Halo 3 is a game that eluded me for what felt like such a long time but was a game I was so excited to play in the lead up to and following its release. As a huge Halo fan, even though my feelings about Halo 2 were certainly mixed, I couldn’t wait to ‘finish the fight’ in the final game of the trilogy. However, I didn’t manage to get my hands on an Xbox 360 until 2009, almost two years following Halo 3’s release. I was a teenager, I didn’t have anywhere near enough money to buy a console, so I needed to patiently wait until I could pick one up cheap enough with the money I did have or hope that my parents would get me one for my birthday. Just as it seemed I might be able to afford one myself, I got one for my birthday and then spent the roughly £250 I had accrued on games for the system. Chief among them were Halo 3 and Halo Wars.
It’s an understatement to say that I played a lot of Halo 3. In fact, on my original Xbox Live account I had racked up over 1000 hours of playtime on it, as well as having unlocked every achievement in the base game. Halo 3 was a game that I stuck to like glue on Xbox Live, and most of my online game time was split between Halo 3 and Halo: Reach, even long after Halo 3’s launch.
So, I have the same kind of love for Halo 3 as I have for Combat Evolved right? Well, sort of.
It’s an understatement to say that I played a lot of Halo 3. In fact, on my original Xbox Live account I had racked up over 1000 hours of playtime on it, as well as having unlocked every achievement in the base game. Halo 3 was a game that I stuck to like glue on Xbox Live, and most of my online game time was split between Halo 3 and Halo: Reach, even long after Halo 3’s launch.
So, I have the same kind of love for Halo 3 as I have for Combat Evolved right? Well, sort of.
As the Forerunner ship carrying the Prophet of Truth enters Earth’s atmosphere, stowaway Master Chief jumps from the ship and lands in a nearby jungle. Awakened by Sergeant Johnson and The Arbiter, Chief is reunited with the UNSC and informed that The Covenant are looking for something buried underground in Africa, but what that is they do not know. The Covenant discover a portal that will take them to The Ark, whilst The Flood descend onto Earth. A single UNSC frigate, the Forward Unto Dawn, as well as several Covenant Battle Cruisers piloted by the now allied Elite army, follow Truth through the portal whilst the rest of humanity and the Elites remain on Earth to combat the Flood.
Arriving at The Ark, Chief must stop Truth from activating the installation, in turn activating all six remaining Halo rings. However, he must also find a way to destroy The Flood, its leader Gravemind, and rescue Cortana from what remains of the Covenant city of High Charity.
Coming hot off the heels of Halo 2’s incredible story, Halo 3 feels a little undercooked to say the least. In fact, it’s probably my least favourite Halo story because everything feels so drawn out. There are so few goals to achieve in Halo 3’s story, yet it takes so long to actually see any of them resolved. As a result, much of what leads up to those moments feels like busywork and padding. Halo 2 nailed the pacing of such a complex story because it told it from two perspectives, giving the player two separate goals to work towards, goals we don’t actually see get resolved until the end of Halo 3. But Halo 3 relegates The Arbiter to an NPC role this time, and he doesn’t even get all that much to do in cutscenes. This makes Halo 3’s scope significantly smaller, despite being on a larger scale. The only goals are to rescue Cortana from High Charity, and to stop Truth from activating The Ark. Cortana literally has one mission dedicated to her, and whilst she does perpetually pop up in sequences that wrestle control away from the player in the middle of combat (which is really not cool and very irritating), the fact of the matter is she only gets one mission out of nine (and it’s the worst level in the game) dedicated to her portion of the story and it’s the second to last mission in the whole damn thing.
Arriving at The Ark, Chief must stop Truth from activating the installation, in turn activating all six remaining Halo rings. However, he must also find a way to destroy The Flood, its leader Gravemind, and rescue Cortana from what remains of the Covenant city of High Charity.
