Of course, I’m playing Halo 3. The single-player campaign, while entertaining, really isn’t anything more than a training ground for the real meat of the game, which is the multiplayer.
There’s a mishmash of a story involving the Covenant’s invasion of Earth to retrieve the Ark, Cortana’s imprisonment with the Gravemind and of course, the great question: how is it Master Chief can fall from space at escape velocity and survive, but he dies if he slips off a 30-foot embankment?
Well, that last one is never answered, but the rest wraps up nicely. Stick around after the credits for a nice little bit of closure.
Not that the single-player is the point, but still, given the pretensions of the story, you’d think they could’ve tied it into the game a bit better. Instead, you’ve got exposition leading into combat, followed by another cutscene, which is only really there to explain why you’re in the next map. There’s even the requisite minecart level toward the end.
As a single-player experience, it’s certainly a let-down, but the franchise has always been about killing other players rather than computer-generated bots. That’s where Halo shines.
The Type-33 Needler returns.
One of my big gripes with Gears of War was the lack of matchmaking. New players would be lumped in with far more advanced ones, and the result was frustrating. It’s almost impossible to advance or gain skill when you’re being pelted to death every few seconds. The Halo games do a much better job of skill-matching, and the network code runs very smoothly.
There’s the usual variety of Team-based, Deathmatch and Capture-the-Flag games, and the practice of generating custom ones is smooth and easy. The graphics don’t look all that great in motion, but as you can see from stills, they’re very nicely detailed. Movements look natural, and the lighting effects, while subtle, are gorgeous.
Which brings us to all the other stuff. Halo automatically records and saves a video record of each multiplayer match, which can then be played back, edited and uploaded to Bungie’s servers. Talk about bragging rights.
That ended up being an 11-kill string, followed by another triple kill on the turret of a Warthog (with some assistance from Shigknight at the wheel). The game does a great job of telling you what’s going on, and it rewards you richly for pulling off insane stunts (11 kills, did I mention that?).
In playback, the video can be cut and edited, and camera angles can be changed on the fly. All the screenshots you see were taken from the in-game engine. In fact, pausing the video reveals just how detailed the graphics really are. This isn’t a game that rewards standing around and gawking, but when I was pulling screenshots, I couldn’t help but stare at how vividly things are rendered.
Co-op is also seamless, which is a good thing, because the Heroic and Legendary difficulty levels are just as intimidating as they sound. Up to four players can gather for it, and the singleplayer mode gains quite a bit of charm when played this way.
All the old weapons are back, though some have been tweaked a bit. The Needler can no longer be double-wielded, but it’s a bit more powerful. There are a few new weapons, like the ludicrous-but-effective Gravity Hammer, and you can pick up and use equipment, most of which adds defensive capabilities such as radar jamming and the bubble-shield from the original trailer.
Halo 3 won’t win any awards for originality, but that’s not the point. Bungie knows what they’re doing, and they’re not about to change the formula when it works this well. Rather, Halo 3 represents a cluster of upgrades and improvements to an engine that was phenomenal to begin with. If you’re a fan of the series, then you’ve already got it. If you’re new to multiplayer first-person shooters, this is a wonderful way to start. It’s certainly a great swan-song for the series.
See you on the boards.
