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    Halo 3

    Game » consists of 17 releases. Released Sep 25, 2007

    The conclusion to the original Halo trilogy has the super-soldier Master Chief joining forces with The Arbiter to finish off the threat of both the remaining Covenant Empire and the parasitic Flood, once and for all.

    Halo 3 and me

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    PurpleShyGuy

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    Edited By PurpleShyGuy

    The end of an era.

    Spoilers for Halo 3 ahead.

    Talk about Halo long enough and chances are that you’ll get around to Halo 2’s ending, a moment so comically disappointing that I still remember it painfully clear today. I was playing in co-op with my brother when we get to the infamous scene where the Master Chief stoically says, “Sir, finishing this fight,” in which my brother responds with, “Imagine if the game just ended there.’’ That joke became a lot less funny about three-seconds later. And so, with the nigh-on-goading marketing tagline “FINISH THE FIGHT” blaring at me, I couldn’t help but get begrudgingly excited to play Halo 3 and finally get closure to one of gaming history’s most buy-the-next-one cliffhangers.

    The reason why Halo 2 ended so abruptly was pinned on time constraints, but I’m almost (almost) glad it did because it meant Halo 3 now exists. Not that the series wouldn’t have continued if Halo 2 did bring the story to a close, there was still a lot of money for Microsoft to make after all. And – after years ruminating on it – Halo 3 is my favourite Halo of them all. That bitterness of waiting another three years quickly melted away when I found myself flying happily through the air on a nippy ATV. Halo 3 was the combination of the best aspects of its predecessors, with the more expansive environments of Halo: CE combined with the tighter physics of Halo 2.

    Peter Moore never got over his addiction to getting video game tattoos.
    Peter Moore never got over his addiction to getting video game tattoos.

    Halo 3 also made good on the promise of the invasion of Earth, with it actually feeling like a war instead of the drunken scuffle outside a pub we got with Halo 2. The Covenant also saw some changes, with the Brutes now calling the shots who were perplexingly less effective than the Elites, mainly due to how the Brutes’ armour would explode off them Ghouls ’n Ghosts style when shot. The ante was also upped with the parasitic Flood and this is easily my favourite version of them. The little puff bags can now turn friend or foe almost instantly into another body of the horde, which really helps sell you on how much of a threat they are. The story is as much about ridding the galaxy of the Flood as it is breaking the Covenant once and for all.

    A task aided by the addition of some shiny new armaments, such as the Spartan Laser which could tear through vehicles, and the wonderfully cathartic Gravity Hammer – which also spawned the game mode Griffball. As mentioned, the ATV Mongoose was a blast to drive, and having someone on the back with a rocket launcher turned it into a tiny terror, with lumbering tanks shuddering in fear at the sight of it. The front-heavy Chopper could plough through smaller vehicles and it was wise to assault it from the back or sides where the driver was exposed. Thinking about it, it was strange to see Brutes have floating vehicles, they always seemed like a race who’s greatest technical achievement before being absorbed into the Covenant was shitting into their own hands and throwing it at each other.

    The Ark for all its build up was essentially just a really big Halo.
    The Ark for all its build up was essentially just a really big Halo.

    The generational leap in power went towards making the battlefields more organic, despite the game not stacking up technically against its contemporaries – faces for example weren't great. The domineering Scarab which was essentially on rails in Halo 2 was now free to roam, you even fought two in the suitably epic showdown on the level The Covenant. Speaking of levels, the penultimate one Cortana might have had me lost in a confusing nightmare of disembodied voices and anus doors, but at least tonally it came across as Halo 3’s darkest hour. And it of course lead to the very last mission, in which I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of sadness because after all these years of being a fan, Halo was finally coming to an end – or so I thought back then.

    But what a finale, closing the entire thing with a redux of the Warthog run with the very ground falling away as you race towards your ship, which ends in the Master Chief and Cortana being stranded in the middle of space. While it was inevitable that there would be some allusion that the story wasn’t truly over, it was a satisfying conclusion at the time. The campaign was only half of my relationship with the Halo series, however, with the other half being the multiplayer.

