[Xbox 360] Halo 3

[ElijahTW]

Halo 3, belongs to the most hyped series of games ever, deservingly so? Not really, but after Halo 2's Cliffhanger ending, I was damn excited about Halo 3 coming out.



[Played on]
Played on Xbox 360 hooked up via VGA to a monitor @ 720p.

[Gameplay - 8/10]
The first couple level or 2 look great, and they are different than usual, but afterwards it becomes a little more of what we are used to from Halo, however, they brought back a bit more of a open world like in Halo 1. I can't complain much about the levels, because, besides the amazing first level, its what I expected from a Halo game.

This game features some new weapons and tools. They brought back the assault rifle from Halo 1, and there is this bubble thing you can drop and it will sorround you, and no weapons can penetrate it, however, enemies can walk into your buble. There are some new grenades I haven't used much yet. They have changed some of the aliens a bit, there are a couple of new ones, which is good. I think they added a couple grunt sayings too. (Anybody who played Halo has to love the grunts!)
The game plays like most standard Halo games, get 1-3 friends to play co-op with you, and you'll have a blast!

[Sound 10/10 - Tested on cheapo 5.1 system]
Nothing to complain about here. Good weapon sounds, amazing soundtrack like usual. The sorround sound is great, I can hear people running behind me and stuff. Pretty nifty.

[Graphics 7.5/10]
Okay, it's not the messiah of next, err.. current gen games, but it looks pretty good, and is definetly not a last gen game. The textures are somewhat improved, it definetly looks prettier, and seems to run smoother for the mostpart, but sometimes I notice minor frame rate drops. It's not the best next gen game so far, but it IS comparable to some of the nicer ones.

Also, it's worth noting, it does not actually run at 720p.

"Halo 3 uses not one, but two frame buffers - both of which render at 1152x640 pixels. The reason we chose this slightly unorthodox resolution and this very complex use of two buffers is simple enough to see - lighting. We wanted to preserve as much dynamic range as possible - so we use one for the high dynamic range and one for the low dynamic range values. Both are combined to create the finished on screen image."

I know some people will make a unnecessary big deal out of that.



[Replay Value 9/10]
Multiplayer, not the best Multiplayer ever (IMO Unreal Tournament is), but it's still pretty awesome. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, get a couple friends over and kick back and play some multiplayer is awesome.

Online play has the great matchmaking that many fans loved about Halo 3. Matches always seem pretty fair and competitive (and it will get better over time). Multiplayer seems realitivly low-lag.

Also, 4 player online/system link Co-Op is more fun than going thru the mission alone. They put a lot of hard work in to the co-op, and it shows.

[Overall 8.8/10]
Is it the most amazing game ever? No, but it is pretty damn good, if people would give up thier Halo-Hating and give it a chance, they might like it. Unfortunently I don't see this happening soon. If you have an Xbox 360, at least pick it up when you can get it for cheaper, it IS a pretty good game, give it a chance, have an open mind.

I only want constructive replies, please. No "Halo is teh sux lol".

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[Hyuga]

Nice review not flowing on the top of all the hype which is good, but a little short though. I wonder why didn't you mention anything about new features like filmmaking and such?

[ElijahTW]

Originally Posted by augur

Nice review not flowing on the top of all the hype which is good, but a little short though. I wonder why didn't you mention anything about new features like filmmaking and such?

You know, honestly I haven't really messed with filmmaking or forge yet, I'll have to try it a bit later.

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[blueshogun96]

The halo 3 hype didn't look too high to me. Maybe I was just ignoring this whole hype, then again, I don't live around too many Halo fans anyway.

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[ElijahTW]

I think Halo seemed to LOSE a bit of hype right before the release.

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[FLaRe85]

http://www.flaretech.net/opendir/halo3.zip

Feel free to gauge the multiplayer from the video I posted in the pre-order thread. (Why do we have about 4 Halo 3 threads going now?)

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[blueshogun96]

Originally Posted by FLaRe85

http://www.flaretech.net/opendir/halo3.zip

Feel free to gauge the multiplayer from the video I posted in the pre-order thread. (Why do we have about 4 Halo 3 threads going now?)

That's like asking why do we have so many FFX threads.

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[hushypushy]

It's a popular game, let it have a lot of threads. Whatever.

I already beat this game, it's WAY too short. Disappointingly short. And the storyline is awful. When my roommate and I finished it we just stared at the credits screen in disbelief. That was it??? we said.

The only other thing I didn't like was the extreme amount of backtracking. Not only was the game shorter, but you cover less ground due to walking back and forth a lot.

Other than that, the game is pretty damn fun, I liked the graphics, sound, gameplay. This game is a huge improvement over Halo 2.

Did I mention the story still sucks?

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[Coolsvilleman]

Bungie Confesses Halo 3 Not HD - MegaGames console

I gave Halo 3 a 75% before just cause of forge mode. Now I am downgrading it to 65%.

