"There simply isn't a better multiplayer gaming experience on a console"....7/10

hmmmm

also, try playing the campaign on a setting other than easy/normal, and then review it - see what you think

After a fantastic Halo and Halo 2, i have been really waiting for Halo 3. Im gutted that i bought it on Saturday and finished it on Thursday with just a couple of hours play each night.

You guys have got it all spot on 7/10 total light weight short game.
After the crappy way Halo 2 finished i thought that Halo 3 would be a biggy, but nay! it's a smally.

"None HD rendering, no AA, very short game play. Static back grounds, and jerky gameplay"

All of which are un-true. We can bicker about H3's itty-bit less than 720 lines of vertical rez, but on every console I've seen it run on gameplay is perfectly fluid and smooth. This was Bungie's main intent - to make the game look good on all manner of hardware and not just premium Hi-Def displays. The HDR lighting implementation is also excellent, but it looks like some of you need to retire your 4yr old Walmart rear projection sets. I'm also tired of the comparisons to Gears of War, a game that I found even more repetitive and boring than H2 along with noisy textures and poorly designed levels. Run, crouch, wait for bad guy to stick his head up - bang. Repeat 1000x times. Unlike H3, GOWs online muli-player is also absurdly repetitive and not very fun.

Halo3's campaign might not be in the same zipcode as Halo1's, but H3 was designed from the start to be a multi-player FPS, and that it does superbly well. Those looking for a better campaign experience need to wait for Half-Life 2's Orange box. I'm likely to be first in line.

Glad to hear a lot of you agree.
I got the usual fanboys posting obscenities to my email, but nice to know some others are agreeing with what I've pointed out.

Been playing the multiplayer side for a good week now. What's up with removing the voice over in lonewolf matches???

I agree, Halo 3 is only slightly better than Halo2, as it was only slightly better than Halo. 

The dev's rested on their laurels after finding the perfect control scheme for a FPS with a controller. All the ridiculous marketing hype and reviewers too afraid of being blacklisted didn't help alert Bungie to the error of their ways.

I'm still fuming about the dev's disassociation from the gamer/customer. In Halo2 if a matchmade game could not be found it would give this pre-programmed erorr message: "We couldn't find a game for you. Sorry about that." As if a human was searching for a game for you. They could have written Anything, ONCE. It could have been fluffed up by a marketeer and been much less infuriating to consumers when their gaming experience is sub-par. Instead they put up a message to their millions of customers which is less than appreciative of the time and money the customer invested in them and their product.

Halo is a cool game, but the story was written by an actual sci fi author and Bungie just happend upon a perfect control scheme. Everything else- how the game looks and plays, that shows about how good a dev bungie is- which is not equal to id Games or Valve Software, they are completely out classed by PC game makers. Just look at Epic who made Gears of War, which is much better on the console than any Halo single player ever will be. Epic, just to be clear, started on the PC and continues to produce for the PC.

I agree with everything said both in this article and in the comments following it. Thanks for being honest.

These Sony-ran websites are just pathetic. I don't even know where to begin to address this incompetent article. I'm sure this article has prevented the last 23 people on Earth who have not bought Halo 3, from buying Halo 3. Congratulations! Get a life, get over the fact that you got junk by buying the PS3.

I happened to see a demo of both Halo 3 (on Xbox) and Quake Wars - Enemy Territory (on a PC) last weekend and I was just shocked by the difference.

I am not a gamer so I realy didn't know what to expect, but the massive difference in video quality Quake has over Halo made me think that Quake is a generation ahead of Halo in this category.

But like I said, I am not a gamer and good graphics donesn't nessecary mean a good game, it may well be that the Halo gameplay is miles ahead if Quake's, but you guys should seriously consider a "review" of Enemy Territiory.

I finished single-player in normal in about 6-7hrs and I pretty much agree with your review.. It was nice to see the graphics keep up with my set somewhat, but _Bioshock_ was far more impressive.

Can't wait for _Mass Effect_!

I hear the both the fundamental Christian church and Al Queda are using Hero 3 for recruitment and training. Go figure.

I can see what you are saying about short changed but with a multi-player aspect which can be played for as long as you want I dont think that this should come into it. Halo 2 was one of the most played games on xbox live.

