Halo has become the most popular gaming franchise in the world next to World of Warcraft. This has been mostly due to the amazing multiplayer and the tremendous amount of hype that Microsoft has generated about Halo 3. This game's expectations were totally unreachable by any franchise in any media. The first day sales of the game broke every record for media in history. The hype machine worked to it's perfected crescendo with this title and franchise. Unfortunately, the game is so much less than what has been hyped and reviewed by so many press outlets that perhaps the video game industry needs to wake up and stop drinking the kool aid.

The single player campaign begins where Halo 2 left off with Master Chief falling to Earth and getting together with Arbiter to fight the Covenant invasion of Earth. Things aren't good on Earth with the human forces only having a few ships left to defend the planet. The full story of Halo 3 is more like a epilogue to the story begun in Halo rather than the full conclusion to the trilogy. There is no real mention of the conflict between the Prophets and the Elites. The Flood makes another tacked on appearance and you don't even get to fight the Gravemind. This just appears to be a way of working the Gravemind into Halo 4. The final battle in the game is anticlimactic and the final level of the game; which tries to be a fast paced action sequence, fails miserably. The story wants to mirror those of action movies when it should be trying to mirror something more along the lines of Star Trek rather than Bad Boys. I was hoping for lots of cinematic cutscenes showing devastation of Earth and huge battles in Space and on the ground. None of that materialized, The story was kept at bay for the sake of the gameplay. Considering the game is 9 levels that can be finished in around 6-10 hours depending on skill level, difficulty settings, and whether you use Co-Op or not. They could have spent a lot more time fleshing out the story. This type of thing was all right on the original XBOX but games have come a long way since 2004, perhaps Bungie should have realized that; after all, the franchise does have a growing novel series that could have been drawn on for story if necessary.

The overall design of the game is pretty much just halls(either in the woods, in an ice valley, or in buildings. Followed then by some kind of open area. Then, the player is usually made to do some kind of vertical progress. This is repeated, over and over again. The vehicle parts of the levels are a mix of being horribly annoying to be being masterpieces. The scarab tank battles and a few of the interim air battles with the hornets versus the ghosts are pretty amazing but most of the warthog levels usually boil down to some really boring driving and waiting for your gunner to destroy other vehicles or foot soldiers. Besides this, the driving quickly and path choices that could end up getting you killed are back from Halo 2's final level. This was such a transparent way of making this REALLY short game a little longer that it was pathetic. By the time I had to do this driving level I was hoping the Arbiter would go get the ship and pick me up.

One of the biggest problems I have with Halo 3 is that there is absolutely nothing new the campaign. The same enemies, perhaps the Brutes have three types now but that just means they have a different weapon and wear different armor. All of the ships and environments look SO MUCH like Halo 2 that it is all most scary. The Grunts look the same from Halo 2 and there are tons of them in this game. After 2 titles shooting these annoying little guys you would think they could retire them. The Jackals seemed to be just thrown into levels to keep from having even more Grunts. They had years to figure out some new species, why didn't they? The Brutes aren't boss characters and they don't make very good infantry. Unless your playing on Legendary they do some pretty stupid things just like all the other enemies in the game. They will throw out a bubble shield and then walk out of firing not using the bubble shield for protection. The environments that the game takes place in are completely void of all background life. There are no animals, no civilians, and no buildings that mark habitation. Just flat expanses with hills and military buildings on them. If this is Earth, where is everyone and where is all the advertising? I guess there are no brand names in the future. I guess Mountain Dew, Microsoft, and Pontiac have gone out of business.

