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| Source // Xbox |
The space choir are back, chanting their lungs out to conclude the Halo trilogy with Halo 3, the first-person shooter that all the others would look up to and try to replicate.
'Why?', I never quite understood. Whenever I saw Halo I was bemused at how anyone could get so hyped about a silly-looking super-soldier with bright pink weaponry stolen from comedy space turtles. How was this series so popular? Did Xbox players have nothing else?
What they did have was online connectivity and plenty of multiplayer lobbies to mess around with, literally forging a game they want to play with the tools available to them. Halo multiplayer was the draw, Halo 3 was simply the next version of it.
But I'm here for the plot. I've still not finished the first two games, so whatever plot I pick up probably won't make much sense in the grand scheme of things. Can Halo 3 deliver to someone diving right in?
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| Source // Xbox |
Fun Times
I've got the Xbox 360 original Halo 3, and I'm both surprised and alarmed to find out that I only needed a 900kb update to be able to play it. That doesn't seem right at all.
Anyway, once fired up, the familiar Halo theme sets up a game that is more grandiose and important than anything else in your video game collection. You've probably come to expect it by now. Halo isn't a series that does frantic rock or electronica. This is a noble game that makes you think long and hard about the characters and their plig-- lol, no, it doesn't.
The campaign starts with Master Chief crash landing in the jungle, a team of marines who we may or may not have met in previous games on the scene to see if we're still alive. We are, as it happens, and the plot that is set up is to find and save Cortana, the ship's AI. I don't know what she did or where she went. I guess I should play the previous games.
Along with the marines is an arbiter, a former enemy. Again, I don't know the significance of these guys to the story, but the Chief immediately stops trying to kill him and follows him into the jungle to dispose of any threats we encounter. And there are a few.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
From dropships to snipers to sleeping grunts, the first few levels of Halo 3 are short and have you get to grips with the controls, which are a little different from the console FPS titles I'm more familiar with, mostly thanks to the ability - and encouragement - of dual-wielding weaponry that you pick up from down enemies.
I'm playing on Normal difficulty, but you could play on any of four difficulty levels, with up to three other players co-operatively, giving you plenty of reasons to play through the story a few times before you even think about the multiplayer.
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| Source // MobyGames |
Frustrations
However, it must be a long time since I played an FPS with a controller because I am all over the place. To watch me try to shoot these grunts would have resulted in players wondering if I've ever played a game before. Well, it wasn't that bad, but it was still a poor showing for someone who grew up with FPS games on consoles.
There does appear to be some sort of snap-targeting to help your aim, but I only noticed it when I was running up on dozy targets to melee them across the head. I don't recall any other targeting aids that, frankly, I would have welcomed in my rusty state.
After some corridor like levels through the jungle, occasionally broken up by small arenas for another firefight - another thirty seconds of fun - a brief cutscene showed the sergeant being manhandled by the bad guys, having split off from us barely two minutes before, and Halo 3 gives us a sizable, somewhat open area for us to tackle in our own way en-route to freeing him from his captivity.
Do we snipe from the relative safety of our higher ground? I don't really have any decent weapons to do so - Halo locks you to two weapons, after all. I could drop down into the thick of things, but then I risk being swamped and surrounded by enemies.
While I got through the first section, crossing a bridge of sorts introduced me to the new/smarter brutes, one armed with a whopping big hammer determined to charge at me and slam my head into the ground.
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| Source // Moby Games |
I just couldn't deal with him. I lobbed some grenades, but they were never on target and I only had a couple of them. I aimed for the head and held down the trigger, but would often miss the head and run out of ammo, and he doesn't stop running to wait for you to reload. All the while, other enemies are whittling down your shields, which can be recharged if you sit still in cover for a bit, but again, the brutes keep running for you.
After a few attempts, I found an alternative path below the bridge, but emerging at the other end wasn't very stealthy. The brute knew where I was, dropped in to say hi, and only died because a panic grenade was in a confined space this time. I didn't survive much longer after that, now behind the enemy lines and surrounded by things wanting to kill me. No amount of AI marines can deal with that.
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| Source // Xbox |
Because I was not an Xbox player back in the late 2000s, I have no idea why images like this mean so much to some people. It's a multiplayer mode, many FPS games have them, why do you talk like Halo multiplayer is God's gift to video gaming?
Multiple modes and the ability to create your own maps (sort of) might a reason to shout, but TimeSplitters 2 had that. What's so special about Halo 3?
I'll never know unless I dive into a multiplayer mode, but based on my laughable performance with a controller, and general lack of skill and interest, any first-person shooter will have to knock my bloody socks off to tempt me back into that world.
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| Source // MobyGames |
Final Word
I said that playing Halo 2 had got me a little more interested in seeing the rest of the series, but the advantage of that game is that I owned the PC port, and was competent at it having transitioned over to the keyboard and mouse, thanks to this 1001 list.
Halo 3 is more of the same, taking place in jungles and deserts and more industrial warehouses, and it promises to wrap up the story in a satisfactory manner that absolutely won't need a Halo 4. I don't know how well it does in terms of story, of course, nor do I know how Halo 4 relates to the events here. I don't even know how the events here relate to the events of Halo 2.
If you're not invested in the story and don't care about multiplayer gaming, I don't think there is anything here that would wow you. It's more of the same in terms of Halo, and it's different to the likes of Call of Duty, but it's not the glorious champion that so many hailed it to be.
It's not average, either. Halo 3 introduced gameplay to the series that other games would go on to copy for themselves, and once again, it showed what consoles were capable of in terms of a genre much more suited to the PC. But recommending it as a standalone title just doesn't make much sense - you won't get much out of it unless you know about the first two games, or invest heavily in the multiplayer mode.
I don't know. I'm not flabbergasted by Halo 3, but that was mostly down to my poor performance. I do still want to see where the entire Halo story goes, but I'm not desperate for it because I still think it's a bit silly and over-the-top, and not in a good way.
Should you avoid it at all costs? Not at all. Should you go out of your way to finish the fight? Only if you're desperate to do so.
Fun Facts
Development of the game seems to have not been the happiest, with key Bungie employees leaving the project, rendering the game directionless. The story to conclude the trilogy was initially drafted by a committee, rather than a lead writer.
Halo 3, developed by Bungie, first released in 2007.
Version played: Xbox 360, 2007.