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[hushypushy]

Damn, people are really making a big deal out of this "not HD" thing...

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[Thanakil]

Originally Posted by Coolsvilleman

Bungie Confesses Halo 3 Not HD - MegaGames console

I gave Halo 3 a 75% before just cause of forge mode. Now I am downgrading it to 65%.

Oh snap, they use 2 frame buffers instead of lowering the HDR lightning, this sooooo deserve a minus 10%... 640 upscaled to 720 instead of true 720, what is this world coming to .

There was probably a way to keep both good hdr effects and 720, but honestly, it's not a reason to go from 75 to 65...

If peoples didnt have any idea the game wasnt true 720, I think it shows that it doesnt matter, at all. The game already got enough pixels, upscaling never killed anyone, worst case scenario, remove a few points from the gfx scores... But if you go from 75 to 65 for this, you should build yourself a killer PC instead of playing on the 360.

[Cid Highwind]

Of course this game has been hyped a lot, it's MS' flagship title, what else did you expect. From what I've read it's just a mediocre game in most departments with the exception of replay value because of the outstanding multiplayer features.

It's probably a very fun game, but with some flaws and especially the single player game, like hushy reported, I wonder if all the superbly high ratings are justified. I mean, it's far from a perfect game so the scores at Metacritic are a bit misleading. Anything close to a 10 should be considered near perfect and covering all bases, Halo 3 does not, again, judging from the nuances made by people who played the game.

Just my impression

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[ElijahTW]

Originally Posted by hushypushy

Did I mention the story still sucks?

I thought the story was better than Halo 2.

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[hushypushy]

Originally Posted by Cid Highwind

Of course this game has been hyped a lot, it's MS' flagship title, what else did you expect. From what I've read it's just a mediocre game in most departments with the exception of replay value because of the outstanding multiplayer features.

It's probably a very fun game, but with some flaws and especially the single player game, like hushy reported, I wonder if all the superbly high ratings are justified. I mean, it's far from a perfect game so the scores at Metacritic are a bit misleading. Anything close to a 10 should be considered near perfect and covering all bases, Halo 3 does not, again, judging from the nuances made by people who played the game.

Just my impression

Well, there are many people buying this game JUST for the multiplayer. My roommate is a HUGE Halo fan and was so excited about getting this game, but he's never beaten any Halo game in story mode (I don't think he ever even played part 1's single player). We played Halo 3 co-op on his 360 just to get the achievements and see what it was like. My point is that this game is sort of backwards from normal game development--the trend is usually to make a kickass story mode and then give you extras like multiplayer and such. This game is based around the multiplayer and it gives you an extra story mode just for kicks.

Multiplayer has so much done to it, it's so refined and tweaked. They've been improving since the first one. But story mode has gone downhill...the story is a bit better in 3 but the levels and game length are much crappier than 2, which was much crappier than 1.

The original Halo is still one of my favorite games ever, both for multiplayer and single player, and IMO, the best Halo by far.

Originally Posted by BigIg

I thought the story was better than Halo 2.

I thought so too. But that doesn't stop Halo 3's story from being awful.

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[Coolsvilleman]

So ya halo 3 is bascially halo 2.2. I did not see a big difference in many parts of the game. The single-player is average. The multi-player seems almost identical to Halo 2's. The graphic are not only not a high res, they are very low polygon and bland. Only forge and the battlerecorder seem truly new. If this was not a halo game it would not have done well at all. Its not that i hate halo, i just hate milking series, like EA.

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[ElijahTW]

Originally Posted by hushypushy

I thought so too. But that doesn't stop Halo 3's story from being awful.

I don't think it was awful at all, I thought it was about average.


Halo 1 still seems the best to me, though.

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[@ruantec]

the game is not bad but i get bored after few minutes of play... the graphic is pretty amazing though.

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[ElijahTW]

You know whats weird? There are people say that the game sucks but the graphics are good, people who say the game is awesome but the graphics suck, and people who say the game is just awful. Heh.

EDIT: What I said wasn't directed to the guy above me. He doesn't quite fit into any of the categories.

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[hushypushy]

Originally Posted by BigIg

I don't think it was awful at all, I thought it was about average.


Halo 1 still seems the best to me, though.

Well, I guess it is sort of average, in a way. Most videogame plots are terrible, and Halo's is also terrible. Thus, it's average

It's certainly no Final Fantasy VII or anything, even though it seems like they want to that epic.

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[ElijahTW]

Originally Posted by hushypushy

It's certainly no Final Fantasy VII or anything,

I've tried recently to get into the FF games, but I find them too boring.



On another note, I am actually kind of sad that Halo is kind of "over", because I first played Halo back in early 03, so it has been almost 5 years of my life from the start to the finish. Kind of weird thinking how different things were back then. (I was 11 and being 16 seemed so far away!)

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