Halo 3 Review

Halo 3 is the third game in the halo series and it was released exclusively for the Xbox 360 and hit the shelves on September 25th 2007. It ends the story of the Halo Combat Evolved story arc.

Continuing the Halo saga this one starts with you (Master Chief) crash landing on earth to fight yet another war, but now previous foe The Arbiter is now your ally. Without spoiling too much you fight the Covenant and a surprise enemy from the first Halo game the flood are back and you have to defeat the grave mind once and for all.

Let's move onto the gameplay. Is there anything new? Short answer no. But it's still an addictive first person shooter and it's what we all bought our 360's to play. I still have a big problem with this game WHY no iron sight? I guess I can't really complain about it that much since it was released over a year ago. But with hope they will put it in the upcoming sequel. Oh well, back to the gameplay.

It still uses low gravity to jump & obviously futuristic weapons. There are plenty of guns with the addition of a new gun and a new melee weapon! The spartan laser which in reality is useless unless you're taking out a vehicle and the gravity hammer which is an uber weapon. But there are two new grenades, Spike ones which are almost the same as plasma grenades except they can stick to walls too, and incinerary grenades which light you on fire as you could guess. Also the die hard halo fans and we who love Red vs. Blue should be happy to know that, wait Blood Gulch isn't a map in this game? ARE YOU SERIOUS? Yup, instead we got some Welfare version of it titled "Valhalla" which in all honesty isn't that bad but its not blood gulch.

If you haven't played the other halo games then I'll shed some more light on the gameplay. You have an energy shield that takes a certain amount of damage before it goes down and when it does if you continue to get shot or damaged it results in your death but if you get away before that happens your shield recharges. Melee is a big part of halo too; with a well placed tap of the melee button you can kill an enemy in one hit. You can carry two guns at a time & 4 of each kind of grenade. As mentioned above you can jump high in this game, and it uses two different kinds of weapons. Some use bullets some use energy (which still requires ammo). That's basically everything you need to know.

Ah yes, graphics! Halo 3 doesn't look great, most people say it looks amazing, I sort of disagree. But I'm comparing it to games that were recently released. It uses a sort of realistic style of graphics but they just don't impress me too much (and I run my games in 1080p). But I won't say it's bad because it still looks nice just not what I'd expect from a console's main advertising game. It still looks flashy; Character models are greatly detailed and same goes for the environments. It takes on a shiny look but that's the most I can say for graphics. Sound you may ask? It sounds very clear, Voice acting is passable and sound effects for guns and explosions are very good not much else to say for sound really.

Now lets talk about multiplayer because this is what halo 3 is used for, this is probably the first major title on the Xbox 360 that make paying $50 a year for service worth it. There are plenty of kinds of online play such as, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the flag, Odd ball, hardcore, SWAT, big team battle and various other gameplay modes Making Halo 3 very addictive online. It's still in the top 5 most played Xbox live games and it's the reasons are fairly obvious.

It has up to 16 player online and 4 player co-op for the campaign with friends who make beating the game on the hardest setting or collecting all the skulls and doing the tasks to unlock the special armor just that much easier.

Halo 3 is a great game, it did not disappoint me. It kept me playing strong for around 5-6 months and I'm starting to play it again. It's got an alright but short campaign, Good graphics and sound, Lots of replayabilty and a fanbase to support it, It should be a law not to have this in your Xbox 360 collection.

- "Dazzling" Brad