GameSpy Review of Halo 3

For many gamers, Halo 3 is the reason they bought an Xbox 360. As the biggest title in the 360's arsenal, Halo 3 is undoubtedly the most hyped game in existence. Notice, however, that we didn't say over-hyped. We've put in some serious hours reviewing this game, and after several exhaustive playthroughs both solo and co-op as well as countless bloodthirsty multiplayer rounds, we can announce that Halo 3 is everything that it needed to be to fulfill our wildest gaming fantasies... and then Bungie showed us The Forge.

Love Letters to Cortana

First off, let us just say that we can't go into any details about the plotline of Halo 3's 11-18 hour (depending on your skill level) single-player campaign, and honestly we don't want to. After the somewhat disappointing cliffhanger delivered by Halo 2, we were concerned that developer Bungie wouldn't be able to wrap up the fragmented chronicles of Master Chief. So, while playing through Halo 3 for the first time on Heroic difficulty, we paid special attention to the story.

What we can tell you is that, as promised, the fight will be finished by the time the credits roll. However, the folks at Bungie are both clever and wily, and they kept us guessing and worrying right up until the very last burst of assault rifle fire. Not only are the tattered strands of Halo 2's loose ends tied up, but a whole host of shocking new events unfold... we just can't tell you what those events are.


Of course, longtime fans of the series will recognize all of their favorite Halo characters (well, the characters that are still alive, anyway), but an expansive knowledge of the Halo universe isn't necessary to enjoy Halo 3. This is due to the overwhelming quality of the performances of the voice actors, the script writers and the digital artists that have crafted Halo 3's engaging tale into a futuristic epic. Granted, at least a cursory knowledge of who the Master Chief is (he's the green guy with the gold visor) will prove rewarding because Halo 3's sweeping plot draws from the entire Halo universe, bringing everything back around full circle.

What was funny to us was that the staggering quality of Halo 3 is apparent in nearly every single aspect of the game, regardless how trivial. The magnificent voiceovers featured in the cut-scenes (Ron Perlman does a great job) spill over into the gameplay in the form of an all-pervasive combat chatter that will surprise you with how entertaining it is. By the time you're through with Halo 3, you'll have witnessed insane zealotry at its finest as well as the best Warthog driving level ever. It's those little touches that submerge you in the world and make Halo 3 less of a game that you play and more of an immersive thrill ride. Background Noise

A major difference between Halo 3 and the previous games in the series is the environment. In a departure from prior releases, Halo 3 features rich and luscious locales to explore that barely ever repeat their layouts. You don't have to worry about clearing out ten drab concrete hallways that are all the same, because Halo 3 follows a much more organic (albeit still definitely linear) design ethic.

It was easy to see where Bungie's inspiration for Halo 3's first level came from as we rambled along the gorgeous country roads of Washington on the way to the studio. The verdant greenery that makes up the overgrown valley where you begin the game closely resembles the evergreen forests surrounding the place that Bungie calls home (although there's a hint of a tropical flavor to the first level as well). Mossy, sun-dappled stones surround creek beds in a way that you might barely notice while gritting your teeth as you take cover from sizzling plasma fire, but if you happen to look down in that moment you'll be astonished at their fidelity to the real thing. It takes a lot to impress us with next-gen graphics these days, but the environments presented in Halo 3 blew us away.


It's not all woodsy timberland though, and you'll find yourself in an extraordinary variety of different kinds of environments. Of course, there are several areas that feature hallways in space ships as you might expect, but there are tons of outdoor areas as well and even a few which occur in what appears to be the inside of a particularly unhealthy length of intestines -- that sounds gross, but we assure you that it's a totally appropriate level of disgustingness considering what is going on in the game at the time.

One thing that stood out to us in the environments was Bungie's passion for beautifully hand-painted matte backgrounds. We mention them here because you might not notice them unless you take a second to look up... just be sure to get behind something solid first so that the Covenant doesn't put a bunch of holes in Master Chief while he's ogling the sky.

Everyone's a Killing Machine

Now that we've gotten the story and the environments (awesome though they are) out of the way, we can get to the seriously sweet parts of Halo 3: the multiplayer. Few games can boast as large an online audience as the Halo franchise, and Halo 3 adds features that will make all those hardened veterans weep big sloppy sobs of joy.

We've already spent an ungodly number of hours covering the multiplayer beta, so you really ought to listen to us when we tell you that the Halo 3 beta was only the tiniest fraction of a miniscule slice of the whole multiplayer game.

Immediately of interest to us was the alteration of the Energy Sword. Bungie has added an element called "the clash" that finally solves the 50/50 chance of death involved when dueling with the weapon. If two players attack with the Energy Sword at the same time, the clash will knock both players back a bit and drain their shields slightly so that they can attempt to resolve the conflict again. It's an elegant solution to the frustrating exercise that sword combat had been in Halo 2. However, it's possible that we feel that way because we rule with the Energy Sword. There aren't a ton of multiplayer maps, but at the same time, the maps that come with the game have been meticulously designed for maximum carnage. For example, Narrows is a map that works ideally for capture the flag because it's designed around a long bridge. It's supposed to be some kind of coolant facility or something, but all we cared about was getting to the other team's flag which was a long, perilous trot across the bridge. Fortunately, you can use Halo 3's new man-cannon to propel you through the air across the yawning canyon below. It's exhilarating and the whole map functions as the perfect venue for heated capture the flag exchanges.