Horrible A.I. Implemented throughout the game. The player's allies are all absolute idiots. The soldiers will drive vehicles into walls over and over again. Obviously there wasn't much path finding going on here. Soldiers will also run into fire fights with only a battle rifle or a handgun and get killed instantly. This happens more often than is reasonable. Also in higher difficulty levels the soldiers die at the very beginning of the level, because they don't respawn like the player does. The enemies are much better shots, so there is no competition with the the player's ally's easy level A.I. Then there is the Arbiter. Who doesn't seem to know when to get out of the rain. He gets caught in cross fires and just stands there. He stands in corners not doing anything during fire fights. The in the beginning of the game he is a kind of landmark to know where you are supposed to go. This must be part of Bungie's tutorial because by level two that is more or less gone. On Legendary difficulty I found the Arbiter dying shortly after the level begins and having to respawn on average of 5-10 during the second level of the game. The enemies in contrast have some amazing A.I., especially on Legendary mode. They have excellent aim and use a lot of flanking maneuvers to try and kill you. The higher you go in difficulty the fewer allies you are given and the smarter the enemies become. Bungie assumes, I suppose, that people will play Heroic and Legendary in Co-op and therefore the help you had in previous difficulties is unnecessary even though they are making the enemies harder to beat. Although they do give the player the option of finding skulls in order to make the levels more difficult. Like turning the player's HUD off or giving enemies a health boost, making them harder to kill. This makes the situation appear that the player should be doing most of the killing and the allies are really unnecessary. In that case, the developers could have had fewer enemies on the maps that were very intelligent and have no allies at all.

All of the above statements apply to the Covenant, not the Flood. The alien infestation that just won't die. These guys return in Halo 3, for the player's final showdown with the Gravemind. Although considering the open ended defeat of the Gravemind it would be easy to see them coming back for Halo 4. I truly hope I am wrong about this. People have said that the player is supposed to hate the Flood. This is fine, except rather than villains in other games that are fun to hate. The Flood is just cheap. They are all ways spammed into the levels and often the levels are designed to make movement through them harder. The monitors are then spammed when you have to go against them to escape the Flood. The story elements for the Flood are great, but the implementation of is horrible. The game often feels more like a badly done survival horror title rather than an FPS. The Flood simply rushed the player and the player, if they choose the appropriate weapon just cuts them down and moves on. The Flood seem to be just another way of lengthening the story and making the game artificially harder.

Halo 3 seems to have popped out of 2004 or 2005. There are no modern conventions that other FPS games implement, in Halo 3. There is no cover system, you cannot save anywhere and start anywhere; only after checkpoints. In some levels there are only 2 or 3 checkpoints in a whole level and considering the game implements the saved film feature where it is recording the whole game as it goes on this seems a little odd. Why can't you save and then start from the exact spot you left off; considering the game is recording the whole thing anyway. The player cannot customize weapons, the player gets new weapons but most of which are modifications of previous weapons. The fact that all the weapons have limited ammunition but only two can be carried at once is kind of old school. There doesn't seem to be a reasonable point in only being able to carry 2 grenades of each type in the single player campaign. Where ever Master Chief is storing the 6 grenades he can probably just as easy stire 12 or 24. The environments are somewhat destructible but they are not as destructible as a those in games like Stranglehold, Bioshock, or Gears of War. There is no map, at all, in any way! As the player moves closer to the end, the levels get more convoluted and less straightforward. Considering the perspective of the game is supposed to be looking through the visor of Master Chief's helmet it is impossible to understand why he wouldn't have map in one of the corners. I do have to praise Bungie for not using any context sensitive cutscenes. Although, this too is a modern convention missing from Halo 3. I'm not complaining because it is over implemented and never adds anything to gameplay.

The Co-Op feature in the game allows four people locally or over XBOX LIVE to compete in a points metagame. To either compete with each other or contribute to the whole for a group score; while playing the single player campaign. This is an amazing feature and probably should be implemented in other games. This doesn't make up for the horrible campaign but it certainly helps make it more acceptable when actually playing.

The muliplayer in Halo 3 puts every other game on any platform to shame. Mulriplayer only games like Shadowrun and Warhawk look like complete rip offs when compared to the multiplayer in Halo 3. The multiplayer allows you to play online with friends in social matches or play ranked matches either with a team you choose or with a completely random player list. The matchmaking in Halo 3 allows you to stress what is important to you: Connection speed, Skill similarity, etc... There has NEVER been a game on a console that allows you to do this and better still; it actually works! The matchmaking system is unrivaled and hasn't even been repeated in ANY other game on any platform. Whatever is under the hood of this game doesn't seem to be repeatable except in Bungie titles.

