single player, jump on Xbox Live and test you skills there. It was a fun ride but it’s over. Thanks for the memories Master Chief, you will be missed.