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VoR Review: Halo 3

Halo 3
by Robin Prescott of VoR

OH, THE HORROR
When Mitch told me this was the game I would be reviewing this week, I went through many different emotions. First, confusion. Why would he give this one to me, when Erin has been spending her paychecks buying all the Halo crap she can? She loves the series. Me, I’m lukewarm. Next, I felt elation. “Yay! Shiny new toy!” I thought. Third, I felt horror. Suddenly, all my memories of Halo 2 multiplayer came rushing back in one fell swoop, and I was scared. Dear God, please don’t let me be swallowed in a sea of prepubescent pissing contests.

To play this, I would need strength; a strength that one only gets by playing games incredibly late at night with noone around (except for the stuffed animals, of course) and a huge plate of snack foods. I curled up on the couch in the test room, whimpered softly and began my descent into the 3^rd circle of hell, which is reserved for egomaniacs, twitch gamers, college dropouts, and 13 year old boys (so far as I can tell).

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
On startup, things are fairly normal. We have a new remix of the Halo theme. This one stays in the background a little bit more than 2’s, which means no trying to sing along. (Awww.) The menu is a little bit confusing though. We have new options, Theatre and Forge,… I’ll get to those later. The big thing that I wanted to jump into was Co-op campaigns. I loved campaign on Halo 2, so hey, maybe I can finish the story and be done with this life-sucking trilogy. For this, I would need a partner to supplement my meager “Noob” skills, so I grabbed the most obvious choice. Erin. Slayer of Aliens, Humans, and anything that dares point a gun in her direction. Judging just from first look at the co-op menu, it looks like it might be possible to host a campaign on Xbox Live. I never actually tested it, but if we could, thumbs up Bungie.

The story started off strong, but as we played through, I realized I had no clue what was going on. I thought that the story in 3 was just a continuation of 2, but wow, I was wrong. Erin was constantly blabbing on and on about the story, trying to explain what was going on and why, but for the most part, I didn’t get it. So, I just tried to concentrate on the task at hand: Killing sh*t.

Which, as luck would have it, is quite easy. Even though I was rusty, and we were playing on Heroic (much to my dismay, but at the insistence of Erin) I still managed to keep up with a decent number of kills, so long as Erin stayed alive. See, in co-op as long as one player is alive, the other will respawn next to them if they’re out of battle for a few seconds. It keeps the battles going fairly quick. The system works kinda like co-op in Gears of War, but without having to find and touch the teammate. If both players die though,… well, you’ll have to sit through the loading screen, which is incredibly boring, and usually takes a bit.

EH, ITS HALO
For the most part though, there’s not really much new here. It’s still Halo. The graphics won’t make you have a heart attack, the sound isn’t terribly stunning, and the gameplay is incredibly repetitive. All of it comes together to make a great multiplayer game, but if you’re not that deep into multiplayer, like me, you’ll find it a little bit disappointing considering all the hype.

Once again, the settings of the campaign will have you alternating between “Oh my god! Its so pretty!” and “What the hell?” There’s lush jungles with unexplainable log formations, destroyed cities with pretty sunsets, and pus ridden innards of the Flood filled spaceships.

YES, THAT’S RIGHT. THE FLOOD.
Goddamn it. I hate the Flood. But, I suppose there couldn’t be a Halo game without them. The little zombie makers have made me notice something about the Halo series though. It would seem that the story seems to constantly repeat itself. Master Chief wakes up, wanders through Convenant, shoots things, the Flood shows up, he battles his way through them, then find the largest bomb possible (Spaceship, Halo, Artificial Planet, etc) and then proceeds to blow the crap out of everything, ending with his questionable disappearance, leaving everyone unsure as to whether he’s alive or dead. Sorry if I busted your spoiler-free bubble, but its true.

Honestly, at this point, I’m really bored with the story.  So, let’s move on to something else!

