Published by Microsoft

Developed for the Xbox 360 by Bungie

Rating – “M for Mature” Contains Blood and Gore, Language, and violence

Once again Master Chief, Cortana, Sergeant Johnson, and the Arbiter race across the universe to try to stop the Halo rings from destroying all existence. Once again they find themselves hunting for a Cartographer’s room, for a map with the location of a remote library and an index key. Once again the covenant prophets unlock a new installation that becomes quickly infested with the Flood and once again they get drawn into debate with its cybernetic guardians who spout protocols and cryptic details about an ancient race called the Forerunners.

The only difference is that this, we are told, will indeed be the last, the very final time. Not only will there be no more Halo rings, one way or another, but there will be no more Halo games. Creators Bungie will hang up the franchise to work on something new and let others create non-story-driven, spin-off games using their iconic characters and vehicles.

I have mixed feelings about this. I’m currently going through my second time finishing Halo 3. It’s a fantastic playground of reactionary tactics and rewarding explosions. Everything Bungie makes, their vehicles, weapons, and maps, all have that extra kick to them that make them better than the warfare goodies offered by others. But as my opening paragraph hints, I think that Bungie’s story-telling abilities have fallen into a bit of a rut. The first game did an excellent job of laying down a compelling concept. The cyborg-like Spartan warrior taking on a superior army made up of conquered alien races (a wink to the Battle of Thermopylae), the idea that it might be the aliens whose religion is threatened when first contact is made with humans, not the other way around, that their fanatical religion would drive them to want to self-destruct the entire universe like the suicide bombers that horrify us today, and that a planet might be more than a planet, but part of a system used to contain a plague of universal proportions.

Since first establishing these intriguing, intelligent concepts in Halo: Combat Evolved, little has been done to expand on them in either Halo 2 or 3.

While the Covenant are now fractured, with some of their group crossing over as allies, the Flood has become more organized, taking on the mindful direction of their new Gravemind leader. Cortana is now imprisoned by the Gravemind, placing her into the role of maiden-in-distress, and as Master Chief races to rescue her, he’s forced to realize, kind of, just how close their relationship has become…. without it actually turning into a kind of romance. These are fairly uninspired, rather mechanical plots, symptomatic perhaps, of a group of designers more in love with their game craft than their story craft.

For this reason I’m quite happy to have them end the story and allow the action to continue in different forms.

The gameplay of Halo 3 is extremely familiar territory. The style of combat and level design hasn’t changed at all, but rather has been made fresh with an extremely long list of technical upgrades, additions, and enhancements.

Now running on the Xbox 360 and in High Definition, the graphics are immaculate in detail. From a visual standpoint, the world of Halo, its much-loved characters, vehicles, weapons, and landscapes have never been more focused or realized. Every instrument panel, every formed armor pad, every tentacled proboscis shows evidence of having been thought through for hours. Part of the reason I’m playing through the game for a second time is that you can’t help but overlook many of these details on your first pass and so there’s much still to be discovered with each repeated visit.

I’m quite fond of the new collection of weapons and vehicles. From the bubble shield and dual-wielding Spikers that were first unveiled in the Halo 3 beta, to the flame-thrower, Brute Grab-Hammer, and Covenant Phantom (their version of the Wart Hog jeep) now available in the final game. The flame-thrower is a particular achievement as it is the first I’ve ever seen in a game that looks and behaves in a realistic manner. It spews out a jet of flame that not only looks convincing, but behaves it too. When you use it, you get the tangible sense that things are really being set on fire, and as you can imagine, for a world filled with diseased zombie-like creatures, it’s exactly what the doctor ordered.

My favorite vehicle by far is the new Chopper, a low-rider motorcycle that looks like it was designed by Heavy Metal magazine. It has two massive front wheels that pull its driver seat about in a wonderfully agile manner (especially compared to the behind-dragging Warthog). Not only does it come with two directional cannons that are easy to aim, but the front wheel is designed to “chop” as you run over items in your path. When I played a game of chicken against a Ghost and it crumbled into pieces as my Chopper drove through it, well, it was love at first chop.

Much has been made about the improved intelligence of the Brutes, the large Gorilla-like creatures who now sport Samurai-style armor. Through media demos and a documentary short, Bungie has promised a “pack dynamic” to the brutes, that their ability to coordinate together would offer new challenges. So far, nothing that the Brutes have done as a group has forced me to stop and think, to change the way I fight. Whenever I’ve come across a “pack” of brutes, I find they look for cover or attack me in turns, sometimes pounding their chests and charging. Nothing Coordinated. Mind you, that’s at the normal difficulty level and I admit I’ve yet to play the game on “Heroic” or “Legendary” where the enemies behave differently.

