Monday, 8 December 2008

Halo 3



















The Halo franchise is one of the biggest in gaming ever, and is Microsoft's lovechild in terms of its gaming consoles. A good 80% or so of people with an Xbox 360 have Halo 3 and it's the generic taken-for-granted game, unfortunately. Everyone knows Halo 3 but I still think it isn't given enough credit.

Please for the love of shit do NOT mistake me for an 11 year old Floridian fanboy. I do not think Halo 3 is the absolute greatest game ever - though I don't deny it comes close indeed. The reason it is as great as it is is because it just has SO much, allowing for a huge replayability value. Firstly, we have the campaign. The campaign is actually what gets the most stick from fans of the previous games; it's undeniably short and to many doesn't answer all the questions. However, with such incredible environments, each with mindblowing backdrops and a huge variety of enemies, some being very challenging, I don't know what there isn't to be liked. The variety in weaponry also allows for great variation in play and tactics are different with each. You run and gun through an adventure of loss, pain, glory and horror, all with the masterpiece of a soundtrack playing through. Absolutely unforgettable.

There are three other main sections of Halo 3. The multiplayer (of course), the Forge and the Theatre. This is where I believe it elevates above your standard Sci Fi FPS. The multiplayer is only describable as massive, in every sense of the word, partly for its population, for its variety of game types, for the time you'll spend on it and in the chav from Sussex 'massive trackkkkk' kinda way - a compliment. Unlike the Call of Duty, the difference in every game type is outstanding, and each requires VERY different tactics, not least because of it not being easy to kill one person - again unlike CoD. You love it or you hate it; and to put it simply, you'll probably love it. Bungie keep everything varied, with things being edited as soon as need be, and Double Exp playlists being available every weekend. Skill in this does not come easily - it takes a lot of practise but the medalling for superior skills make everything so much more satisfying when you get four sniper headshots in a row. The Forge is a map-editing program which is another brilliant part of the game. It allows you to move weapons around, make new ones, put vehicles where you want, put random objects where you want and how you want. The sky really is the limit, along with the budget. But what can be made and saved as a custom map just blows customisation in most games out of the water, you can see on YouTube some of the maps that have been made, you'll be amazed. I, for example, have personally made a D-Day style map, where the attacking team start on the shore with explosives constantly raining on them (explosive barrels spawn in the air above them), and they must try to make their way up the hill as the defending team mans machine guns from their fortress and stop the attackers from planting the bomb in the base. This is only a small sample of what you can make. Get forging, and have a heck of a lot of fun. Finally, the theatre is a feature in which you can re-watch your previous multiplayer games or capaign levels. Sound boring? Right. Who wants to watch their own games when they were the ones who played them? Exactly. So Bungie took made it so much better: you're able to take screenshots and videos of your greatest, funniest or weirdest moments of Halo with the very flexible ghost camera mode, which literally will fly all over the map allowing you to get the perfect angle. You can then slap these o your File Share so your friends can download them, along with your custom maps and game types.

Seem a lot of stuff? It is. Guess what? There's still so much more which I needn't go into. If you haven't got Halo 3, I really hope I've convinced you to buy it from just showing you the main points. On top of this there's secret easter eggs, fun glitches, www.Bungie.net for tracking all your stats, and more. Incredible, I sometimes wonder how Bungie did it all. 10/10, I still struggle to find flaws other than the occasional network lag. Finish the fight, and enjoy it.