Halo 3 Review

There are those who said this day would never come...

What are they to say now?

Halo 3 is a game when played behind the lens of modern-day games does not hold up quite as well to many of it's successors. Take this review with a lens of 2007 in order to see what impact this game had in its time and how it has shaped this franchise going forward. Despite many loving Halo 2 as well, Halo 3 was the game that set the course for the future of Halo with many of the gameplay features and mechanics setting the new standard of what a Halo game should be. This game is one of the best video games of all time & I write this review now, not as a new player who has never played this game, but as an experienced player that quite literally grew up with this magical franchise.

I hope you enjoy!

This game is one of the best video games of all time

Video Review Coming Soon???

Tell that to the Covenant

The opening moments of Halo 3 instantly sends you right into the feeling of hopelessness as Chief crashes into Earth after hitching a ride on the Forerunner ship that the Prophet of Truth fled High Charity in. Now obviously, you knew Chief wasn't going to die in the opening moments of the game but it created a grounding of his character to show that he isn't as indestructible as we thought... and some of that may very well have been emotional damage from leaving Cortana behind. The opening jungle sequence is still one of my favorite environments in all of Halo. The beautiful tree lines with (still) superb lighting leads your way as you grasp with the realization that the covenant have hit Earth, your home. This realization hits even harder throughout the level as you encounter scripted events that happen in the world that make it seem like a living, breathing place. Walking up on a Brute that is about to brutally murder a marine and having the option to save him before it's too late is so very rewarding. Near the end of the level, Arbiter has this great moment describing how the Brutes treat their prisoners & how primal they truly are which illustrates perfectly how they came to power in the covenant. All of this is just the FIRST LEVEL of the campaign.

The scale of this game is absolutely breathtaking.

As you progress throughout this campaign, you get more variety than I've ever seen in a Halo game up to this point of release. You encounter wide open jungles, close quartered bunker, city streets and highways, a new mysterious installation, flood infested hives and so much more. The things that you can do within these sandboxes makes it all the more exciting with many returning weapons at your disposal as well as new ones. The BR is just an absolute masterpiece in Halo 3 with the assault rifle taking a bit of a backseat, despite it's return from Halo CE. New weapons like the Spartan Laser are SO MUCH FUN getting something formidable to fight the MANY new threats in this game. One of those threats being the absolutely gigantic and menacing Scarab which returns from Halo 2, however this return is a glorious one considering the Scarab fights are one of the coolest new campaign mechanics from this game. Boarding takes on an entirely new meaning when you take down a leg on a Scarab and quite literally jump on board to take it down from the inside. Vehicular combat is one of the most satisfying parts of Halo with the popular Warthog making its return alongside the Scorpion, Wraith, Ghost and many others. The scale of this game is absolutely breathtaking. The story, characters, world, vehicles, weapons, equipment all combine to make one of the best campaign's ever made.

The gameplay to this day holds up well and in it's time was an absolute master class of development by Bungie. Things like equipment pickups, new types of grenades, and interactive elements in the world were something Bungie experimented with here to continue to expand the sandbox. Not only that, but a new console generation gave us the opportunity to work with a new controller which improved the control scheme dramatically over Halo 2 utilizing a still PERFECT Halo control scheme that I still use to this day (Recon). Gameplay can't be mentioned without mentioning multiplayer, and man did Bungie deliver here...

Did he just teabag me?

Multiplayer in Halo goes together with campaign like Peanut Butter goes together with Jelly. Both amazing on their own but combine them together and you get something truly magical. What Bungie did with Halo 2's multiplayer was already impressive in its own right, but Halo 3 takes it to the next level. With brand new staples of Halo (now) being introduced with both Forge and Theater mode, you've got one of the best packages of games ever created. Forge was originally conceived by Bungie as being a map editor to just tweak weapons on the map and change some placement of items around in case they wanted to make design changes to improve map flows. They clearly didn't anticipate it being used to actually fabricate new maps for crazy game modes to be played such as Duck Hunt, Jenga, Fat Kid or Halo (yes, this was a custom game). What they ended up getting was a bunch of community members making some of the most amazing creations utilizing a glitch that allowed players to float objects in the air. Some of the best times of my life were spent playing custom games with randoms or friends alike until 3, 4, 5 am in the morning on these amazing and unique custom maps made with Forge. Forge is one of the single most important game modes that has ever launched new with an established franchise. Theater is on that same level as well introducing a way to create clips from your gameplay WELL before it became a popular thing to do on streaming services or built into the platform. Sharing these clips was easy by utilizing another huge proponent to Theater and Forge: File Sharing. Every single person had their own file share that they could share out to the community to spread their creations to the world. Bungie even curated these into the best stuff every single week to put a spotlight on these creators with something called Bungie Favorites.

Forge is one of the single most important game modes that has ever launched new with an established franchise.

The community wasn't just involved in creating content for themselves using Forge and Custom Game Settings however as Bungie routinely cycled in some of the BEST content created by the community into matchmaking for diverse offerings even past what their own DLC offered. This was for serious 4v4 ranked matches, but also the crazy action sack playlist that combined all kinds of crazy game modes created by the community and Bungie alike with new Forge maps cycled in. Hell, even Rooster Teeth got involved at the time by creating their own 'official' map and new game mode called Grifball which is a reference back to Grif from Red vs Blue. It was so popular to the point where Grifball went on to be pretty much a Halo sport beloved by the community.

All of this notwithstanding, we then got the BEST post-launch support that Bungie had delivered up to that point in time. Halo 2 had some good post-launch DLC, but Halo 3 takes the cake with 13 new multiplayer maps released in the 2 years following Halo 3's launch. One of those maps, Foundry, was released in the first map pack and became a pivotal map to shape the future of Forge in Halo as the entire map was able to be moved and re-arranged. Some of the first custom games were built on this map & showed Bungie there was a huge desire to make this type of content. That decision to include Foundry in the first pack ended up influencing Bungie's later ideas for maps as well... In the 3rd map pack, we got the MOST important map for Halo 3 custom games... Sandbox. This map was incredibly important as most community forge maps created after this point used this canvas as Bungie made the area significantly bigger & taller to build upon in Forge. Sandbox became the important home for both the Duck Hunt and Halo custom game modes. It set the precedent for all future Halo games forge canvases and set the franchise on a course for community generated content success.

Sandbox became the important home for both the Duck Hunt and Halo custom game modes.

Verdict

At the end of the day, Halo 3 isn't just the best Halo game of all time, it's one of the best video games of all time. What Bungie did was capture magic in a bottle once again with the perfect combination of campaign, multiplayer, and forge with so much more in between. Their love for the game was evident on the screen as well as in their weekly communications with the community. This one cannot be missed.

Halo 3 gets a...