The Flood does have a new trick, something I didn’t notice until the second time through. The larger, Hunter-sized creatures have the ability to change their shape (like John Carpenter’s The Thing) quickly turning from two-legged humanoids into spidery crawlers, into wily leapers, it’s actually astonishing to watch.

All of these details and hidden elements come to life in the Theater, one of two new technical advances that represent the biggest engineering leap in the Halo franchise. I don’t know how much use it will get from the majority of players, but for the hard core niche, the ability to go back and watch your game as an interactive film will change the way you think about video games and their virtual realities. Not only can you watch a replay of the action (did you see how many times I flipped that Warthog?), but you can pause the game and move the camera around, completely and utterly, in all directions, in all areas of the game map, zooming in and out, discovering all the action that goes on in the game off-screen, the stuff you never see.

Without the theater, I wouldn’t know that the flame-thrower has a WWII-style dog face painted on its muzzle or that the flash light you use in the game is on the sides of Master Chief’s helmet and not on his gun. The Theater literally gives you the keys to the kingdom, allowing you access to every secret the game as to offer.

A big part of the Halo Franchise’s success comes from its introduction of co-operative play, where you and a friend fight side-by-side in the main story, rather than against each other in the multiplayer arenas. For this third installment, the game now offers that co-operative mode both over the internet and with four different players. One player takes on Master Chief while the other three play Elites. All four of you can then team up to act out complex strategies against the bigger enemies and more target-enriched battles. As I’m writing this before the game has actually been released in stores, I’ve yet to actually try out this co-op mode, simply for a lack of other players.

There are just as many people who buy the Halo games strictly for the online multiplayer games as there are those for the main story and adventure. And just as Bungie hasn’t changed the style of their combat or level design for the main game, they haven’t tried to re-invent the online version either. There are ten main maps to begin with, along with nine game modes, both categories offering a mixture of both the familiar and the new. Their match-making ranking service offers a handful of careful tweaks. You can still search for a game to play based on your skill, but there’s also a social playlist that allows groups of players to find matched games to join as well.

A new addition, one I think important, but surely to be overlooked by others is the option to change your character’s gender. You can choose to play as a female version of Master Chief and while the armor and look of the warrior won’t change, the voice and a number of other effects will to suit a female presence within. Women have become prominent Halo fans, especially now that all technology has become more social, and adding such a small option will no doubt make a big difference for those who discover it.

If there’s a future for Halo 3 beyond its launch, it’s in the impressive map editor included with the game called “The Forge”. Like the Theater, it represents the biggest engineering advance for the series as it allows fans to reshape maps from the game, creating their own versions by destroying landscapes, adding in new terrain, and even dropping in additional vehicles and weapons. To keep it a challenge, Bungie limits your edits using a currency system, where you’re given a set amount of dollars to spend in giving a map a makeover.

Beyond simply making cosmetic changes, you can actually open the editor as a playable game and then edit it while other players are running around in it. Meaning if you wish to drop a Scorpion tank onto someone to see what happens, you can. In this way, groups of players will be able to play around with the physics and the materials of the game, exploring all the possibilities and coming up with outrageous combinations.

Everything, the recorded films, the customized maps, the edited levels, screenshots taken of your friends posing in combat, all of the custom elements you can create can in turn be sent through a file-sharing option to your friends. Whereas the online maps and game modes of the previous Halo games have been limited in choice, and so became predictable over time, Halo 3’s new customizable tools will make sure the online side of Halo will stay fresh for years.

As much as I would have liked a better story, Halo 3 is of course a video game first and foremost, and as a first-person shooter it still offers the best action playground on the market. You can’t find a better combination of single-player, co-op, and multiplayer modes. It has one of the best catalogs of vehicles, weapons, and equipment, with popular selections for every type of combat and a well-balanced offering between both good and bad sides. Its world and its physics remain a favorite for geeks to experiment with, and all of the new advances and upgrades offered in this third-installment deliver a strong boost to all of those elements, right across the board. I may not spend much time discussing its ending with my friends, but thanks to all of the new editing tools, I’ll be playing online with them for years.