Halo 3 Thread

I’ll be playing it strictly for Single Player. I’ll wait until the reviews are out to decide whether to buy it on Ebay in a few weeks or wait for it to hit the bargain-bin in the next couple of years.

I hear it’s a First Person game where you run around and shoot aliens.

At last, a clever and original idea.

I honestly don’t mind. I can see why people wouldn’t like the series; the first one especially was incredibly repetitive in terms of surroundings, the second one less so but still bad in places. Sometimes the A.I. cheats, too. And of course it’s a shooter, and some people don’t like shooters. I just happen to like it anyway, but I can get why other people wouldn’t.

If you don’t like the look of Mass Effect, however, I will have to kill you. Just a friendly warning. :slight_smile:

Seriously, do you expect the reviews to do anything less than to fellate each and every member of Bungie?

The same thing goes for you, Dumbest Guy In the Room.

I don’t mind the complaints. It’s not specifically titled “I Love Halo and Here Is Why”. Come on in and voice your displeasure over the game/series if you want to. I certainly don’t look at it as threadshitting.

Actually, when Halo 2 came out, although they all bigged up the Multiplayer, quite a number commented that the single player was dissapointing. I got a good deal at the time (£7.99+4 cruddy Xbox games) so I bought it immediately. I won’t buy Halo 3 full price if the first reviews have the same attitude though, as muliplayer just doesn’t interest me.

It was disappointing because of the story. Some thought it was weak and had a couple holes and seemed rushed, which, according to Bungie it was. Halo 2 was an inferior product and Bungie said so. They’ve also learned from that (supposedly) and put forth th elessons they learned in this new installment.

I dunno, it’s not about the story for me. Everything just seems to work nicely. The gameplay, the graphics, the environment, all that jazz. I don’t care so much about the story line, although if it’s good, it’s a plus.

I still think you’ll hear a chorus of “Bungie has knocked it out of the game, the park, the league, the entire god damned sport with this game” than anything else.

That’s far from being the only reason. How about the completely linear levels that forced you down confined paths, as opposed to the gigantic open worlds of the original? Or the duel-wielding which changed the game for the worse? And how about all of the Arbiter’s crappy in-door levels?

I hate Halo 2.

Heh. There were certainly some that preferred Halo 1 to Halo 2 for a myriad of reasons.
I dunno, complaining about the levels seems a little counter intuitive. Yeah, you’re shooting aliens on an alien spaceship for some of the levels. Yes, it’s not original, but come on ,what is? You can’t reinvent the genre or create an entire genre every game.

I dodn’t mind the dual wielding, but its limitations were pretty apparent and addressed in Halo 3.

The Arbiter would/could be/is construed as “part of the story” as well. Again, I didn’t mind the arbiter at all.

Online, though, Halo 2 was an amazing game. It has its flaws (button glithes and crap) but despite that, it’s very good. Also, judging from what I saw in the Beta, it’s refined in Halo 3.

Let me get a head start.

And since people were curious and don’t mind: I thought the game was just sub-average. I’ve only played the original but the level design, the thing I find most important in a FPS, was atrocious. Most environments were effectively one-dimensional with only one obvious and direct path between you and the goal. The vertical element was rarely used and never used effectively giving the whole game a flat feeling. And everything looked the same. Miles of identical spaceship corridors followed by miles of identical external environments followed by miles of identical ruined hallways followed by more miles of identical spaceship corridors (but a slightly different shaped one than before!). Everything felt sparse and sterile and dead.

Other smaller complaints include the general lack of variety in enemies, the generic feeling weapons, and the terrible controls (which are inherent in playing an FPS on a console which is why I don’t do that).

There were two things that I thought Bungie did effectively. The first was changing up how health worked but that has been copied so many times now that I don’t want to see it anymore (though I wouldn’t hold it against any other Halo games). The other thing is they had a fairly smooth vehicle system.

So, is that against Mass Effect or Halo? I’m confused…

Uh, come again? Where did I complain about the lack of originality (relative to other games, as you seem to imply)? And even if I had, how is that counter-intuitive?

No – I’m complaining about the fact that every god damn room in those interior environments look identical to the one that preceded it. Sure, maybe a crate was moved a few inches to the left, and now there’s a Brute instead of an Elite, but I’ll be damned if I cared. The game was boring as hell to wade through, because there was no motivation to see “what comes next,” because you’ve already seen it in the previous 25 room.

And my complains don’t just stem from the indoor levels, but the outdoor ones as well (which might as well have been interiors as well, given how confined they were). In the second level, you’re confined to the city’s allies; in another later on, you’re stuck along thin-mountain ridges. It felt restrictive, and claustrophobic, and thus many times less dynamic.

Just because he’s “part of the story” doesn’t negate the game play elements that are tied to his presence, such as many of the aforementioned boring-as-shit interior levels.

It was a good, online game, but as far as pure game play is concerned, paled when in comparison to the original. The many (minor) changes Bungie made to the game play accumulated to create a very different feeling game, and one that was not as fun as Halo was three years earlier.

I know next to nothing about Halo 3. Was there even a Halo 1 or 2? I assume so. Not much of a video gamer in case you can’t tell.

Anyway, I have a bunch of work contacts at Microsoft and they invited me to the Halo3 launch party tomorrow night at Microsoft’s New York offices. I’ll go and see what all the fuss is about… anything in particular I should watch for/report back?

Gotcha. I’m starting to get what you’re saying now. I never understood/found the repetitive areas to upset me. I understand that it can signal a lack of creativity or lack of processor power…or whathefuckever…but I don’t realize it much, to be honest.

I’m suprised we’re talking about Halo faults and no-one’s mentioned the ending of 2. Totally annoyance inducing.

Swag!

So what version did you guys get? I put down a deposit on the Legendary edition but after thinking about it for the past few weeks I decided I didn’t really care enough for all the extras of the Legendary version or the Limited edition so I changed it to the regular version today.

You’ll be able to catch all the extras on YouTube anyway, I’m sure

I put a 5 dollar deposit down for the middle package. I won the Legendary edition. My buddy is buying the one that has a deposit off of me.

Well, the review embargo is over. It looks like Halo 3 is being received pretty well. 96% on GameRankings.