Halo 3 reveiw

Well, it's here. I have logged more time then I am willing to admit,mostly on the superb multiplayer mode. I'm two thirds of the way through the campaign. I have ranked up allot. And this game has really impressed me.

One of the thing's that I think really sticks out about Halo 3 is the wealth of features. Out of the 5 or so offered, all of them are extremely great with lots of options variants. The only one that I think drags a little is the film, but it is still pretty good. I can't really reveiw this game normally, so I will just review each feature individually.

campaign

The campaign mode of Halo 3 is one thing short of perfect. It feels unique enough to establish it's own identity in the Halo series, without alienating existing players. The options for weaponry and such are large, but not overwhelming. The enemies have great AI.Now the AI is really interesting in this game. One of the thing's I have always liked about this series is how the enemies interact with each other. The brutes will make ruthless,and often quite lethal, charges once the forces they command have been wiped out. The are often backed by more brutes, and its a great to barely survive a conflict with several groups if grunts and jackals, only to be charged by several ruthless armored gorillas wielding all sorts of spiky weapons once you thought it was over. One of the cool things about this is that you are confronted with a choice every battle: You can try and pcik off the brutes and send the enemy forces into confusion, but you could be picked off by Jackal snipers or overwhelmed by the grunts. Or you can nail the weaker grunts first and then close in a lethal melee on the jackals, then focus on the now enraged brutes.

It's a delicate balance, and one that will have to be made at the start of every encounter. And moire tactical decisions such as these abound in the campaign. Like balancing your ammo, which you will run out of really quick with a Battle Rifle. Ton's of little pieces of strategy are hidden in Halo 3, and it all changes with the truly amazing 4 player online co-op! It is a little on the short side.

campaign rating:9.9 out of 10.

Multiplayer

Muliplayer has always been a key part of the halo experience, and it has not changed in this iteration. up to 16 players can be playing, and the end result is madness. Grenades are being flung, assault rifles are almost always being fired, and cars are exploding. Everything is madness. In just a few short seconds, you could be dead. the weapons are basically the same, but with allot more maulers. One of the coolest things is just how fast everything can go to peaceful and secure to you staring at your own bullet ridden corpse and swearing into the mike.

The gameplay remains the same: Kill enemies while accomplishing cetain objectives and managing your armory. Sound simple? Well it isn't. You start with an assault rifle, which takes takes an entire clip of ammo to take someone out. It has an average melee and is short in range. It's just a peashooter, but works fine against other crappily armed enemie's. From that original spawn in, you have started a never ending quest for weapon. The battle rifle and carbine are useful and much better then an assault rifle, but it's easy to find. The best overall armory is probably a sniper shotgun combo. The sniper is the most effective anti infantry gun, as even a miss can cause jumpy players to stay in cover, letting your teammates flank for the kill. The shotgun is for any enemies sneaking up behind you.

All in all, the multiplayer is well balanced and the maps varied. The one flaw being that the assault rifle (which is almost always the default starting weapon) takes a bit to much to kill someone with. But slightly better weaponry is commonplace, so it's not too much of a flaw.
multiplayer rating: 8.9 out 10
The Forge

The most ambitious of Halo 3's features, The Forge is a map editing tool. While not allowing the user to make maps from scratch, the large amount of maps allow for a a lot of variety, and stuff you can do makes up for that. The amount of item you can put in makes for some maps that really play differently. From adding a few battle rifles to Snowbound, to making a mongoose racing map, the forge is an amazing feature, and already a large community has formed around making these types of maps.
The Forge rating: 9.3 out of 10

Theater
Another new idea from Bungie, the theater allows you to veiw the last 25 games you played, multiplayer or otherwise. You can fly around and stop time, take screenshots, and play things in in slow motion, the they play at a normal frame rate. As if this was not ambitious enough, you can save and send film clips. It's a really nice feature that will finally show if you lying about that triple headshot.
9.5 out of 10

You can even make your own gametypes. I won't spoil all of it, but theres allot of game variants beyond the minimal settings in most other games.

Overall 9.7 out of 10