Halo 3 Thread

damn, it coulda bit me. thanks.

So, playing a teensy bit of matchmaking makes me want to open up my NAT. I looked online about opening ports and crap and I have no idea how to do this.
Help?

And I don’t like knitting, swimming, or shopping. To each his own.

One thing I don’t understand, which seems to be a huge discrepancy between parts two and three:

In part two the Grunts and Hunters aligned with the Elites when they rebelled. Here in part three only the Elites seem to be splitting off from the Covenant. The Grunts and the Hunters are aligned with the Covenant and keep attacking me. No explanation has been given for this.

I can answer half of that; unlike the other factions the Grunts haven’t taken sides en masse. There’s supposed to be Grunts both still in and out of the Covenant. Don’t know about the Hunters, though.

There is one huge gaping flaw that is extremely annoying. In splitscreen mode they don’t use the whole hidef screen; there are big black bars on the left and right. WTF? The whole point of 360 is to support hidef, so support it already. Fuckers.

You can’t cycle your TV through “wide”, “zoom”, “panoramic”, etc?

Yes, “Wide Zoom” fills it out almost perfectly, but that’s hardly an optimal solution. Plus we have to switch back and forth between wide zoom and regular for every other screen in the game, all of which support the full hidef screen properly.

It’s highly annoying.

So does Halo 3 finally have expansive, wide-open levels, as were shown in early video demos of the first Halo (but never delivered in either the first two installments)?

And I’m hearing that people are beating the campaign mode in around 6 hours. I would have figured that more fps designers would be taking hints from the best fps (Half-Life). I can understand that graphics can occupy a lot of the processing power, but it seems almost inexcusable to me for a modern fps to have less than 20 or 30 hours of game play.

Halo 3 (so far) has really huge levels, but its still somewhat on rails as far as paths you can take through the territory. Just like Half Life.

This game gives me motion sickness, again. I hoped that it would be different with a new engine/different system but it makes me sick the same as Halo 1 and 2. I really want to enjoy the Halo series but I can’t in longer than 20 minute bursts. I can play many other FPS though. Ghost Recon, R6, Bioshock. Just a few I can’t. The original Wolfenstein was one of them. Doom as well.

I guess I’ll never be able to enjoy these games.

I can play multiplayer longer though for some reason. I really don’t like MP on these types of games because I can unload an entire clip on someone and they can run around the corner and recharge their shields then come back hopping around like a rabbit and gunbutt me. I much prefer the more realistic one shot kills of GR and R6.

Had a much better time just driving around, drinking beers, and hitting every Gamestop we could trying to find one that would seel my brother the game without a preorder. This was all on the fly as my brother is struck with brilliance in the late hours sometimes. Eventually we said fuck it and just drove to the 24 hour Walmart in New Hampshire where we easily picked up a copy.

I was unimpressed by the actual campaign mode itself, but I don’t use the 360 controllers often so it was a little frustrating learning on the fly. Graphics didn’t look as good as I had hoped for, but then again the brother doesn’t have high definition. (One reason we never got very far with that other zombie game.)

Yah, but they did a great job in HL2 so that it didn’t* feel * like that. The sequence in the city towards the end where you stormed the Combine was one of the best pieces of video gaming ever created. Yet in the parts where you are free to roam huge territories (either by boat, or quad) are the parts where I thought the game lagged.

All i know is, my son and his friend went in ‘halfs’ on a copy and picked it up last nite at Gamestop. They played it all nite, and thru the afternoon today; friend went home and at last peek son is still playing it.

:smiley:

Let me be the first one to say that I think it sucks.
I have been playing the single player campaign and am not impressed so far.
I am almost at the end and it basically plays exactly the same as Halo 1.
And why did they not try to put some storyline in it?
It doesn’t give any explanation about what happened in Halo 1 or 2 and just starts at a seemingly random point.
There is also no explanation about the controls at all, no training levels nothing.
It might be a great online shooter but as a single player experience it is extremely mediocre.

[hijack] BTW, I really enjoyed The Darkness.
I think that is a much better single player experience with a great storyline and some great cinematic moments.
It was a long time ago I was so immersed in a game to the point where I really felt for the main character. [/hijack]

I’m digging the hell out of it. I think the graphics are worse than those of Gears of War, but not impressively so. There is minute detail in many unexpected places and the sounds are also rather pleasant.

Multiplayer is great, Forge is very useful, and the game is a pleasure to play.

I’m happy with it.

A slight hijack:

Some MIT students apparently “decorated” the statue of John Harvard in Harvard Yard to celebrate the release of Halo 3. Picture here

Those crazy kids!

I really liked the game. It my husband about 5 hours to beat the game and me about 5 1/2 hours. That was on normal though. We are now going through it on Legendary. I love the 4-person co-op.

I haven’t played much multiplayer yet, hopefully tonight I will get into more of that. I can’t wait to try the Forge too.

LOUNE, it says the same thing about NAT when I go into multiplayer. Let me know if you figure that out.

I’m very happy with the game, not so much with the ending.

I’ve played the campaign about 4 hours thus far. Compared to other 2007 games, I’d rate it 8/10. Certainly improved over past Halos, but no part of it is better than the best modern FPSs. Initially the graphics looked impressive, but after a bit of orientation and a close-look, they seem mediocre.

I enjoy the new weapons and the new funny things the enemies say at times, but these are just incremental improvements. Nothing market-leading here, nothing revolutionary. Halo 1 was a groundbreaking game, coming at the time it did (one of the few really good games on the early XBox). If Halo 3 was the first release in the series, coming at this same time, I don’t think it would have been gloated over quite so much. An average Metacritic rating of 96 (meta-score from 33 professional reviews) seems indefensible, IMO.

I wish David Cross and that chick from That 70s Show were back on as marines. Did any other celebs do voice-over work for this one?

Me and my buddy tag teamed the campaign the other night. That second-to-last level sucks. And I don’t just mean it’s difficult. It’s not fun.

I’m talking about the one where you run around in the Flood-infested Covenant ship (High Charity?). They’re everywhere, and it’s damned near impossible to find your way around in there. And those doorways closely resemble giant anuses (ani?). I’ve always hated the Flood. It’s a blast fighting against Covenant forces, who at least try to employ some tactics when fighting. With the Flood it’s all just growl, charge, jump, swing, lather, rinse, repeat. And then one of those little buggers reanimates a big one. Grrrrrr. Fucking Flood. This isn’t Resident Evil.

Other than that, I enjoyed it quite a bit. No HD or surround over here, but that was OK. There were definitely a few “whoa, that was fucking awesome” moments.