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Halo 3: Revisited

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rainless

Old Member
Joined
Jul 20, 2006
I've been pretty outspoken about my dislike for the entire Halo franchise.

I've played all the games... though briefly... and found it to be an oversimplified FPS eclipsed even by earlier console FPS games like Timesplitters and many others.

...but it's an oversimplified FPS franchise that's somehow grossed over 3 Billion dollars. Something that not even DOOM could accomplish.

So I decided to pick up a copy of Halo 3... at the request of an old friend visiting... mainly for him... but also because it was only 4 bucks used... and because I wanted to understand what the fuss was all about.

So I bought it, and after a few multiplayer rounds and some technical difficulty cleaning the used disc, my friend and I jump into the campaign mode.

It's probably wrong to think of Halo 3 as an FPS... in the traditional sense... at all. It was precious little in common with games like Modern Warfare or Killzone... or Battlefield... or even Return to Castle Wolfenstein. It's really more like a quirky action game that just happens to be in first person.

This was evidenced by the fact that I've been playing shooter for almost thirty years and when I first started playing Halo 3 I had no idea what the hell I was doing. None of it was familiar. Besides the standard rifle... none of the weapons or the sheilds made any sense to me. The last thing my friend said to me was that it was all about finding cover. And that there was also a disproportionate amount of melee. So I took that to heart and picked up where he left off: With some giant lunatic chasing me with a hammer. (This is kinda what I mean about Halo having little to do with your standard FPS.)

I mainly remember Halo from my days getting my Master's degree while most of the students were doing their undergrad. Guys with baseball caps would play Halo and Halo 2 while drinking beer. I decided I needed enlightenment and was hanging out with whoever was available at the time. So sometimes I would sit-in for a round or two of Halo 2. (But never for very long. I almost always went back to my dorm room to play Unreal Tournament 2004).

That was really all I knew about the franchise. That it was some sort of strange Unreal ripoff that wasn't quite as good.

Now I can see it from a different perspective. I can see all the rum and absinthe that probably went into the creation of Halo. In Halo three there's a gun with pink spikes on it that shoots pink plasma balls... (I'm sure drugs had nothing to do with the creation of this item... but...)

And it's fun when you give up on the idea that bullets are flying your way and you can't do so much as duck. But that won't matter because they probably won't hit you anyway. Just beware of that giant, vicious, ******* with the hammer... or the little troll things that sometimes shoot at you... and sometimes run from you.

It's a game that keeps you off balance. And it's bound to get weirder. But I do understand why someone would play it now... at least one of the releases. For a little while. And maybe even how, if they got to the right person at the right time, they'd be hooked for life.
 
Thanks for the fun read. I don't play video games much anymore, but Halo used to be a favorite of mine. I only play the occasional multiplayer game at a friends house now, but this brings back good memories. Nice sense of humor in your review :)
 
I've probably spent 10x the amount of time playing Halo 1 than any other video game.

So you can IMAGINE how I felt playing this game for the first time... for real.

...annnnnnnnnd I just learned that Halo 3 does not autosave.

Sigh... Isn't that nice. 2 levels down the drain.

On the bright side... The level that I last saved on took me 20 tries the first time around. And now I just finished it in two minutes!
 
I loved Halo 1 I always played so much and went away but came back an hour later cause of the story as it went along but I felt it got very boring after that, I played Halo 2 and was only really getting into and this is the honest truth when he was on the Forerunner ship at the end I was ready for the next level only to be greeted with the end credits WTF.


Halo 3 was good but not great I have never had that feeling to wanna carry on like I did with Halo when playing 2 & 3, I even thought Multi player was dull too.
 
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