Halo 3 Review

September 25th, 2007

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Over the past 4 weeks I have had the opportunity to play Halo 3 on Multiplayer and the Campaign from a regular TV to a nice HDTV. The following is a mini review that tries to stay away from giving you too many story spoilers.

First off, Halo 3 does not re-invent the game, because it’s part of a trilogy of sorts, so it doesn’t need to. If this is your first time playing Halo then you will be able to jump right into the game. For those who follow the trilogy you will be able to pick up the story from where it left off in Halo 2.

Now onto Halo 3.

The game itself has some nice graphical additions. Almost everything has been upgraded – yes, you can still see some areas that look 2D but for the most part they added texture to where it was needed. Items you interact with look better, people you kill die with gushing agony, (well except for the grunts), things you blow up…well you get the idea.

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I was also pleasantly surprised at the variety of levels you go through in the campaign, no cookie cutter maps here, just vibrant jungles, frozen wastelands and futuristic cities. I am sure you will have your favorite maps in the end.

You can also interact with your environment a bit more – items are not nailed down as much. This is not to say you can destroy everything or take everything, but you can move things around more and knock over items. This can work in your favor – say you knock a large crate of items into a group, they will have to go around it or over it. You will also be happy to know that if you find a turret of any kind, Alien or Human, you can take it with you.

The controls are mostly unchanged, how you pick weapons up and drop weapons has been moved to the right bumper, you also do get the addition of the item button, which allows you to deploy and make use of equipment. While that doesn’t change the way you control the game itself, it does affect the way you develop your strategies.

One of the biggest surprises for me was the improvement of the computer AI. (Theirs not mine). The computer AI was very impressive, at times you can see the AI forming strategies based on what looked like emotional reactions to fallen comrades. At other times I found myself cursing, “Why won’t he just stand still?!” This has to be one of the best evolutions to the game.

One more item to note, I did play this on two different TVs. One was HDTV and the other was a regular TV. They both looked great. The biggest difference on the HDTV for me was seeing more detail in the distance, seeing more shadows and the feel that I had more peripheral vision.

We’ll come back to multiplayer in a few days, and I will tell you more..after I OMGWTFPOWNZU. (translated: Own you online)

Posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 4:40 pm by Jessica and is filed under Just For Fun.