When a game generates over $170 million in the first 24 hours (USA alone!) there is clearly something exceptional about it. Some might disagree when I call the Halo franchise one, if not the most important hallmark in gaming, but Bungie’s games up until now never failed to impress. Is Halo 3 the great game it was supposed to be, or are the incredible sales all due to Microsoft spending millions on marketing? PC zealots will undoubtedly go with the second option while the Xbox360 fans are already lighting the torches and sharpening their pitchforks to defend the title. As usual the truth is somewhere in between ...

Finish the fight

If you were disappointed with the way Halo 2 ended (and going by the huge cliffhanger at the end of the game there is a good chance you were) then you probably can’t wait to find out how all the loose ends tie up. What happens to Cortana who was left behind with the Gravemind, the “leader” of the flood? Why did the prophet Truth return to earth after activating all of the long-dormant halos? And for that matter, how is the Covenant doing now that the Elites have gone AWOL with brutes taking over as the main military force within the organization? All of these questions and more get answered during the course of the game, along with a bunch of others that you might have had.

Overall the story is satisfying, as is the end. Compared to Halo 2 there are fewer cutscenes, but you still get your share of high quality drama complete with cheesy one-liners. What is disappointing is that if you want to enjoy the story in Halo 3, a good understanding of the previous two games is a must. There is a short “The story so far” snippet in the manual, but it only grazes the events of the past games, leaving out important aspects of character development. That said, you can go ahead and skip all of the cinematics if you wish to and play Halo 3 as a pure shooter, ignoring the entire back story and still have some fun.

Halo 2.5?

The way Microsoft has been advertizing Halo 3 one might be led to believe the game will be nothing short of a gaming revolution. If you believed their claims be prepared to be sorely let down – Halo 3 is just a slightly tweaked Halo 2 running on next-gen technology. This will be enough for many, dare I say most and well it should be – Halo 2 was by far one of the most enjoyable console shooters with a singleplayer campaign that was short, but very sweet. Today the game might not look like much (even the Vista exclusive PC port), but most of those who played it still have fond memories of various confrontations with the brutes (and flood if they happen to be masochistic).

But enough reminiscing, let’s talk about how Halo 3 plays. Following the very successful formula of the predecessors the game puts the player in the middle of a full-blown war between humanity and the Covenant, pitting small groups of enemies against the player. These groups are mostly composed of grunts, which are relatively harmless on their own, but can be quite dangerous in greater numbers, jackals with their shields or sniper rifles and a few brutes which act as leaders and the main driving force behind the group. On normal difficulty (and easy for that matter) you’ll usually get away with a frontal assault, but on heroic and legendary a single ignored grunt is all it takes to kill you, so staying in cover is a must. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that playing the game on normal is a waste of time, but the real challenge of all Halo games is the hit and run gameplay style that is forced on players at higher difficulties. Even on legendary there are still plenty of head on fights, but you’ll usually feel like Han Solo did on the Death star when he and Chewie chased an entire squad of stormtroopers, hoping that they don’t realize there are only two guys chasing them.

In line with the military changes within the Covenant there are several new weapons available to players. The most powerful (and spectacular) is by far the hammer the brute chieftains carry with them. It acts in a similar manner to the plasma swords, but deals tremendous damage to anything foolish enough to stand in front of it when it is used. The rest of the new weapons may not be as cool to wield, but they are just as powerful. Most of them are actually stationary turrets that can be ripped from their emplacements. So what’s preventing you from just ripping every turret you see and dragging it along? For one you can’t reload them, so once you run out of ammo you might as well grab a rock and carry that with you instead. They also slow you down considerably (and the viewpoint changes to a behind the shoulder view), so enemies can flank you without trouble. Still, once you burn down an entire room of enemies with the flamethrower turret gun most of these shortcomings don’t really matter that much anymore.

Which leads us to vehicles. With the brutes taking over most of the military it was inevitable that we’d encounter some of their vehicles as well (after all, most of the Covenant machines carry that unmistakable Elite design). Cue one of the most hardcore bike designs of all times, with a hover mechanism in place of the back wheel and a huge ripper instead of the front one. Riding it might not be the most comfortable experience ever, but it sure as hell beats standing in front of one. The other new Covenant vehicle is a troop transport, very similar to the Warthog in terms of functionality. A quad bike doesn’t look like much on paper, but with an AV-gunner on the back seat this little thing can cause enormous damage. Finally, after years of being assaulted from the air by the Covenant, humans have brought flying units into the fray. This machine-gun equipped VTOL craft is able to stand on its own against most dangers, save perhaps for an AA-emplacement.

