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Monday 14 January, 2008
Gamelog #1
SUMMARY:
Halo 3 is an advanced fps (first-person-shooter), in which you play as “The Master Chief,” a futuristic unit with the most advanced military equipment of the day. The point of the game is to use the various weapons that the game provides (both human made and alien made), to defeat an invading alien race called the Covenant. Halo is known as “combat evolved” because is physics create a unique new game play unlike any known before; the master chief wields many different guns whose damage depends on the gun, its optimum range, and how the weapon is used in combination with grenades and melee. Eliminate your opponents shield then finish them off before the kill you.
GAMEPLAY:
In my first 60 minute session of playing Halo 3 I played the single player campaign, in which I was following the final steps in the ongoing series of halo, where the Human race battles the alien Covenant, in a religious battle over the unknown halos, which may hold an untapped power, more powerful than any could have imagined.
The game starts, and I am just blown away at the quality of the graphics, Halo 3 is an amazing display of the 360’s HD graphics. In this fps one’s life is represented by a shield, when ones shield runs out from enemy fire you have only a short time to find cover and let your shield recover or you will be killed. The master chief is allowed to hold only 2 weapons at once so I found that it is best to always carry a long range gun and a short ranged weapon to cover all aspects of battle. In Halo3 one can ether shoot one of their 2 guns (or duel wield 2 guns at once), throw a grenade, or use a melee punch button to give a devastating punch. All of which can be used in several combinations to drop your opponents shield and then eliminate them.
As I progressed through the game I was able to increase my skill, and save my progress via checkpoints, in which the game would auto save my campaign progress after major battles. I was greatly amazed by the new Halo environments, with earth, space, and alien planet battles, Halo created a vast expansive environment, in which I could conduct and complete the linear campaign, on several difficulty levels.
Gamelog#2
GAMEPLAY:
In the second session of Halo 3 I was able to encounter a completely different aspect of Halo 3; I was able to play the Xbox live multiplayer setting. The multiplayer opened a whole new world of competition, where people have mastered all of the weapons, and are indeed very skillful. Multiplayer comes with a variety of new and intricate levels, that really define “combat evolved.” I was able to play a game with the screen split four ways, while my team of dorm mates played in several death matches where our team must reach 50 kills before the other does, which requires many new strategies to defeat the much more skillful and ingenious strategies of fellow human intelligence. The object off all of our team slayers was to work skillfully as a team and kill 50 of your opponents, in a continuous unstoppable game in which you continually spawn after your death (and not allow your team’s net deaths to amount to 50).
Online multiplayer provided to be very difficult and even frustrating at times, as I tried to master the new physics of the different weapons, combined with their ranges and level of accuracy and damage at specific ranges it remained very difficult to kill more than one person at once. This forced our team to follow each other, and when combined we made a much more damaging squad.
DESIGN:
When playing Halo 3 I always thought that its physics and game play physics where always superior to all other first person shooters. In halo 3 all weapons have been modified and balanced, so that against any weapon, one can use a variety of strategies to defeat their opponent, meaning that no weapons are more powerful than others in every circumstance. This allows for a very balanced multiplayer leaving the competition down to the skill of the player, their interaction with the environment, and their control over their multiple weapons. This balanced multiplayer allows Halo 3 to have a very high replay value where online no two games are ever the same, as no two players will play in the same way.
Halo 3’s online continues to challenge its players by keeping a rank. As gamers play more, their skill increases, and they win more games thus increasing rank. As players increase rank with their live accounts they are matched up against people with similar ranks, causing the multiplayer matching to always match people with similar skill level to your own. This allows people to improve, as well as keep and incentive to people that play a lot. As players increase rank they are also able to unlock new armors, and customize their characters in their virtual online world. I thought this was a very interesting aspect of the game and caused me to further challenge myself to unlock new armors in effort to customize my own Spartan.
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