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Tuesday 4 March, 2008
GAMEPLAY (Session 2):
Halo 3 is the last game in the series and it finishes the story of Halo. At the end of Halo 2, Master Chief was arriving at Earth on a foreign spacecraft preparing to “finish the fight.” In Halo 3, he is fighting on Earth and that’s where the story starts. As you progress through the game, it reveals more about what’s happening on Earth: there is a hidden artifact underneath the planet and the Prophet of Truth is trying to activate it and you need to try to stop it. I enjoy how the story was progressing as you played through the levels, showing more information and why the Covenant joined forces with the humans. Your main goal is really to try and stop Truth from activating the artifact, but when that fails, a hole is ripped in the sky and another life form, the Flood, land on Earth via a ship. So now you have to try to destroy the Flood before they wipe out Earth, but the Covenant let you know that there is something of value in the ship: Cortana. This is your new mission and you have to fight your way through the Flood (I don’t like the Flood, but it is part of the story) and find her. The way the story unfolds is done well as you have to complete objectives before continuing on to the next level. Pretty similar to many other games, but Bungie Studios does it well in Halo 3.
The game is really interesting to play, especially the multiplayer. The campaign is well done. I wanted to know what was going to happen in the end so it kept me interested in trying to finish the whole game. The multiplayer is another part of the game that keeps people in, myself included. You can customize your character to look however you want (although there are limitations on color, armor, etc.) and if you get all of the achievements in the game, you are rewarded with a katana on your back as you play multiplayer; something else to keep you interested in the game (it kept me interested). Multiplayer is fun, fast and exciting. You level up and you get promoted, which is always nice to have on your avatar. Also, depending on who you play with, you may or may not enjoy the experience online. Some people just have bad mouths and start to say random, stupid things, but there is an option to mute other players and that comes in handy sometimes. Halo 3 will continue to be popular because of the multiplayer and people are always going to want to have fun stealing another person’s vehicle while they are using it. I know I did.
DESIGN:
I mostly enjoyed the levels of Halo 3. Since the first game in the series, there have been a couple of levels that I cannot stand, and they consist of the Flood levels. Having to fight your way through Flood enemies is not fun for me, and I know that many other people don’t like that as well. I enjoyed the levels on Earth, where there were no Flood and only Grunts, Brutes, and Jackals. Everything looks great there are detachable turrets (which is new in this game) to take anywhere you want so fighting enemies can be a breeze if you’re good with the weapon you’re using. The levels are varied and the atmosphere changes when the Flood arrive on Earth; that’s good because it gives you the sense that Earth is now in danger because of the Flood so you know you have to do something about it. There is a lot of close combat which is fun, but sometimes can get really crazy and you might die if you don’t pay attention to everything that’s going on around you. What I really love about some of the levels is the open area. Rushing towards a Wraith just to steal it is fun and having different positions to try and sneak up on it makes it better. The different vehicles in the game fit well with the different levels of the game and so did the enemies. The game looks great, the AI is really well done, and the characters have depth to them. This makes Halo 3 is a good game. It’s not great, but it will last a long time because it is fun.
Halo 3 is the first game in the trilogy made for the Xbox 360 and it’s the first Halo game (besides Halo 2 PC) to have achievements. Since the debut of the Xbox 360, all games on the system had to have achievements for the players and this was its own reward for the players. Halo 3 has achievements and anyone who owns a 360 will want to have completed all of them to show off. I enjoyed getting achievements for Halo 3. It was cool and it made me want to get every single one of them. Many of the achievements are multiplayer, but there are some that are single player as well, to balance the rewards out. For people who do not have the online achievements, they will be playing for a long time just for the ones they don’t have (I did this when I first played it). It’s really rewarding to have completed something in particular to receive a notice on the screen saying that you completed the task to get an achievement. And what do you get for completing 100% of the achievements in Halo 3? You get a katana on your back that lets everyone in the world know that you have finished the game with everything completed. Every time you play online, your sword will be there and it’s a nice feeling showing off to the world that you’ve done everything the developer put into the game.
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