When all is said and done, what makes the Halo 3 singleplayer truly great are not the individual components. It is the whole experience which is so tactfully orchestrated that it is sometimes hard to believe you are not just watching a movie but playing it. Thanks to the very good enemy AI (the friendly one is inferior, especially at harder difficulty settings) every single game encounter is unique, intense and most importantly fun. Your foes will flank you, seek cover, run away if unnumbered, suppress you with fire and scare the living sh** out of you should you forget to check behind you every once in a while. There is never much downtime in the game and the checkpoints are set around perfectly (I suspect the game skips a checkpoint should you be doing bad when you cross it, so you never end up replaying the whole level because of an inopportune save point). The vehicle levels are still well balanced and fun as hell, especially when you manage to pull of some insane stunts while mowing down enemies at the same time.

The Dynamic Du… erm… Quadro

Halo 3 has been built from the ground up as a multiplayer title. Every single part of the game (save the settings screen) can be accessed with a group of friends, be it the singleplayer campaign which then becomes a co-op campaign or the custom map building tool. Even the movie section, where you can play back any of the saved recordings of your games and watch them with your friends. You can edit these recordings if you want to, and then send them to other Halo 3 players for bragging rights. The feature might not sound like much fun, but it is very cool and can help you grab some amazing screenshots of your singleplayer, coop or multiplayer matches.

At long last I’ve mentioned the multiplayer. Going by the success of the Halo 3 MP beta and how popular the Halo 2 multiplayer has been, this is the aspect of the game that many will spend the most time with. I won’t delve into details, as there are far too many maps and gamemodes to list them all. I’ll just say that Bungie once again managed to create an insanely fun online experience that is unrivaled on consoles and to some extent even on PCs. All of the new vehicles and weapons fit in perfectly with the old classics, resulting in a frag-fest that is hard to match. Online lag is minimal even when playing cross-continent and at least for now there aren’t any game-ruining exploits known.

Next-gen experience

Bungie stated several times that they weren’t trying to push the Xbox360 to its limits with Halo 3, so the game’s graphics wouldn’t be groundbreaking. Even though several internet forums are filled with posts claiming that Halo 3 doesn’t look any better than Halo 2, things are hardly that bad. Sure, compared to Gears of War the game doesn’t have that gritty realistic look, nor does it push the same amount of polygons on the screen, but it has a certain charm that is hard to negate. All of the characters, be it humans or aliens are a lot more detailed than they used to be, though admittedly the human faces could do with at least double the poly-count.

The animation is as always superb, as are the physics running behind every single object interaction. The environments are still just as big as before, so at first glance they might look similar to those from Halo 2. A closer inspection reveals a lot more terrain detail, grass sprites, dozens of placables in sight at any given time and more. Perhaps the most advanced part of the game is its lighting system. Resulting in painfully obvious missing AA, the lighting implementation is amongst the best we have ever seen. HDR in Source engine games might be more realistic, but it is hard not to be impressed by the way terrain glares when looking at it from inside a dark building or how different materials reflect the light in different ways. According to Bungie this is also the main reason the game is actually rendered at 640p and then upscaled to 720p/1080i/1080p. I personally wasn’t bothered by it, but I’m sure some will find the low resolution and lack of AA a big problem.

My personal favourite in Halo games is the music. The way the different tunes affect the experience is amazing. From the low-key “creepy” music to the Halo-themed choir music that plays when monumental events take place, every single piece of score is perfectly suited for the occasion it plays in. If you liked the music in the previous Halo games you are bound to enjoy it this time as well, both due to its quality and the familiar sound. Hand in hand with the high quality of music are the professional sounding voices of all characters in the game. All of the old voice-actors are back and so are the Master Chief’s gritty voice and his legendary one-liners. There are also tons of combat dialogues to be heard, and even after playing through the game twice I still haven’t heard a single line more than twice per game.

Conclusion

Halo 3 is not perfect. On the PC, where there is an abundance of great FPS games it wouldn’t be nearly as praised. And let’s face it, were it not for Microsoft shoveling millions of dollars into the franchise the Halo brand wouldn’t be as successful as it is. With that in mind one has to wonder if bucket loads of money are all it takes to make a hit game. The answer is a definitive no. Halo 3 might not be perfect, but it is still one of the best shooters released this year on any platform. It is also the most cinematic experience you will get from the moment you start up the game to the time you finish it about 7-8 hours later (playing on your own on normal difficulty). And let’s not forget how huge the multiplayer is bound to get, with hundreds of thousands playing the game just a day or two after release. And last but not least, if we beat two Halo games before, why the heck should we not finish the fight in Halo 3?