VGRC

Believe.

This is it, folks. The most hyped, most anticipated, most talked about game of the year, is finally in our hands. Its been a long 3 years since the cliffhanger ending of Halo 2, but now, we get to finally play the third and last chapter of the Halo trilogy. Finish the fight, indeed.

Halo 3 picks up right where Halo 2 left off. Having hitched a ride aboard a Covenant-piloted Forerunner spacecraft headed for Earth, Master Chief is ready to pick up right where he left off: Kicking Covenant ass. However, the road before him is longer and more desperate than ever before: Humanity doesn't have much left to stand with against the Covenant onslaught, the Prophet of Truth is even more dedicated to activating the Halo rings than ever before, and meanwhile out in the far reaches of space, a highly-evolved strain of the Flood has overrun the Covenant home world High Charity, with Cortana held prisoner in its computer systems. The Chief has his work cut out for him as he fights to protect humanity, while embarking on a more personal mission to fulfill a promise he made to a good friend. Any comparisons to "Return of the King" are completely warranted: It not only closes the story, but it closes it damn well. (And remember to stick around after the credits!) And for the story-nuts, there are also hidden "Terminals" that when found, reveal a bit of backstory and the history of the Halos. It's not required to enjoy the game, but finding them is certainly a reward for the devoted.

Campaign-wise, Halo 3's gameplay is yet another step higher than Halo 2's. Bungie once again put together a series of varied environments and battlefields together in stunning cohesion. One minute you'll find yourself wandering through the woods with a small patrol of marines, while other times you'll be caught up in the middle of gigantic battles that seem to be more than "everybody against the Chief." The Covenant don't wait for you to appear before they start fighting (something that was tinkered with in the last few levels of Halo 2) and you'll commonly find yourself jumping into massive battles that started without you. One of my favorite moments in the game is a massive aerial battled between the humans and Covenant forces over a beach front, and you just jump in with a Hornet (one of the new vehicles in Halo 3) to tilt the battle in the man's favor.

The enemies are a bit changed around this time as well. The Elites, now split from the Covenant, have found themselves working with their former enemy (mankind) against a common foe: The deluded Prophet of Truth and his barbaric Brutes. The Chief will now find himself joined by the Arbiter, as they take on the Covenant and Flood forces this time around. The Covenant side alone is more fearsome: The Brutes live up to their name and are much more ruthless than their honorable Elite counterparts. That said, they're stronger and more powerful than before, but it's really nothing compared to the new Flood forms you'll encounter later on, which include a "pure" Flood form that can mutate from spider-like creatures to hulking beasts to wall-crawling baddies that can actually shoot needle-like things at you from a distance from their tails. And remember the Scarab from Halo 2? Remember how it was just a big scripted piece of scenery you couldn't really do anything with? Well, it's been redesigned and brought back with its own AI, meaning it will actually chase you down and rain down death and destruction upon the battlefield. It's destroyable this time around too... good luck with that, because you'll need it.

In terms of new gameplay features, Halo 3 adds some new and tweaks some old. There's the standard-fare FPS upgrades (new weapons, new grenades, new vehicles, etc) of course, but the whole interface has been redone specifically for the 360. Dual-wielded weapons can now be reloaded individually on command, which makes more of a difference than you'd think in a fast-paced firefight. New to the mix altogether is Equipment, which you can carry one piece of, which ranges from portable shields and covers to gravity lifts, flares, trip mines and more. The grenade system has been changed up a bit, too; rather than being able to carry 4 of each type, there is now a max of 2 of each type. To even it out, there are two more grenade types added to the fray: The spike grenade (which shoots a cone of... spikes) and firebomb grenade, which douses whatever it touches in flames. Other than that, everything else is pretty much business as usual in the Halo universe.

However, while the game's single player campaign provides hours of enjoyment and thrills, Halo 3's multiplayer aspects are where it really shines.

The big new addition to multiplayer is online co-op. After plenty of begging from series fans the past few years, Bungie has finally implemented it... and went to town on it. Not only is it online, however, but it also now supports 4 players rather than two, with players 2-4 taking control of the Arbiter and a pair of Elites. Just like before, playing campaign on co-op is a blast, but now being able to do co-op any time you wish over Xbox Live with 3 friends makes it even better. Skulls are back too, which alter different aspects of campaign... usually making the game harder. (more difficult enemies, dead enemies drop less ammo, loss of motion tracker, and more) And on top of that is the new Campaign Scoring feature, which makes it more competitive as you strive to get a higher score (based off how many skulls you have activated, difficulty level, medals earned, etc) than your friends. These scores also get documented on the revamped Bungie.net, which I'll go into detail on later.

Of course, the standard multiplayer modes are back in full force as well. You've got 11 maps that ship with the game, (a mere 11, but we don't have to even speculate that Microsoft will take the chance to release more maps down the road in the XBL Marketplace) and a great variety of maps at that. You've got massive maps which just beg for epic team battles, small maps for more up-close-and-personal fun, and some in between. Each map is solidly designed. However, the great part is each map has thousands of possibilities open to it thanks to the new Forge tool, which lets you edit most objects within a map. (vehicles, weapons, equipment, scenery, etc) So, rather than having to rely on pre-made gametypes, each map can be customized for just about anything. Take Valhalla for example; nice large map that echoes back to the days of CTF in Halo PC. However, it just feels a bit too empty. A few edits in Forge later, and you've got a massive supply of vehicles and weaponry, fortified bases, sniper towers on the spires of the bases... and suddenly things become a lot more intense. Or you can go the opposite route and spread things out, remove the vehicles and the power weapons, and you suddenly have a map geared towards a slower and more tactical game. You can't edit the geometry or break past Bungie's liberal use of invisible walls, but you have enough control to still do quite a bit in terms of customization. The possibilities are literally endless. It's simple to work in Forge, too; when you start to edit a map, you (and anybody else in your party) join it as if it were a game. You can then switch between the roles of combatant and monitor. When you go into monitor mode, you have access to drop items on the map, as well as selecting existing items to move or delete them, or edit properties like respawn time. Player spawn points and objective markers (such as the flag return location) are all represented as objects that you can move around as you wish, too.

Matchmaking hasn't changed a whole lot from Halo 2: You select a playlist and jump right in, and it finds you people to play with based on your skill level. However, it's really only there if you need to get in some good practice, have nobody online to play with, or just need to get a few quick games in. It's not bad by any means; I'm just unenthusiastic about it because Custom Games are where the real fun is at. Get some friends together and have some fun outside the boundaries of Matchmaking, either with the default maps and gametypes, or your own custom gametypes and Forge creations. Of course, if you want, you can take your party out of the Custom lobby right into the Matchmaking lobby, where you and your party can stick together in a series of games in Matchmaking. Alternatively, you can bring your party into the Forge, Theater (more on that next) and Campaign lobbies.

Now, the big thing that ties all of these modes together is the revamped Bungie.net site, which is completely integrated with Xbox Live. While in Halo 2, you could check game stats on Bungie.net, it now collects all your campaign information, XBL Achievements, (of which there are a ton of in this game) and stuff saved from the Theater. What is the Theater, you ask? Why, after every game you play (both multi and single player) 3D game data is saved to your drive or memory card, which you can replay in the theater to watch previously played games. However, unlike a simple movie file, you can move the camera all about the playing field and catch anything you may have missed. When you're done fucking around in the Theater, you can take screenshots and video captures and share them with your friends over Live and through your File Sharing area. (along with custom gametypes and Forge maps) You can even bring up your screenshots on Bungie.net and save them to your computer for posterity, so then you can easily flood pictures of your accomplishments to your friends email boxes. (Or whatever else you wish, really.) Recent Forge maps you've played on are also temporarily saved in a "Recent Maps" area, so if you played on a cool map in a custom game, but the party leader didn't have the map in their File Share, you can still grab it, and even edit it if you so wish.

Graphically, Halo 3 is stunning. While at first glance it may only appear to be average 360 fare, there is far more beneath the surface. I've always been a fan of the art style from the Halo games, and Halo 3 delivers in that department with unique level design and tons of details that bring the whole game to life. It's not just pretty environments, but believable environments. It's also a huge step above Halo 2, with more detailed... everything.

On the sound front, it's a mixed bag. On one hand is the dialouge, with there being nearly 3 times as many pieces of NPC dialogue as there was in Halo 2. (Nearly 40 thousand!) There is also separate recordings for near and distant gunfire, adding to the realism of the game. The voice acting is once again top-notch (for the most part, anyways) with most of the old major voice actors returning to reprise their roles. (Though I do have to express my disappointment that David Cross didn't return.) None of that's so bad, so where do my aural complaints come from? The fact that literally half the in-game music was just recycled from Halo 2. One of my favorite parts of the past two Halo games was the soundtracks, and I was hoping for a bit more than a rehash of something I already heard in 2004.

In fact, the game is far from perfect. Campaign, for example, has a couple boring stretches in the first few levels that will drive you insane. The game's thrilling story is hampered by some poor storytelling at times (namely in the later parts of the game) that may just end up confusing you. It's made even more annoying by the fact it would've been an easy fix; a few extra lines of dialogue here or there in the cutscenes would've gone a LONG way. Forge too, is not without its imperfections. My first complaint is Bungie's liberal use of invisible walls to block areas off. I understand doing things like that for fairness, but Forge maps can only be used in Custom Games, so what's the big deal? There are a ton of nooks and crannies in every map that would've been fun to build off of, but it's just blocked off. There are also limits on items you can put in a map: Each item can only be placed on a map so many times. Now, that makes sense because Bungie was obviously trying to provoke a bit of creativity there. However, on top of the per-item limits is a whole budget system, with each item costing money. It's essentially a double set of limitations that hampers the potential of some of the maps in Forge. Even more inexplicable is the fact each map has a different budget limit, with the largest of the maps having some of the smallest budgets. Some of my gripes are just from poor decision making (the Forge issues) but I can't help but feel the game was rushed to store shelves too soon.

All in all, Halo 3 does live up to the expectations of being one of the greatest games on the 360 to date. It isn't "BEST GAME EVER" by any means, but this is definitely the game 360 owners have been waiting for, with its deep multiplayer and Xbox Live features providing what will be years of entertainment to come.

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