Each map is extremely well-tuned, and we found that Sand Trap (with its several vehicles and huge, wide-open dunes) was best suited for slayer or team slayer matches. Meanwhile, another level (that we can't remember the name of because our brains were addled by terror) similar to Halo 2's Lockout consisting of a large central area with multi-tiered corridors surrounding it was perfect for a custom game type that Bungie's Frank O'Connor (he's some kind of Community Manager for Bungie.net, but his official job title is "Content Monkey") showed us called Spooky.


In Spooky, all players' motion sensors are turned off, all players are granted unlimited active camouflage (making everybody invisible unless attacking or being damaged) and only shotguns and pistols are allowed. As you can imagine, there is a lot of running backwards and looking over your shoulder occurring during Spooky matches, but it perfectly exemplifies the versatility of Halo 3's custom game type controls. Beyond the standard kit restrictions featured in most multiplayer games, every single aspect of the game can be tweaked and altered, including the speed at which characters travel and even the pull of gravity.

But custom game types are just the beginning...

Hephaestus is Jealous

The Forge is a special addition to Halo 3 that essentially enables unlimited replayability and the creation of completely new games. It's basically a map editor where you can place weapons, items and equipment around existing maps. You can't edit terrain, but you can change player spawn locations and adjust the respawn timers for weapons and just about every other item in the game. This may not sound that exciting, and we'll admit that we didn't fully comprehend the number of uses that The Forge could be put to at first.

Messing around in The Forge with IGN's Hilary Goldstein and Team Xbox's Will Tuttle, we began as so many Halo 3 testers did before us by blowing stuff up. See, we discovered that if you create a combustible item (like a plasma core or explosive barrel) in midair and then shoot it as it falls, it would respawn in the place where it was shot and subsequently fall to the ground and explode. That was fun for a couple of seconds, but then we started piling up every explosive item we could find into a big volatile pile directly below the falling barrel. The result was a recurring flaming apocalypse in the middle of the map that would obliterate anything within a 30 yard radius every ten seconds -- how fun would it be to try to play team slayer around that? Now, as awesome as our perpetual death-maelstrom map was, we began to grow bored of trying to find more things to pile up or trying to jump a Mongoose (the new two-person quad-cycle) over said pile. Fortunately, The Forge was only too happy to provide us with further options for customizing pick-ups in a game that Will entitled Pink Death. For this game, Will created a custom pick-up that would grant the player a 3X overshield, increase their run speed by 300%, grant one-shot kills and also turn the player a bright pink, but only for 30 seconds. To balance things out, this pick-up also increased the gravity on the affected player by two times normal gravity so that jumps were only half as effective (incidentally, this didn't balance things out at all).

While Pink Death was great when you had possession of the custom pick-up, it grew rapidly tiresome for the poor saps that didn't grab it. However, The Forge had even more to offer. While attempting to jump a Mongoose off of one of the Valhalla multiplayer map's man-cannons, we discovered that you could slam the vehicle (and flailing driver) into the stratosphere by smacking it with a well-timed blow of the Gravity Hammer (a new weapon favored by the massive Covenant Brutes in the single-player campaign). To our surprise, this behavior extended to everything hit with the Gravity Hammer, including rockets fired from the rocket launcher.

In no time, we had set up a make-shift baseball diamond on one side of Valhalla with a batter using a Gravity Hammer swatting at "pitches" thrown by Will and his rocket launcher. If you missed a pitch, there were no strike-outs, only charred Spartan remains and chunks of singed Mjolnir armor. We had turned Halo 3 into an incredibly entertaining baseball game thanks to The Forge.

Suffice it to say that The Forge provides nearly unlimited customizability and affords infinite replayability to a game with an already dauntingly addictive multiplayer experience.


Halo Evolved

While an argument could be made that the single-player campaign alone wouldn't quite be enough to garner a 5/5 score for Halo 3, the entire package is more than satisfying enough to warrant it. The Forge is a gargantuan achievement that puts game design in the hands of players, daring you to be creative and invent a Halo 3 multiplayer experience all your own. Of course, the multiplayer is every bit as astonishing as it has been in past iterations and even eclipses its predecessors in many respects.

In a lot of ways, this review is merely a formality, because there's no doubt in our minds that everyone with a 360 and a hunger for viscious multiplayer should own Halo 3 immediately. In fact, there are probably millions of people who do not yet own 360s that should go out and buy them just so they can witness the majesty that is a furious Halo 3 multiplayer match (provided they enjoy serious competition).

Quite simply, Halo 3 is the reason the Xbox 360 exists.

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