Also available on Xbox One and Windows Halo 3 was the series's first foray into HD. As the conclusion to Bungie's Covenant war arc, the slogan for the game was "Finish the fight;" hell, the Master Chief's last line in Halo 2 when asked what he was doing upon getting back to Earth was, "Finishing this fight." This was the Xbox 360's killer app and the reason most of the people I knew growing up bought a 360. I grew up poor and made sure the few consoles my mom was able to afford for me were always Nintendo's latest console, so I never owned Halo 3 until college, but when hanging out with others, I remember being blown away with all of my friends by the game's graphics. When the game came out in 2007, the graphics absolutely blew my mind. When replaying in 2022, even with the Series X upscaleing the Master Chief Collection version to 2160p, I kept thinking, "...this game kind of shows its age..." That said, graphics don't make or break a game, and while the game's textures may show its age a bit, the gameplay itself is absolutely phenomenal. The Covenant have launched a renewed and much larger invasion of Earth. Unfortunately, due to some of the events of Halo 2, Earth now has not only a Covenant invasion but also a new threat to contend with, one that could result in the glassing of Earth even if the Covenant are defeated. In a lot of ways, Halo 3's gameplay is "more of the same but now in HD." There aren't a lot of new gameplay mechanics or weapons, but the "Bungie's Halo" foruma has been pretty much perfected by this point. The story is pretty well told and wraps up the war with the Covenant pretty well, and the environments in which you fight are pretty varied from jungle to Forerunner structure to Covenant structure. You get to see some of the awkwardness of the human-Sangheli relations after they split off from the Covenant. World-building is something I always wanted more of in Halo, but Halo 3 does a pretty decent job of it. Halo 3 doesn't quite live up to Halo 2 in my opinion, but damn is it a good game nonetheless. It was the first game in the series to be made in HD, and while Halo 3 is your typical first entry in HD - it looks way better than the previous entries, but the textures leave a little bit to be desired. It's something we saw a lot with PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U, and Switch. Still, though, that's not to say the game looks bad, just that it hasn't aged as well as some games on the platform. Almost all Halo fans will have played this game by now, but Halo 3 was really the peak of Halo's popularity, so if by chance you've just gotten into Halo in the last 15 years, make sure you give this one a play (but only after you play Halo and Halo 2 first). My Rating - A |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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