By: Miles Chandler
Making $170 million in the first 24 hours of it's release, becoming the biggest pre-sold game in history with 1.7 million pre-orders, drawing over one million Xbox live players within 20 hours of it's release breaking the record for the most people online at one time, advertising in every single way from a Computer Graphics preview, game play and live action trailers, even obtaining it's own soft drink, Pepsi' Mountain Dew Game Fuel, receiving the most media coverage of any video game, throwing the biggest launch parties, and becoming the most hyped game in history, Halo 3 is finally here. The wait is over and the game is out. Was it worth the wait?
Obviously, fans of the game are most anxious to finish the fight in Campaign Mode, where the game's main story is. The Sci-Fi story that started in 2001 will at last come to a close. The levels in Campaign mode are beautiful and no one is the same as the next. You'll be doing anything from waging a Holy War with the alien Covenant or fighting off the zombie-esque Flood to activating a Halo weapon or even driving over constantly falling and exploding panels conveniently pace over a ten mile stretch of lava. The best part of Campaign mode is that it now supports four players, which you can even do over Xbox Live on four consoles, as opposed to the two player Co-op in Halo and Halo 2 that only supported one system at a time. Once you beat the game, if you're a dedicated gamer, you can go back through it on Metagame, which lets you keep track of your kills and overall score, or turn on some hidden "skulls", which do anything from making enemies drop less ammo to taking away your crosshairs, making it more difficult to aim. The only disappointment about Halo 3 Campaign is the story. I felt that the storyline was quickly thrown together and they'd dropped any mention of the Arbiter's struggle to battle against his own kind, the Covenant, focusing solely on Master Chief. Another disappointment with the story was that they try to invoke some kind of emotion by unnecessarily killing off characters. The Campaign mode is great, don't get me wrong, but it pales in comparison to the Multiplayer. Halo 2's strong point was always the Multiplayer. Being able to link up four Xboxes and battle against 15 of your friends simultaneously had never been done so well, that is until Halo 3 came out. Halo 3 was made for the Multiplayer. This Mode can be experienced in three ways. You can play just on your 360 with three other people, you can link up to four other systems to yours locally, allowing up to 16 people, or you can play online either joining your friends' games or using the Matchmaking feature to help you find the type of game you want. All of the previous game modes are there: King of the Hill, Oddball (Keep Away), Capture the Flag and, of course, Slayer. Now there is more customization than ever before. You can now change what your armor looks like by unlocking achievements that you obtain by playing online games and Campaign Mode. You can also customize your own levels. Using the new feature called Forge you can tweak the levels that the developers, Bungie, have already made. You can change the weapons that appear, where they appear, add items and vehicles that aren't normally there and create some interesting minigames along the way. My friends and I have made a level where explosives constantly spawn above a garbage pit of vehicles, causing a massive colorful explosion every ten seconds. You can also summon a rocket launcher and a gravity hammer and play your own Halo version of baseball. To add to all of the madness, you can save your favorites moments of your games on videos and post them on Bungie's website for everybody to see. You can also share your levels with others. The customization is endless and the gameplay is awesome. This game will be played for many years to come. I'm giving it a 9/10. It deserves it. .
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