Halo 3

I really wanted to be on par with the story of Halo before venturing into the third installment of the series, but it seems I’ll never be able to catch up so I decided to go ahead and play the game that has been sitting on my shelf for years now. I generally don’t expect much from action games in terms of story but I had noticed that a lot of people hold it in high regards, I tried my best to engage.

I must admit that not being able to follow the story from the first two games jeopardized my experience a bit, especially in my first play-through. I wasn’t at all understanding most of was being hurled at me. You can argue that Halo follows a similar pattern to basically every game in the genre, the Earth is at risk and you must save it, shoot stuff and proceed. That’s basically the case, but still some moments got me thinking, especially the flashbacks that Master Chief experiences during the whole game.

Master Chief falls within the category of soldier boy, the ever-present group of warriors hardened by the heat of battle, emotionless and focused on the job at all costs. You deal with the usual military people along the way, generals, lieutenants, soldiers, the sort. They showcase a role that’s pretty by the book, lots of decisions for the greater good of mankind, lots of military jibber-jabber. You do seem to have a companion who shares the same race of the guys you are fighting against. Why? Who knows.

Had they presented the story a little better it wouldn’t be so confusing, at least slip in some prologue for newcomers. At one point in the game you seem to completely change the focus of who the enemy is; I don’t know if you join the enemy to fight a greater foe, I don’t know if it’s simply the same foe infected by something hideous, I don’t know if it’s the same foe but just a different faction, or maybe something else. I often found that the in-between cutscenes just made the whole thing weirder and more confusing. It’s nice that they’re brief, but they could have been a bit more effective.

In technical terms this is pretty much top-notch. The graphics are detailed and offer immersive futuristic atmosphere. I constantly kept having the feeling of a spiritual successor of Perfect Dark — perhaps even more so than Perfect Dark Zero —, both even have an alien helping you along the way. What I think is more impressive is the soundtrack; it took me a while to get used to it but when I did I really enjoyed it. It’s different from other action games that tend to pound unrelenting rhythmic tunes, especially in fighting sequences. Halo 3 features a more contained type of atmosphere, more mellow, dabbling in a serene flow, with orchestral pieces much more oriented by its science-fiction facade than the action one.

Something I did not enjoy one bit was the lack of control over the sound. I thought the mix wasn’t really fair and the voices were a bit too loud for my taste. I would have enjoyed to turn the SFX and the voices a bit down while raising the ambient sound had I the opportunity to do it. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do so, there doesn’t seem to be any type of control over that, which is a shame. The actual options are pretty strict to tell the truth, only the essential to create games, both online and offline, the game modes and you’re off to play. Since there’s no collectibles or anything of the kind at least the story could have been recapped in some menu tab, like I’ve mentioned before.

The length of the adventure is pretty much what you’d expect from a modern shooter, or any modern release for that matter. It focuses on being short and intense rather than long and dull; I can relate to that, I’ve come to realize it’s much better a good adventure that’s replayable than a stretched one that I’ll never touch again and will probably forget the minute the console is off. You’ll probably take around 8-12 hours to finish it the first time, depending on the difficulty and pace you choose to play at.

Everything controls as it should. The aiming system is highly dependable on accuracy that’s increased as you get close to the enemy, if you enter its sweet spot the cross-hair will turn red and you’ll get better results. Shooting enemies from a distance, even with long-ranged weapons is a pain, making dealing with snipers something a bit too cumbersome. Another problem is dealing with ammunition since the maps feature various pathways and corners to hide guns from sight, and finding the gun you’re looking for in the ground is pretty annoying most of the time.

There are various weapons and that makes it even harder to refill ammo, so you’ll probably keep switching them as you go not to run out of ammo in precise locations where it’s not safe to happen so. You’ll probably end up giving up a gun you enjoy but that’s the price you got to pay. You can only carry two of them at one time, it doesn’t really matter which, you could carry two pistols if you so wished. You can also get tertiary limited-use heavy-caliber guns along the way, like stationary machine guns or plasma beamers — they’re often at some place where you can use them at the spot, or you could just take them and move, your choice. When you wield heavy weaponry you can’t change weapons and the moment they’re out of ammo you’ll have to discard them.

To deal with enemies you can perform melee attacks which are surprisingly effective. They’re probably the strongest attacks you can perform with the obvious drawback that you need to get up close to heavily armed foes; getting close and personal gets unimaginably tougher in higher difficulty settings. As things get harder you’ll face differing colored armored threats who will endure more bullets, making it much harder to break through their armors. Most times you’ll be facing off light infantry with maybe only a commanding officer leading them. In certain moments you’ll face elite foes wielding special weapons of some sort.

You also have multiple vehicles you can ride along the way. It goes from usual military machinery like cars with turrets on them, and tanks; as well as more alien kinds of stuff. Alien vehicles include laser-shooting hover machines which are light and nimble, two-wheeled heavy thingys that shoot hard and never ask any questions, things that seem to be taken right off a Madmax movie or something, and alien tanks which shoot energy balls of some sort. All pretty unworldly.

The developers made pretty sure to make this a blast for playing with other people. The multiplayer is robust, lots of game modes and a vast community. The game modes include major hits for games of its kind as well as some alternate modes. You can play in teams or full deathmatch, and since the gameplay is pretty rock solid when it comes to balance and response, you could have pretty nice competitive matches if somehow first person shooters on PC isn’t your thing; and Halo 3 is one of your best bets for that.

What I thought was even better was the fact that you can play single player mode on co-op, online or offline. This opens up a whole new adventure. Most of the time you have your alien friend with you helping out, so if you can make that a human character things suddenly get a lot more interesting. You’re able to track which of the 10 missions you’ve beaten already, both on single player and co-op, and at which difficulty setting. You can also activate a scoring system that features both team and competitive aspects to test you skills.

Speaking of difficulty settings you’ve got 4 of them to choose from. Easy, where the game basically plays itself. Normal, good for newcomers. Heroic, which the game clearly states that you’re bound to find the true Halo 3 experience and those already familiar with Halo. Last but not least, Legendary, which is just bananas. I started out on normal and it suited me well, I got to enjoy the game while keeping an eye out for the story. I’m not really into first person shooters so it worked nicely. I then played on heroic and can guarantee that it really does have a nice dosage of difficulty without compromising the adventure. It’s tough, but manageable. I’ve beaten it on Legendary too and this is just for people who enjoy the pain. The game is a little broken at times in that particular setting but that’s part of the deal.

I have to say that Halo 3 is pretty hardcore at what it presents. The story is neatly told, the chapters are solid and offer much to the player. The co-op is pretty engaging and should make those who have other people to play with very satisfied. The multiplayer stands as one of the most solid ones in first person shooters for consoles, with a plethora of differing game modes and, provided the servers weren’t discontinued yet — which they eventually will, sadly —, wholly habitable. Not much else that isn’t absolutely necessary to make these work actually exists in Halo 3, no extra collectibles or profiles for humans and monsters of any kind for example. Maybe that’s exactly its charm.