The Three Rs: 21: 38 - More Rant Than Review, But Nonetheless, Here be Halo 3

21: 38 - More Rant Than Review, But Nonetheless, Here be Halo 3

Friday, November 30, 2007

Written by: Prodigy

I apologise its been a long time coming but amongst other things, I've been trying to give myself the allusion that I could get some sort of longevity from Halo 3.
As you can already tell, the fanboyism concerning Halo has gone, regarding this entry anyway. To quote a much loved line from Yahtzee Bungie " took all the comments on board, then threw them into a fire" as well as it seems, everything else that made Halo 2 brilliant. The inspiring campaign we had in Halo 2 is about as short as Portal, minus the effort, ingenuity and the good looking graphics. And the multiplayer, well far from perfect, but fortunately that can be amended with time.
Sadly and disappointingly, the same cannot be said for a horrifyingly underachieving and ultimately anti-climatic ending to what has otherwise been an enthralling saga. They had so much time and opportunity to turn it into a truly brilliant game, and in essence 'epic phailed'. There are only ten campaign levels with only nine of them being playable, and some said Halo 2's campaign was criminally short, o rly, Halo 3 to Halo 2 is simply what Gimli was to Treebeard, with various fellow ents on his shoulders, and maybe Mount Doom as well, with Saurons tower balancing on the peak. Yeah about that sort of longevity difference.
Furthermore, one thing that really made Halo 2 for me were the in-game sequences (do we still call them FMVs). There were many, lengthy and above all enjoyable. I can't remember exactly how many sequences there were, I'll estimate around 4, actually 5 at most, in terms of genuine in-game sequences. Thats less then there were Star Wars films, and like both these things, we could have done with more.
Even when we do have in game sequences, theyre as flat as my motherland(Heh guess). Relatively no addition to plot, no further development. Just short clips of elites in ships and a minor one of the prophet being killed by the Arbiter, all of which I could have replicated to some degree of accuracy on the theater mode, maybe even better ones.
However, If I leave the campaign alone for just the moment there are other issues particularly with multiplayer. Even more particularly the completely illogical melee system, that instead of letting the quicker person win the melee battle, the person with the most health does. Even worse, the opposing player who usually has more health has upto around a second and a half with which to respond with his own melee, and therefore due to the twisted completely unexplainable logic that Bungie have implemented, the quicker player dies (unless he had more health, and sorry to any females that play the game but I'm not gonna waste valuable time typing he/she). Such stupidity can be reinforced by real life examples, since when can an individual be shot in the face, with his brain exiting the skull within nano seconds of impact, and still have the capability to snatch up his gun and return fire to the other opponents face, and then somehow survive and get on with his existence, despite the fact he has a hole in his face emulating a donut. Exactly, I could find only one such occurrence in history.
But, as stated earlier, I can forgive Bungie the other more trivial issues with regards weapon and vehicle placement and attributes as these can all be amended in due time, a quick read of Bungie's latest update assures me they're at least attentive of the flawed online aspects.
And after all,the game isn't all bad. Theater for one is a particularly clever little feature, automatically recording all ingame events, so you can screenshot that invisible rocket shot that otherwise would have been banished to the murky abyss of both time and Giles memory (Alex pwnt Gile wif active camo basically). Theres also the online co-op, so in case you weren't pissed off at the campaign enough, you can be even more infuriated and share the experience with a friend anywhere in the world, but mainly to gain achievements and gamerscore, which aside from what I must say is nicely varied level design, is the only other plus point that can be taken. Forge also is rather useful in its own way, for making boring racecourses and other various other rather limited and altogether tedious map variations, which I don't enjoy but I'm sure some small,tiny Halo fan minority do, in comparison to the uber large majority who wanted something actually worth something *cough* map creater*cough*.
All in all, though I've been harsh of Halo, its not thaaaaat bad. Its undoubtedly bad, just not that bad. I mean for me the campaign was practically the whole point of Halo which is why I have judged it so (deservedly) harshly, though in retrospect I was equally as enthusiastic about the multiplayer, which due to recent statements from Bungie, I remain enthusiastic still.
Perhaps theres some partial redemption yet for Bungie and their franchise, with regards to multiplayer modification and also the upcoming 'Halo Chronicles' by Peter Jackson and Wingnut Studios, who apparently intend to produce only semi playable yet amazingly detailed episodes in terms of plot and story, the perfect supplement and in a way, partner to Halo 3. But time will tell, and theres a lot of time.
Halo Chronicles is thought to be released next year around this time.

Yes I'm afraid so Mr Puffin Type Thing, we're stuck with matchmaking for a while.