Finally, after playing Halo 3 for a good week, we’re ready with our review of Halo 3, a game you might have heard of recently. For starters, we’re not going to introduce you to Halo 3 or the Halo universe, as you probably know all of it by now. Full review after the break.

Finishing the fight
The Halo 3 single-player campaign, which is set to “finish the fight” against the Covenant, basically starts off where Halo 2 ended (and we all know how that ending was), taking you though 9 missions, offering very varied scenery from indoor, to forest and deserts, to everything you can imagine, really. As expected, it provides a decent ending to the trilogy, an ending that answers all, or most, of the ton of questions raised in Halo and Halo 2. It’s a satisfying campaign, although a few minor issues do occur, most noticeably, the AI, or lack of proper AI. The soldiers you’re fighting with throughout the campaign are, well, not that smart. Actually, sometimes they’re pretty retarded, but the game offers a wonderful solution to that: online four player co-op. The entire campaign can be played with up to four players over Xbox Live, which makes the campaign that much more exciting, and easier (on the harder difficulties). You’ll probably finish the fight once alone, and then finish it again in co-op mode.

Playing with others, online
Simply put, the online multiplayer aspect of Halo 3 is probably the best you’ll find on any console today. It’s very clear that most of the work went into making a great multiplayer experience, something that the predecessor is extremely well known for. You have all the popular modes, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the flag, Territories, and Infection, where one player is infected (as a zombie, that is), who’s goal is to infect the other players. Bungie has done a great deal of work balancing the matches and who plays against who. The 11 multiplayer maps are fairly balanced and vary a lot, some are more preferred than others, but that has always been the case in multiplayer games.

There is also a great customization feature, where you can select the color and emblem of your player, and there are a ton of stats and medals a lot of hard core gamers will appreciate. Also included is “Forge”, a sort of map-editor. While you can’t edit geometry and the map itself, you can paly around with objects items etc. The cool part is that this is all done in real time, while you’re playing with other players, which guarantees some memorable multiplayer moments.

Technically speaking
On the graphics and audio side, which is part of every review, Halo 3 neither impresses nor disappoints. For one, the game isn’t the best looking on the Xbox 360, but on the other hand, it doesn’t disappoint by any means. It delivers a smooth frame rate throughout the game, great looking player and enemy models, high-res textures, beautiful lightning (especially the HDR lightning), and virtually no in-game load times. The audio is top-notch, from voice acting to the music, the way you expect it to be.

In conclusion…
On virtually all aspects, Halo 3 delivers. It ends the story, answers the questions, and the multiplayer is in a league of its own. There are a few issues, like the AI and considering how much hype Microsoft has build up around Halo 3 and “next-gen” games on the 360, Halo 3 kinda disappoints on the visuals, especially when compared to graphic heavyweights like Gears of War. But all those issues pale in comparison to how much fun you’ll have playing Halo 3, online or offline, but most likely online, with a lot of other gamers.

Final score: 9/10