Coming hot off the heels of Halo 2’s incredible story, Halo 3 feels a little undercooked to say the least. In fact, it’s probably my least favourite Halo story because everything feels so drawn out. There are so few goals to achieve in Halo 3’s story, yet it takes so long to actually see any of them resolved. As a result, much of what leads up to those moments feels like busywork and padding. Halo 2 nailed the pacing of such a complex story because it told it from two perspectives, giving the player two separate goals to work towards, goals we don’t actually see get resolved until the end of Halo 3. But Halo 3 relegates The Arbiter to an NPC role this time, and he doesn’t even get all that much to do in cutscenes. This makes Halo 3’s scope significantly smaller, despite being on a larger scale. The only goals are to rescue Cortana from High Charity, and to stop Truth from activating The Ark. Cortana literally has one mission dedicated to her, and whilst she does perpetually pop up in sequences that wrestle control away from the player in the middle of combat (which is really not cool and very irritating), the fact of the matter is she only gets one mission out of nine (and it’s the worst level in the game) dedicated to her portion of the story and it’s the second to last mission in the whole damn thing.
Halo 3’s combat is significantly better than Halo 2’s, with weapons actually able to do some damage this time around. We also see the return of the Assault Rifle, this time alongside the Battle Rifle which replaced it in Halo 2. There are the additions of two new grenade variants, spike and fire. Spike grenades work very similarly to plasma grenades but have a significantly smaller blast radius, fire grenades meanwhile produce a lasting area of damage to anything that touches it. Both grenades types can be occasionally useful, but more often than not you’ll wish you had traditional frag or plasma grenades as they are still the supreme thrown weapons. Halo 3 also introduces various consumable items. These can range from bubble shields to protect you, flares to stun enemies, and even regenerators that restore shields quicker. They are reminiscent of the overshield and invisibility power-ups from Combat Evolved, though are far more frequent and can be saved to be used at particular moments. Bear in mind that enemies can also use these items though, and that gives the gameplay a fresh update that still feels distinctly Halo but gives you loads more options when entering a firefight.
Missions are much larger in scale this time around, even grander than the largest levels Combat Evolved could muster. It’s only appropriate seeing as the game was billed as the grand finale to the series (before 343 Industries came along with Halo 4), and as a result many of the levels have large scale battles that play out over very large environments. You’ll also encounter far more vehicle sections, and even face off against multiple Scarab tanks during your time with the game. All of these larger battles can be approached in multiple ways too, with various different vehicles at your disposal at any one time, as well as the ever-reliable method of simply running and gunning.
In terms of gameplay, Halo 3 really does feel like the culmination of everything great about Halo so far, and that’s most of the reason I stuck around for so long because this carried over into the multiplayer as well.
Missions are much larger in scale this time around, even grander than the largest levels Combat Evolved could muster. It’s only appropriate seeing as the game was billed as the grand finale to the series (before 343 Industries came along with Halo 4), and as a result many of the levels have large scale battles that play out over very large environments. You’ll also encounter far more vehicle sections, and even face off against multiple Scarab tanks during your time with the game. All of these larger battles can be approached in multiple ways too, with various different vehicles at your disposal at any one time, as well as the ever-reliable method of simply running and gunning.
In terms of gameplay, Halo 3 really does feel like the culmination of everything great about Halo so far, and that’s most of the reason I stuck around for so long because this carried over into the multiplayer as well.
As of writing, Halo 3 is the only one of the original trilogy of games to not receive a remaster. As such the visuals can look quite dated now in comparison to every other game in the series. For the time though, Halo 3 looked great and alleviated many of the issues I had with the previous games of bland, texture-less environments. Now they are extremely intricately decorated, and full of life to make them seem like real places. Marty O’Donnell also returns to provide yet another knock-out score, I mean the fact that I simply cannot pick a favourite song this man has composed for this set of games goes a long way in saying just how good the soundtracks are.
STORY: 7/10
GAMEPLAY: 9/10
PRESENTATION: 8/10
LIFESPAN: 7/10
SCORE: 7/10
Whilst Halo 3’s story falls a little short, the gameplay and level design are back up to par with Combat Evolved (and sometimes exceeds it). It can be a somewhat underwhelming end to Chief’s story, but with all the hidden secrets and gameplay challenges packed into the title it’s one you’ll certainly come back to multiple times over.