    And thank the gods because the much-despised Battle Rifle plus Plasma Pistol combo had its bite softened, as the Plasma Pistol’s charged shot now homed in with less precision and the Battle Rifle was no longer hitscan. Other changes included the Energy Sword having its range reduced, and the Rocket Launcher losing its lock-on ability. Ladders were also thrown out to make way for the far more expedient – and far funner – Man Cannons, which would launch players and vehicles soaring through the air.

    Maps were solid with some real gems in the bunch, even if they weren’t as dynamic as some of Halo 2’s collection, which might have been a good thing considering that lag would often turn the trains of Terminal completely invisible for instance. Rat’s Nest mixed tight room-to-room combat with an outside racetrack for Warthog’s to patrol. Narrows featured a bridge suspended between two bases, but you could also use Man Cannons to fire yourself across if you were feeling brave. And how could I not mention Sandtrap, the only map to include the enormous mobile fortresses named Elephants.

    Valhalla was far superior to Blood Gulch and I don't care if no one agrees.
    Valhalla was far superior to Blood Gulch and I don't care if no one agrees.

    It might not have been the birth of console online play Halo 2 was, but Halo 3 did add something that would become a staple of Halo for years to come: Forge. Although it was fairly limited in its first iteration, Forge could still be used for some novel game types. I fondly remember a scenario where one person on the ground had a Spartan Laser, while everyone else was on a platform above them, a platform that could slowly be blasted into pieces with said Spartan Laser. What followed was an incredibly tense match, as everyone scrambled for ground that was being destroyed by a person taking blind shots.

    To put a finer point on it, Halo 3 was where the series peaked for me, and while I’m not saying there isn’t any enjoyment to be found in later instalments, with every new release after, I felt my enthusiasm slowly fizzle. Halo 3: ODST was a fun, moody little expansion that brought us the wave-based Firefight, but the premise of being a normal, squishy human in a mini open world didn’t really change much. Halo: Reach went for a more character-focused story, but made the rookie mistake of forgetting to give any of the cast a compelling personality. Plus, I didn’t much care for the whole reticle bloom thing. Halo 4 was the introduction of a whole new chapter featuring the Prometheans, yet they had to share the spotlight with the (at this point) overly familiar Covenant. It was also clear that Halo was now chasing the Call of Duty train, as Halo 4 introduced some rather anaemic loadouts and, of course, sprint as a core ability.

    Halo 5? I didn’t even play it, which would have boggled the mind of the me from 2007. Back then I adored the Halo games, lapping up every morsel of information about them from the lore to new gameplay mechanics, but that feels like a lifetime ago. And while the battle rages on with the next-gen arrival of Halo Infinite, for me personally, the fight was finished a long time ago.

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    Justin258

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    Halo 5's multiplayer is genuinely great and worth the price of admission, but the single player is decidedly not. It controls incredibly well - and I'm saying this as a reformed mouse and keyboard player who can't seem to get back into gaming with a controller even when I really want to. The level design is mostly fine, but the music leaves a lot to be desired, the constant Warden bossfights are utter garbage, and the story takes a few interesting ideas and fumbles them, hard. The event that kicks off the entire story is Master Chief getting knocked out and getting a dream from Cortana telling him to go somewhere. I'm not making that up. That's the event that really sets the story in gear. Who the fuck read that and thought "yeah, this is good, this is the direction Halo needs to go in"?

    If you think you can set that aside, though, Halo 5 still has some good stuff going for it and it's worth trying out.