DEAR GOD, NO!
Multiplayer. The only thing I hate more about Halo than the Flood. Luckily, Mitch told me I would only have to sit through a few matches, just to get a feel of things. What I found surprised me. There was no trash talking. Actually, in all of the matches I played, there was at least one person who complimented my use of my dear sticky grenades. I was absolutely floored. Did they… really… just… compliment me? Instead of talking about my mother and tacos?... How many virgins did Bungie have to sacrifice for this??

And we got to play dress-up with our Spartans. I was instantly in love with this. For 3, Bungie has added in the ability to change more than just the armor color, but also the armor parts, like multiple helmets, shoulder pads, and so on. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any parts unlocked, except for like two or three, so my Spartan ended up looking like a 60’s Sci-fi reject.

An interesting addition here is the USNC tags. Evidently you can make a shortened tag for yourself made up of a letter and two numbers that will float over your head instead of your full name. In my opinion, that’s very cool, and a very good idea. When in the thick of things, you really don’t want to be trying to figure out how to sound out Ms7rbo0mr11. I think more games should toss that in when they have hectic multiplayer.

BUT THERE’S NEW TOYS!!
Oh, yes. There are new toys. And Erin and I love them. There’s the shields, invulnerability, shield sappers, regenerators, heavy turrets, flamethrowers, and more. The biggest addition here is the equipment, which can add some new flavor to the standard gameplay, offering new tactics other than just run in, guns blazing, especially when teamed up with a friend for the story. The new guns are cool, although sometimes it seems like they just don’t hold enough ammo, especially the Spartan laser and maulers. The new grenade, I love as much as I can, which is good because you find it approximately 3092^4 more often than the good old blue stickies. It works kind of like the stickies (in other words it still sticks), but it has an incredibly small explosion, so don’t hope to catch too many badies in the blast. Other new things: Mongoose (cool), Chopper (Not so much), Hornet (Hellyeahs!), and The Flood (Wait, what??). Seriously, there’s a couple new types of Flood enemies. I can barely contain my enthusiasm.

Another thing that’s welcome here is the Forge, which lets you modify maps, and put pretty much whatever you want down in the game. Want a rocket launcher with crap load of ammo just lying around? Go ahead!

Enter the “saved films” feature. While playing around in campaign mode, the game gives you the ability the record and save footage of yourself and who ever is with you, provided you leave the campaign and go to Theatre first. Basic functionality is here, cut, fast forward, etc. Make your own little gameplay movies, have a blast, yada yada yada. But then, those saved movies and modified maps can then be traded to friends with the… File sharing!

No, its not like Napster, but you can trade maps and even movies of your Gameplay expeditions to other players, if they even care that is. Which isn’t likely. After the 20 years of continuous video from Halo 2, I’m pretty burned out on “Hey look what I can do!” videos, and I imagine everyone else is too. Even Erin had a hard time getting excited about the Theatre.

As for the Achievements, they’re pretty standard. Kill so many enemies this way, Destroy so and so this way. Beat the game with this restriction. Find this skull. Get to this rank in Multiplayer, so on and so on. Honestly, the achievements are easy enough to get you might find yourself playing through the campaign a few times to get them, even if only to get the armors (squee!!) that the achievements unlock.

QUIT WHINING, YOU BABY.
In the end, I’m not too impressed. Erin was ecstatic about almost everything, but then again she’s the biggest Halo geek I’ve ever known. And, I doubt anyone is even reading this to decide whether or not they’re going to get the game. Mitch made me do this review just because he expected us to get complaints if we didn’t. I give it a decent score, it’s probably worth your money, unless you’re as burned out on Halo as I am. Let’s face it, if you like Halo, you’re going to get the game, if not, you won’t. There’s no mystery here.

[Wow. What a way to end a review. –Ed.]

[By the way, the Mitch mentioned in this is Michael "Mitch" Evans, the imaginary Editor of VoR, which isn't the same as the Mitch on the SEDiverse. Just a coincidence. -9]