Microsoft - Xbox 360 - Halo 3 Review

Where have all the geeks gone? Well, they are all here with me and we are playing the highly anticipated Halo 3 on the Xbox 360 here of course. See why gamers around the world are firing up their 360's and why you should be too.

If you played the original games before this one will feel very familiar. In the 26th century humans are battling it out with an alien race called the covenant and earth has been taking over. In fact that was the crappy unfinished ending to Halo 2. You play as a 7ft tall Spartan Soldier simply named Master Chief and you lead a group of humans and rebellious covenant Elite warriors on a mission to retake the planet and answer a few questions about these strange alien Halo structures.

One big new change is the story mode can not only be played both split screen or online with Xbox Live but it's now a full four player game as well. This is good news since the computer A.I. on your team mates isn't the best. If you get sick of that there are 11 new multi-player default maps with more coming in the future via download. Now 11 maps may seem small but one nice new feature called Forge lets you edit the contents like weapons and objects in these stages for additional replay value.

Like before there are a high abundances of options like what weapons you can use, Free for all battles, Capture the Flag, King of the Hill and many more but now you can even prevent players from hiding all the time with the Infection mode. If a player tries to camp in one area to protect spawning weapons or to Snipe safely in an out of reach corner of the map then a bunch of bombs will surround them. That will teach ya, Jason!

Of course you can't talk about the game without talking mentioning the new looks. The game feels a lot like part 2 but now the metal on the soldiers is much more detailed and the lighting and shadow are more defined as well. The environments also have some touch ups like blowing glass and one of the coolest things I seen here so far was how your opponent drifts down a river after they get owned. My friend and I were just watching this one fallen guy just to see how far it would go. We would even tag bag (sitting on the head) it too heh heh! The graphics are great and a nice improvement over the previous Halos but of course it's going to be better since it's on more powerful hardware now. Sadly, the visuals don't have the wow factor of other high profile 360 titles like Bioshock and Gears of War since they have a whole new art style. There aren't too many soundtracks in the game but what in here is well done and the characters in multi-player can have different voices as well.

OK, all the game's hype was a bit too much (there is a Halo 3 Mountain Dew drink out there for one) and the end result may leave some hard-core players upset with the lack of changes. Halo 3 doesn't redefine the First Person Shooter and the story mode is a bit too short like in Halo 2 but it doesn't stop me from playing it constantly and risk getting fired. There is even a new score system in the story mode here. Overall the game is easily another 5 star product and is packed with enough new goodies like the bubble shield, bigass weapons like flame throwers, secrets, and modes making it addictive as hell.

Halo 3 overall rating: 92/100

For 1 to 16 players
Rated (M) for Mature
graphics: 8/10
sound: 8/10
gameplay: 9/10
replay: 10/10

-StarSoldier1 2007
(Ryan Genno)