    On to Halo 3! Halo 3 was my high school multiplayer game. Loads of time spent with a handful of high school friends and some people we picked up along the way. Some of them drifted more off to CoD 4, some drifted away from video games entirely, but we still had a lot of people playing that game for quite some time. I couldn't get enough of it and I couldn't be more thrilled to be playing it again today, on my PC. It's still an awesome game, from top-to-bottom! That campaign is just great moment after great moment, something that no other Halo game since has achieved. ODST's open world is cool but would have been boring if the game were more than six hours long. My problem with Halo Reach is, primarily, that all of its levels are pretty damn good but all of them are also missing that one something that makes them great - there's no watercooler "holy shit, TWO SCARABS!?" moment in Halo Reach.

    Also, weirdly enough, I think it still looks good? Like, faces are obviously bad and the bloom is awful in spots but for the most part, the game's cartoon-ish colorful look and focus on wide-open vistas really helped that game's look age quite well. My brother and one of his friends argued that it needs a remaster to get it in-line with Halo 2 Anniversary but I personally don't think so. Touch up the faces and turn down the bloom in spots and you've got the major issues covered.

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    BigBoss1911

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    Loading Video...

    Nothing compares to the feeling of 6th grade me watching this on my homeroom computer right after the Microsoft conference. 343 can't hold a candle to what Bungie accomplished with their trilogy. I thought Infinite might bring back some of that excitement but alas.

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    PurpleShyGuy

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    @justin258: Technically I think Halo 3 is lacking, the environments and characters are pretty low poly when compared to something like Gears of War. But I completely agree that the bright colours really make it pop (I think Halo was where I got my love of purple). Especially when you compare it to the washed out art style of Halo: Reach, which looked worse in my opinion despite it having a higher poly count.

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    PurpleShyGuy

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    @bigboss1911: I remember the agonisingly long wait time to download that trailer on my Xbox. I think it over an hour because everyone and their dog was doing the same thing.

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    deactivated-61665c8292280

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    I respect the decision to close your personal book on Halo with Halo 3, but if you're really invested in Bungie's vision, you owe it to yourself to play through ODST and Reach.

    Reach, particularly, is this beautiful goodbye. It's really pretty incredible how it manages to feel like this piece of gratitude written directly to fans of the series, and yet stand all the while as a worthwhile pillar of the franchise in its own right.

    Bungie going out on Halo: Reach is like Jordan retiring after hitting the game-winning shot for the NBA championship.

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    ShaggE

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    #6  Edited By ShaggE

    I was never a big Halo guy, but yeah, 3 was just fantastic. I remember renting it when it came out almost out of obligation since I was 21 and trying to get my foot in the door of game journalism (thus reviewing every major game that I found even slightly interesting to flesh out my portfolio), then being legitimately surprised at how much fun I was having.

    I'm not sure why 3 and ODST are the only Halo games I truly like, outside of Reach's MP which is a blast, but something about those two really grabbed me at the right time and place.

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    ItHas2BeSaidKVO

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    Spoilers for Halo 2 and 3.

    I know this is as dumb as questioning the plot of an action movie, but having recently replayed the first three games through the MCC (played them a ton on OG Xbox and 360), man everyone in those games are freaking idiots for trusting the Flood for even a second. Watching the protagonists get hustled in both Halo 2 (sending MC and the Arbiter off just so the Flood can steal In Amber Clad and infest High Charity) AND Halo 3 (waiting until the good guys take down the shields on the Ark and then flying the infested High Charity through the portal to infest the Ark) is just comical. The cherry on top though has to be the end part of The Covenant in Halo 3, where the Flood help you get to Truth for that tiny section, and then the second you shut down the ring, they turn on you. This is punctuated by the deadpan delivery by the Arbiter who tells MC that they've 'just swapped one villain for another'.

    I haven't gotten around to playing Halo 4 or 5 yet, so I don't know if the Flood turn up in those games, but man, there's some horror movie-ass decision making in those original three games.

    P.S. Fuck the Stalkers in this game. An enemy that constantly jumps around, and can turn into both a sniping unit and those hulking tanks? Pick a goddamn lane Bungie.

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    Justin258

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    @ithas2besaidkvo: I don't think the Chief or Arbiter actually trusted the Flood at any point, just that for those moments they had a common enemy and couldn't really fight two armies at the same time. In the Gravemind bit in 2, he literally has them trapped before teleporting each out to do the thing they were going to do anyway.

    Also worth noting that the humans went through the portal in 3 partially to fight the Covenant but primarily to find Cortana's "solution" to the Flood, which turned out to be lighting the not-quite-finished Halo ring. Chief was always going to fight the Flood.

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    ItHas2BeSaidKVO

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    @justin258: Yeah ok, maybe hustle is too strong a word, but they do definitely get played by the Flood on multiple occasions.

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    noobsauce

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    #11  Edited By noobsauce

    Halo 3 was decidedly the peak of the series (though Reach was a hell of a swan song for Bungie). The series hasn't reached those heights since with 343 seemingly underdelivering on one aspect of the game (4s MP and 5s campaign) and the world moving on to different styles of shooters. Yet despite all the hubbub, Infinite has me interested in the series in a way I haven't felt since the Bungie days, in no small part because of the MCC hitting PC and rekindling that Halo flame. Here's hoping it turns out well, though I'm sure I'll enjoy it even if it fails to fully set the world on fire like the days of old.

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    cikame

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    #12  Edited By cikame

    I just played through 3 as part of playing through the MCC on PC and it's just as i remember it.
    The first game is also just as i remember it, i originally played it on PC, then the anniversary edition on 360 which kind of rubbed me the wrong way which i put down to having to use a controller, i like first person shooters on a controller but the bullet sponge design of some of Halo's enemies makes you work even harder to kill them, which is just easier on a mouse and i think creates a better balance, so playing it again now with a mouse really cemented the idea that it is just better with a mouse.
    I hadn't played Halo 2 before so i came at it with zero nostalgia but wow... Halo 2 is awful, i actually hated every second, they made every weapon worse, every animation worse, every combat enounter feels tedious and irritating, the Warthog is slower, they still haven't fixed the weird instant kill balance of some of the enemies from the first game, which was manageable, but with some of the new added weapons it's actually more of a problem, Brutes are terrible, Brutes make my eyes roll every time they show up, the remastered graphics are technically better but are WAY too dark in places, i played almost every combat encounter in original graphics so i could see anything, having a flashlight that lasts 5 seconds is ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS and useless, until the game decides in certain places it's unlimited, and the story... i'll get back to that later, i had to look up the development history of 2 after finishing it and that did confirm my suspicions so i won't be too harsh, but every reviewer back then must have been drunk to score the game what they did it's crazy.
    Back to Halo 3, it is just as i remembered, it's the best of the games up to that point easily, the combat encounters are better balanced and it has the most happening with its locations and momentum, the Mongoose is great until i realised it's just the Halo 1 Warthog but slightly snappier, the Warthog remains weirdly slow from the 2nd game making Halo 1's Warthog the best Warthog Warthog, and that's about all i have to say about Halo 3, stealing mounted guns is good, having weird deployable items is meh, backtracking through that underground bunker at the start multiple times, then having a different but identical bunker appear later on in the game gives me flashbacks of the 2nd half of Halo 1 where every level is a boring ass tunnel, like they reused assets to save time and artificially extend the game, but it's not as bad as that was.
    Story then, i always assume when i replay Halo games that i'll take more of the story away, but every time i'm more and more convinced that there isn't a story, Halo 1 you fight to get the key and blow up the ring, Halo 2... i played it a few weeks ago and i honestly don't remember anything, the Arbiter says at the start that he might even consider the Chief his friend, but due to time constraints they don't really interact until the 3rd game, then a large telepathic, teleport spawning god worm that speaks in rhyme appears... that happens and is intensely stupid.
    Halo 3, i finished a week ago, um, were they on a Halo? I see your picture of the Ark up there but i don't know what the Ark is, was i on that? Did it blow up at the end? Did i miss something?

    I'm actually really interested in playing whatever 343 games are added to the collection, i know 4 is coming but i'd like to play 5 as well, from what i've seen they bucked some of the Bungie trends that never gelled with me so there's a chance i'd like those Halo games more, but we'll see when 4 comes out.
    Edit: I forgot something else about the Halo 2 remaster, what on earth did they do to Cortana? She looks so... Haggard, like an out of shape soccer mum.

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    Justin258

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    #13  Edited By Justin258

    @cikame: I actually think Halo 2's story is the best of them. OK, its cliffhanger is atrocious, but there are very few games out there that manage to do as much worldbuilding as Halo 2 does without having a bunch of infodumps, plus it builds up nicely to the bit where the Prophets betray the Elites. It also sets up the idea that the Covenant didn't lose because the humans found some kind of deus ex machina, they lost because they essentially shot themselves in the foot by betraying the Elites. And because the humans had a big guy in green armor, but that's just video game storytelling contrivance.

    Anyway, Halo 2 mentions the Ark at the very end of the game and makes it clear that the Ark is sort of a control center for all the Halos. You can fire all of the rings from that one location. It also makes new rings whenever an old one is destroyed.

    The bit where Arbiter says he might consider Chief his friend was added for the MCC - it's not part of the original game.

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    tds418

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    #14  Edited By tds418

    Halo 3 came out when I was in high school and it was the first online shooter I really got deep into. It was apparent when it came out that it was somewhat lacking graphically, but it more than made up for it with its gameplay. Obviously COD 4 came out just a month or two later, and some people I know definitely moved from Halo to COD when that happened. But some friends and I stuck with Halo 3, and we played it fairly regularly for probably a year or so. Ultimately my love for Halo led me to follow Bungie to the Destiny series, which I still regularly play. Like Halo it certainly has its flaws, but Bungie still knows how to make the act of shooting in video games feel so good.

    Also, if you love Halo 3 but haven't played Reach, you may want to consider checking out Reach. It's a $10 or so add-on to the MCC on Xbox (or included with MCC if you have Game Pass). Although it's a prequel to 1-3 it comes across as Bungie's farewell to the series and tonally is probably the darkest of the bunch. The campaign still holds up really well though.

    edit (spoilers):

    @ithas2besaidkvo said:
    Watching the protagonists get hustled in both Halo 2 (sending MC and the Arbiter off just so the Flood can steal In Amber Clad and infest High Charity) AND Halo 3 (waiting until the good guys take down the shields on the Ark and then flying the infested High Charity through the portal to infest the Ark) is just comical.

    I haven't played through Halo 3 in a while so I can't respond to that, but the Halo 2 sequence of events makes perfect sense. Master Chief encounters Gravemind for the first time in that game after getting knocked into a lake by a Covenant attack. He knows the Covenant intends to ignite the halo ring and has no ability to do anything about it at that point. Gravemind also wants to stop the ring from igniting, and gives Chief the ability to do so by teleporting him to high charity. Chief doesn't trust Gravemind, but recognizes their mutual interest.

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    JamesBomb

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    #15  Edited By JamesBomb

    Halo is an afternoon with your friends, it is the spontaneity and scale of its sandbox, the mystique of its world design and light, rousing narrative. Halo 3 most embodies those essential parts of the franchise that were unique and appealing to me - later installments didn't take it any further; they became brooding, the gameplay scenarios more controlled. I didn't bother with Halo 5 either and I'm still not convinced about Infinite. The demo suggests that they are leaning into the sandbox element more, but we'll see...

    I honestly don't think the spirit of Halo can be fully recaptured, short of Infinites multiplayer blowing up to Fortnite levels - which isn't going to happen. A lot of it is wrapped up in that twilight period between LAN parties and online gaming. I'm open to giving Infinite a go, but my expectations aren't high.

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    cubidog

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    Halo 3 is definitely the pinnacle of the series and is my 2nd favorite game of all time. It's the first time I remember being genuinely excited for a sequel. Forge blew my mind as a kid, and the number of crazy maps and modes people made was amazing. Also the campaign still holds up.

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