posted
I put in a few hours on the solo campaign last night and I'm really enjoying it. I don't yet own a high-def television but even on my Standard set it looks great and the game play is very exciting. It's not much different from Halo 2 but the small cahnges they made are great. This time around you can tear turret guns from their bases and carry them around. You can also pick up field equipment to use, such as portable shields. The story has been very good so far also. Definately worth the 60 bucks. i haven't played online yet but I can't wait for the 4 player co-op. Already been talking with some freinds about playing soon, just waiting on everyone to get their copies so we can do it up right.
Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Yeah, it does look better even on a regular TV. They have enough aliens to keep 4 players busy. It was kind of annoying that my husband was trying to play through on legendary right out of the box.
The fortune cookies from Cortana were starting to get annoying until I realized they were from Chief's "childhood."
I don't know, maybe when Master Chief fell to Earth and Johnson thought he was dead, he had a near death experience and Cortana's ghost latched onto him. I'm thinking that to destroy the threat, Master Chief and Cortana's "Horcrux" (sorry, can't help it) will have to die. Maybe.
But I don't know how you can ever be sure all the flood in the Galaxy are wiped out.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I played the first mission and a half or so solo and then from there to mission four in online co-op. It was a really good time.
It isn't harrowing or intense in the way Gears of War is, it's got a very different vibe. I love Gears, but I like this too.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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Storywise, I was mostly satisfied. The rescue of Cortana from the Gravemine was a pretty intense segment of the game. The alternating transmissions/telepathic messages really had me invested.
I only have a couple of gripes with the story. First, I wished the Arbiter had been given more of an active role. In Halo 2 I found his character much more interesting than the Chief's. In this game though, he's almost completely pushed to the rear. He tags along for most of the missions but rarely seems to have an important role. If you're playing single player, his main use is soaking up bullets headed your way.
Second, I found Guilty Spark's betrayal pretty unbelievable. It didn't seem necessary for the plot just so they could include one more boss fight. Why not Guilty Spark vs. New-Halo-Moniter with a bunch of sentinels?
Graphics. As others before me have noted, they're gorgeous. The particle effects used for explosions are absolutely top notch. Occaisionally, the light reflections off armor or metal can be a bit blinding, but adjusting the brightness settings fixed this up.
The sound is overall very good. The music is fantastic and almost always perfectly captures the mood of a scene. The voice acting is also quite good...which leads me to my one complaint. So often in Halo 3 (and the entire series, come to think of it) the speech volume has always been set too low, or the music volume too high. I don't know if others have experienced this, but often I have a really difficult time understanding what was being said. In some instances, I couldn't hear the speech at all. There weren't any audio settings to fix this, so I'll just recommend turning on the subtitles option. Don't worry, they don't appear during actual gameplay.
The gameplay is, as you would expect, fantastic. It's going to take me some time to get used to the new controller layout, but intellectually, I like it better. The additional equipment you can deploy (portable shields, healing areas, personal shield drainers, etc) really ratchet up the complexity of the game, and allow for a great deal more in the way of tactics. The new weapons and vehicles are all fun to try out. Which ones will stand up in multiplayer is hard to say, except that the Mongoose (a squirrelly two-person ATV) will likely have limited usefulness. Speaking of vehicles, the AI for NPC drivers is uncharacteristically bad.
Overall, this game is a satisfying end to a great trilogy of games. I'd give it somewhere between a 9.0 and a 9.7 pending further multiplayer/forge testing.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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I've ignored the campaign mode for the most part as I can only play that when my wife is off work.
I've played a truckload online however do all of you folks have handles?
I'm BlackBladed "BlackBlade and BlackBlades" were already taken sadly. I'd love to setup a hatrack friends list and play games with you folks when you are around.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I'll try and let you know before we do our free trial, which we may save for Thanksgiving weekend or something. I've held the line on Xbox Live up until now. I've heard of too many cases where people can't ever get offline once they start online gaming.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Originally posted by pooka: I'll try and let you know before we do our free trial, which we may save for Thanksgiving weekend or something. I've held the line on Xbox Live up until now. I've heard of too many cases where people can't ever get offline once they start online gaming.
I towed pretty much the same line until Halo 3 came out and I purchased 1 month of Xbox Live jus to see how I handle it, as well as how well it runs. So far I am pleased with both aspects of the situation.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Added 2: I've got Halo 3 now and have already played it a bit, but I'm going to be away until Tuesday.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
In other news Halo 3 is now officially the biggest entertainment launch in history, bringing in over $170 million in the U.S. alone during the first day of availability.
Posts: 796 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Omega M.: I've probably just been branded by Nintendo, but isn't Master Chief essentially a male Samus Aran, in that they both wear armor that most of the time makes them indistinguishable from robots?
At one point in Halo 3, I was standing perfectly still next to some marines. One of them said "Uh, you're a .. a dude, right?" and the other one said "man, i can't tell if he's awake or asleep in there"
I thought of this post.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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