8 hours for a FPS style game may be a little on the short side but not by much. Its not afterall an RPG its an action game.

Just my thoughts though no doubt i will get some backlash :D

Totally agree with you, I have always liked the Halo series from the beginning but the horrible graphics have always bugged me.

Its not that in a new generation era, a game with less graphics is bad. Consider Half-Life 2, it didn't have cutting edge graphics which Doom3 and FarCry offered in 2004.

But Half-Life 2 did offer a really good performance as well. The source engine is so scalable that I played HL2 on a 1.6Ghz proc, Geforce 2MX gfx card, 256MB ram.

Not only that, the game doesn't look bad on new hardware either, it looks ok. (I now play games on a GeForce 7950GX2)

In contrast, Halo series gifts you bad graphics with bad performance! The Halo2 for PC runs with 30 or so FPS on my 7950GX2 which runs BioShock lovingly.

Dont forget, Halo2 looked like a graduate student's graphics project on the XBOX.

Bottom line, thanks to the games' marketing which was done wonderfully; else Bungie's pathetically lacking talent would have taken these games down.

One reply that has come up a lot in regards to the short length is that the game was designed to be played at Heroic difficulty, rather than Normal. So whereas a lot games are designed around the baseline of the normal difficulty option (which theoretically the average gamer would play at), with an easier and harder mode available, Bungie felt obliged to retain all the difficulty modes and names from the previous games, meaning the normal difficulty plays more easily (and therefore progresses faster) than intended.

I just want to say I'm happy to find a real review for this game. Bartenders score of 7/10 is generous considering the development time of the game. Good show, carry on.

I agree with the 7 / 10 review but for different reasons. I don't think "same ol' bad guys" is really a valid beef with the game. The game is supposed to be contiguous with the prior 2 so it only makes sense to see the same baddies.

I'm dissappointed with the game because it still fails to capture the pace of Halo 1. Halo 3 is almost exclusively run and gun. Halo 1 had alot more parts where taking your time and thinking out your approach to a section was the best way to complete it.

In Halo 1 you couldn't just frontal charge an Elite. Most of the time he would win. You either had to be accurate and fast to dodge his fire, or you had to outflank him or get a clever grenade bounce in. In Halo 2 and Halo 3 you can pretty much just bum rush any enemy in a 1v1 confrontation and win. 

I personally disagree with the complaints about graphics. For this kind of game, it's pretty irrelevant to the gameplay. None the less, Halo 1 was outstanding for its time. 

Considering Halo 2 was still running on a Pentium 3 you really ought to give credit where credit is due. I think it looks outstanding for what Bungie had to work with.

Halo 3 could have looked better but it really doesn't matter for me. I would have been happier with worse graphics but better gameplay.

Most of the Halo 3's high score is just because of the massive hype surrounding it. I'm glad you actually thought about things before deciding the score.

someone who dares give Halo 3 the seven out of ten that it deserves.

I mean yeah sure. Whatever.

Is sort of what comes to mind.

And eight hours is way too short for a first time play through. I may be a dying breed, but I never play online multiplayer.



The game is way too short. Halo 2 seemed about twice as long as Halo 3 was. I was waiting for the story to twist to another world, etc and then... it just ended. Obviously the game was designed to be played with Multi-player but come on, throw us single-player guys a bone.

Whether it's fear of M$, or the knee jerk reactions of your average xbot, but most reviews seem to be more hype than review. At a base level Halo 3 just isn't that good, a disapoinment to say the least. None HD rendering, no AA, very short game play. Static back grounds, and jerky gameplay.

I'd also hate to think how many more 360's have died under the strain. But at least Bungie has almost broken free of M$ now and at last can get back to doing the one thing that they couldn't before. Innovate and get creative.

Halo is Halo, I bought a 360 just to play it. Now I've finished I've sold the 360 and Halo. Give me Warhawk any day!!!

Umm, I played through the Halo 2 campaign with a friend and literally slapped the Halo 3 disc in before the 

Halo 2 credits had finished rolling. Granted I'm still only in the first level, but the graphics look significantly better than merely being in HD.

Go on, go back and play the old Halo 1 & 2 again. You may be amazed at how much the reality differs from the memory in your mind....

Nice review otherwise. Always fun to read something written without the energizing effects of hyperbole.