The running and gunning game style of Halo 3 is perfect for multiplayer and makes every match exciting and fun. Every aspect that made this game the best multiplayer on the Original XBOX returns and then some here. The player is allowed to make up Custom game types in the Forge editor. This mode allows the player to arrange the map the way they would like and changing game settings to create custom game types. These can be shared with friends over file share on Bungie.net or directly through friends on your friendslist.

The ranking system and the ability to customize your armor, emblem, and colors; make this a truly great multiplayer game; with long lasting appeal. The only problems with the multiplayer is that it just isn't quite enough. What more could I possibly want? Clan support, more armors to choose from, and the ability to use the color BLACK. I'm not sure what Bungie has against the color Black but it has been absent from every game in the series. They manage gray, but not black.

The Theater mode, allows you to view all the films that have been taken throughout every part of the game. Everything from campaign to social matches. Is amazing and allows you to really understand and appreciate the gameplay. This feature also allows you to upload files to Bungie.net. Everything from screenshots to full films. This is limited by the amount of space allowed on the site which is rather small but you can buy more space for 700 Microsoft points which is in the neighborhood of $8. After someone pays anywhere from $60-$130 for the game; it seems a little bit greedy to ask for additional money for media storage. Once Halo 3 became the best selling game in history, I think I would have discontinued “the pay to store more content program.”

The replay value of the game could easily be charted at around twice or three times the price of the game. But the problem, lies in the fact that this would have been just as true of Halo 2 if it had all the features of Halo 3. It has nothing to do with the advantages that come when making a game on XBOX 360. Such as VERY HIGH END graphics, which aren't really seen here. Many of the cutscenes and characters in the game are just not rendered very well. The backgrounds, while on the first pass are pretty, are nothing compared to Gears of War or Bioshock. Halo 2 came out on November 9th 2004; that was all most 3 years ago. This, certainly isn't very long in terms of modern game development, but considering they had a story, multiplayer, and Microsoft all ready in place. It is hard to believe that in three years they couldn't have produced a Gears of War or Bioshock quality project in that amount of time. The gameplay is solid but it is nothing that we didn't see in Halo 2. The story ends much like an action movie series and therefore will require a sequel to ACTUALLY find out what happens.

In the end I have to say that I really do love Halo 3. It is probably one of the most fun games I've played this year. I truly and uttering hated the last two levels of the game and wished that I had a level skip cheat or something because they were painful to play through. I did have a chance to play the multiplayer beta and loved it; so now, with additional maps and additional weapons I cannot deny that this part of the package makes it a must buy for me. But this game isn't the same title that Halo and Halo 2 were; both games made me feel like the XBOX was the greatest console ever made. The graphics were amazing, the gameplay was very fun, and the multiplayer was revolutionary. None of these things were present in this game. Bioshock was this years innovator and if it had a multiplayer component; even if it had come out six months later, it probably could have been the best game ever made. Halo 3 falls short under the shadow of that epic title. The revolutions in Halo 3 are the saved films and the ability to do in-game map changes on the fly. This could have been added to Halo 2 along with another pass with some lighting and texture filters. The game could be released Halo 2.5 for the XBOX 360. Adding the single player campaign of Halo 3 as a downloaded expansion pack, like Bethesda did with Shivering Isles for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I can hardly understand how other reviewers have been able to see past all this to give the game such amazing scores. The only thing I can think is that perhaps the excitement of playing Halo has gotten to them and they are ready to sing the praises of the game even when it hardly delivered on the promise of the BEST FIRST PERSON SHOOTER on a CONSOLE. My official score for HALO 3 is a generous 8.5. I would buy this game, but only the regular edition and if you aren't a BIG multiplayer fan, I would suggest renting the game to FINISH the FIGHT.

8.5/10

The following are some video reviews done by different media outlets that give you a contrasting view of my review. Enjoy: