Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
The first Halo game was so successful it put the Xbox console on the map. Halo 2‘s online multiplayer was so popular it made online play an industry standard. Halo 3 for the Xbox 360 didn’t have the sort of industry wide footprint its predecessors left, but it certainly helped sell a lot of Xbox 360s all the same and still holds an incredibly important role in the Halo series. After two games of the Covenant, The Flood, humanity, and the robotic guardians of the Halos all fighting to see who will come out on top, Halo 3 serves as the grand finale, its significance being that it’s the title where Master Chief finally finishes the fight.
The cybernetic supersoldier finds himself back on Earth in this conclusion to the original trilogy of science fiction first person shooters from Bungie, humanity fighting in Africa to hold back The Covenant’s desperate push to claim ancient technology left on our world. Still holding fast to the idea that the superweapons known as Halos are a key to religious enlightenment rather than a tool for wiping out all life in the galaxy to prevent the parasitic Flood from finding new hosts, the alliance of alien races known as The Covenant seek to harness something known as The Ark. While a single Halo would wipe out all life in its region of the galaxy, The Ark would allow activation of all seven of the remaining Halos, ensuring complete eradication of all known life in the universe. With The Ark’s AI systems trying to assist in its activation, Master Chief must lead those who know the truth of these superweapons to push for survival, The Flood and their leader Grave Mind both trying to ensure their survival and claim as many hosts as possible in this chaotic battle for the universe’s fate.
There is a much larger focus on the grand scale of the war this time around, the first portion of the game focusing on the fight to keep Earth safe before attention shifts to the potential activation of The Ark. Master Chief is actually joined by defected Elites from The Covenant, The Arbiter who had learned the truth of Halo’s purpose and shared it with his kind now serving as the character a second player can play through the campaign as in co-op. However, despite being along for the entire adventure, The Arbiter’s role has been greatly diminished compared to Halo 2, but while his wrap-up in the trilogy is rather small, the game knows where to focus its attention. Major characters are given their time to receive a proper sendoff be they hero or villain and the relationship between Master Chief and his AI assistant Cortana is given more focus after she fell into the hands of Grave Mind. The need to rescue her is at the core of Master Chief’s motivation to fight, but while the game reminds you of Cortana’s dire situation with frequent moments where you see her and hear her speak, there are no subtitles. This issue has been present in all three games thus far when it comes to dialogue during actual gameplay, but here is where it actively hurts attempts at adding emotional weight to the adventure as she appears and can sometimes be barely understood. The scope of this finale and the work it does with its multiple factions and other major characters do ensure that the driving forces of the Halo trilogy’s narrative pick up the slack in making this a story worth getting investing in, but taking some more time to properly flesh out the main characters would definitely help it land its emotional beats even better.
The African jungles, destroyed highways, and artificial structures and landscapes of The Ark all help the campaign achieve the important mixture of environments that are both conceptually varied and visually diverse, with areas like the highway focusing heavily on vehicle combat while interior areas can tighten the focus to more intimate gunfights. Near the end of the campaign things pick up in a few different ways, the dramatic story beats accompanied by a hefty increase in the difficulty of combat as the game starts hurling ample amounts of enemies into gunfights to really test your ability to survive and pick your targets. With an absolutely exhilarating conclusion that makes for an explosive finish to the gameplay portion of the title, it’s easier to forgive the few points where map design starts to take a few cues from Halo: Combat Evolved instead of Halo 2. While forward progress is still encouraged by the map design and areas often feature multiple vantage points or forms of cover like in Halo 2, backtracking through a completed area that receives a fresh new batch of enemy targets crops up a few times on your journey to stop The Ark’s activation. These are rarely drawn out and usually justify their presence by throwing foes with different strategies at you as you cover familiar ground, and when Halo 3 has you moving through more open areas with greater freedom to pick your path it at least still communicates the way onward better than the original Halo game.
The single player map design works well for the kind of gunplay on offer in Halo 3. Regenerating shields and superhuman jumps allow you to both recover from damage you sustain while moving around an area and dodge it in more ways than just finding objects to rest your character behind while you wait for the shields to refill. However, the gameplay mechanics really shine their brightest in the multiplayer maps and modes. The compact design of a map like Guardian with its thin catwalks and small enclosed areas means any encounter is bound to be heated, the bridge-like design of Narrows has two layers so players can move between them to shift the focus of the fight from out in the open to cover focused, and High Ground encourages the push to claim the position atop the hill to better hold back other players. Wide open areas like Valhalla allow for the use of vehicles, and even in the tighter maps Halo 3 makes sure multiple sightlines can allow for a map’s fights in a certain area to feel different depending on your position and view of the opposition. This allows modes focused on kill count or territory control to have maps that better cater towards their style of play while also ensuring none lose sight of what makes Halo’s gunplay exciting. It’s not just about finding and shooting at your opponent the moment you can but making sure you can assure the kill before they find some way to turn the tables or break away to recover their shields.
Perhaps the most important element of Halo 3’s multiplayer design though is the Forge. This option allows for custom maps to be created that can further add variety and unique situations to a multiplayer component that would already have been exceptional on its own. With eclectic extra modes like Infection where designated players try to convert the enemy team to their side by killing them and Juggernaut where two teams try to take down an overpowered player so they can get a turn racking up points as the extremely strong soldier, Halo 3’s multiplayer is certainly not lacking in interesting ideas and variations to explore.
Of course, be it the campaign or the competitive multiplayer, the weapons and attack options are key to the quality of the action. Players can both find weapons around the environment or pick them off of dead foes, with the humans and Covenant featuring a diverse set of weapons each while the Flood forces will pick up the tools of whatever bodies they’ve infested and use them when they’re not busy using their incredible might or numbers to try and overwhelm you. Earth’s weapons trend towards the realistic, with a variety of automatic weapons, a strong shotgun, and special options like sniper rifles and rocket launchers rounding out the reliable standbys. The Covenant weapons tend to lean towards specialized uses, so while the Carbine works like a rifle, the Plasma Rifle like an automatic, and the Beam Rifle like a sniper, other tools can completely change your approach to combat. The Plasma Sword can slice foes with ease if you risk going in close while the Gravity Hammer’s melee strike sends out a shockwave that can hit multiple targets in the area as a price for being the slower close range option. Plasma Grenades and Spike Grenades differ from the frag grenades and firebombs in that they stick to a foe to ensure their death, Maulers offer a smaller shotgun alternative that can be dual wielded with other small arms but needs to be closer to deal decent damage, and you can actually remove mounted turrets from both sides of the battlefield to wield strong automatics in either ballistic or plasma flavors. The Needler surprisingly gets a buff in that its needles do a better job of connecting and exploding for a kill, and the Spiker, while similar in concept, might actually be weaker despite featuring piercing needle shots as well. The successes in weapon variety mix well with battles where strategies can change based on position and what your foes bring to the table, and there’s more than just weapons in play to increase the variety of battle situations you’ll face even during regular play.
Newly added to the series are Equipment items, the player able to carry one special tool at a time they can deploy to shift the tide of a battle. Placing a Bubble Shield to lock an area off from incoming fire or Deployable Cover to give yourself something to hunker behind can allow you to better control an area, the Regenerator will let you play more boldly as it rechages your shields quickly, and being able to turn invisible or briefly invincible are self-explanatory power-ups with the expected benefits. Rather than just weighing up your weapons against the enemies to determine who has the advantage in the environment, a player can whip out one of these tools to briefly add a new dynamic to the confrontation, and in a similar vein, vehicles can completely shift how you approach a situation. Hornets and Banshees allow for aerial combat where one is power focused and the other the more mobile option, Scorpions and Wraiths have two different approaches to tanks with one firing an instantaneous shot while the other’s plasma cannon is slower to fire but has more explosive potential. With the Warthogs and Spectres allowing multiple infantry inside to play different roles as drivers or gunmen and the bike options mixing in either mobility like a Mongoose or attack options like the Chopper, all the vehicles have clear benefits and drawbacks. Players outside of the strong vehicles can still turn the tides by hijacking them, destroying them with special weapons, or even flipping them to force the players out, so grabbing one of these isn’t just a guaranteed success. It is a shame the giant Scarab walker can’t be controlled even just for a story beat, but these vehicles instead serve as good foes for you to fight while using the vehicles in the campaign.
Speaking of the campaign enemies, the game’s shifting opposition does a lot to allow it to remain fresh. One section might focus on various vehicle types competing against each other, another might have Flood overwhelming you in tight spaces as they reanimate the dead and fuse to make new burlier forms or special long ranged strikers, and the Covenant aliens feature different tactics like the Jackals utilizing handheld shields so they’re hard to take out while they’re sniping. Brutes come with a variety of heavy weapons and get the chance to use them thanks to the gorilla-like aliens taking a good amount of damage before they go down, and while the levels already utilize different geometry and elevations well so it’s not all about head-on encounters with foes, the bug-like Drones and laser-firing robot Sentinels move around the sky to pester you during on-foot sections as well. Halo 3’s weapon options and opposition types allow the fights during the campaign to bring the proper level of blood pumping action to match the stakes and gravity of the fight you’re embroiled in, so it’s easy to breeze through even its backtracking moments because it has expertly honed how its systems interact with each other.
THE VERDICT: While certain narrative elements could definitely be strengthened, Halo 3’s campaign still ties up its galaxy spanning war in a satisfying, entertaining, and appropriately bombastic manner. This final fight for survival finds its enemies, vehicles, and weapon options providing a variety of battle scenarios, but the level design is what really lets these combat mechanics shine both in the main story and in the incredibly thrilling multiplayer. With a good mix of maps that draw out the best from the gunplay, multiple modes that favor the levels in different ways, and The Forge allowing for deeper level customization, Halo 3 isn’t just providing a quality narrative payoff to the setting it built up but a competitive multiplayer experience with plenty of tools to tweak its already enjoyable gameplay even further.
And so, I give Halo 3 for Xbox 360…
A FANTASTIC rating. With an epic soundtrack drawing out the conclusive events of the trilogy with symphonic backing and the exciting action gameplay in between underscored with energetic rock or moody atmospheric tunes, Halo 3 brings together its trilogy to an end not just with a bang but with the design quality needed to back up the satisfaction of being the one to help save the universe. Halo 3’s plot ties up the conflict with the expected level of gravitas required for ending a war between such powerful forces, and while it could have given a spotlight to a few characters like The Arbiter who deserved a more detailed wrap-up, it wraps up the most important storylines and gives many of its characters fitting sendoffs. The already excellent first person action of Halo 2 was further tweaked with small but meaningful additions like the Equipment items, more weapon and vehicle variety continue to make firefights more diverse, and the map design in multiplayer especially has really honed in on designs that favor different battle strategies even before The Forge allows for further tweaking. The shifting dynamics of a gunfight in Halo 3 are really where the game shines its brightest as all your tools for survival play against those of the opposing force, and coupled with a game that knows how to draw out the feeling of an event with narrative purpose and dramatic music, Halo 3 ensure the trilogy wraps up fantastically.
While any series as successful as Halo was bound to keep going in some form, the future releases and spinoffs don’t rob Halo 3 of being an excellent capstone to the Halo trilogy back during its prime. The conclusion features both exhilarating spectacle and the important details necessary to wrap up the universe the writers had created while the gameplay continues to focus on environments tailor-made for drawing out the potential of its weapons, vehicles, and other elements. Halo 3 wasn’t content to just be the conclusion to the franchise, it wanted to keep players engaged for years with its quality gunplay. With the degree of thought put into making such a well rounded experience, Halo 3 expertly pulls off the difficult task of giving this landmark trilogy a satisfying sendoff.