Warning! The following review holds heavy spoilers for Halo 3 and the series’ storyline in general. If you haven’t played the game yet and care a bit about its narrative, I highly recommend you NOT read the below text. Otherwise, you are most welcome to click the link below and crawl into my parlor.

I roam through the eternal, lost corridors that is my fading memory; to either side of not walls of steel or concrete but gigantic rows of filing cabinets. Some have names and random complex numbers; others, simply dates and times – while yet others are marked with murderous sprays of blood that act as a warning sign. It is through these corridors that I walk along the rows arranged by date and time; several files in hand, the single goal to find when it originated.

The first file is but a memory; clutched out of an intense desperation not to loose it – yet at the same time, one can easily see the loose sheets that stick out of the corners of the folder are an incredibly jumbled one; fallen prey to the entropy and natural deterioration that comes with a diseased mind. It is little more than tattered remains at this point, easily being mixed in with other games and incidents that were similar to it – yet not exactly the same. It is, quite frankly, the last shreds of the memory I have of starting the fight, way back several years ago when I first played the original Halo.

It holds tatters of that lovely time of gaming – the era of Half Life, Diablo 2, Civilization III and other fond memories. Remember back then? The console wars were barely even getting started, and both PS2 and Xbox fanboys used to occasionally pick on the Gamecube owners together. It was also the year of emerging horrors such as EA’s The Sims and Red Faction. But I digress; I can’t actually remember when I first got to play the original Halo; all that I can remember that it was at my cousin’s house in Malaysia, and I spent almost the entire vacation playing it and selfishly hogging his console so that I could finish it.

Despite never again getting to play Halo CE after that, the memory of the game still lingered; the story planted in my mind like a seed ready to blossom when the time was just right. This is the second file in my hand; this one a fair bit more organized and less tattered. It has a date too. June 2005, the month where I finally had an opportunity to purchase an Xbox during my Army tenure in Singapore – an edition that came with Halo 2 in particular. Remembering the first game let me get into the second one easily enough; and I had a blast playing through the storyline. I was once more living the ‘fight’ that had been started so long before. Although it took me just a day or two to finish the game, I got playing online and loved the experience… for a while, at least.

Eventually, even the updates didn’t help the feeling of staleness that came with playing too much – even with good friends amongst the Singapore Brotherhood of the Box community (those folks ROCK) to play with, it just…”withered away” would be the best description. Like how one would gnaw on a sweet apple, till there was nothing left but a bitter hard core. Maybe the diehard would be able to savor even that core and its seeds – but to me, there was little left. Going online to fight the same bunch of foul-mouthed youngsters lost its appeal, and soon the Halo 2 DVD remained on the back burner; loosing its place to Burnout Revenge and F.E.A.R. for the PC, while more filling elements like System Shock 2 burned it’s presence far more effectively than Halo ever had. But still, the Master Chief’s odyssey remained fresh in my mind. Halo’s story never really left me – in fact, it grew on and expanded – its long roots winding their way to my imagination and blackmailing it into creating the monstrosity bastard child known as the Crossoads of Fate (shameless plug intended).

Imagining how a story goes and experiencing it first-hand is different. So once more, I patiently waited for Halo 3. And it came; adorned with the many ads and launch parties all over the world – some filled to the brim with spoilers; others full of the marketing dribble that expands like some sort of Zerg infestations, falling upon the barriers and shields of the few, brave commanders with enough cynicism to resist such hype. With that said, I’m sort of glad I was never in that battlefield, though; never one of those commanders that had to field massive armies of T1-T3 bots just to keep the hype at bay, or those that had to spam Protoss Carriers just to make sure “all their base” didn’t belong to Microsoft.

Temptation and desire from the hype urged my senses to wait; to spend just that little bit extra so I could buy the Legendary edition and get the extra artwork, the Helmet (if not for myself, for my brother at least). Thankfully, temptation was squashed by the armored heel of practicality. With the legendary edition not only being a fair bit more expensive, it was also only available in Dubai – quite distant from where I’m staying, sadly. So I brought the normal set, with just the Halo 3 DVD. What followed suit was three evenings of constant playing and fiddling around with the game, till it now lies within the case cover; the Xbox 360 firmly switched off and put aside as the game ended, and the story came to a finish.

I had finished the fight. It was done. Finally, after almost five years – it had ended. The only thing I could feel then…was relief, and the simple, almost angry thought of ”What the…hell?” Now, before this turns into too much of a rant (horribly too late for that, though), I’ll get the relevant non-story and review bits out of the way. Halo 3 is actually fairly well made from a technical standpoint and has several improvements over its predecessors (especially over Halo 2).

The graphics are of course, prettier – but it really didn’t matter to me, considering I was playing on a tiny 21-inch SDTV. I don’t think it’d matter even on a 40-inch HDTV though – Gears of War still beats it terms of looks at least. That, and I think if the bloom were to be turned up anymore, Microsoft would’ve ripped off Checkerboard Nightmare by doing the whole “stab you in the face with lasers” thing. Still, I liked the new look on the flood – they really seem freakishly disgusting now. The Brute armor was well done too, and the new Spartan armors are great. However, I wish they’d added a bit more detail to the older vehicles. Their textures hardly changed at all, as did the models – it’s like they ported them over directly from Halo 2 and just made them shinier. This is a stark contrast to the amount of effort they’ve put into the Brute’s vehicles – what with all the moving parts, the details and simple ruggedness of the thing.

The control scheme has changed a bit, moving some of the older controls around to make room for extra features such as the deployable equipment – something that took only a little time to get used to, thankfully. Game play handles much the same as previous entries, so no big surprises there. Covenant Grunts are still the same with their highly funny and amusing voices – although it can get annoying at times; same with the Marines.

Weapons are a fair bit more balanced though, with a few new ones present along with an older one. My personal favorite is the Gravity Hammer (Remember that big hammer Tartarus was carrying at the end of Halo 2? Yah, you get to use that baby now) and the pistol-esque Maulers. I mean, getting to run around with two shotguns in hand is pretty damn awesome, if you ask me. The only thing wrong with it was the tiny amount of ammo they gave, not to mention the stupidly short range. However, they made the Needler a heck of a lot more powerful and awesome – pity you can’t dual wield it anymore. Most of the new weapons are mostly belonging to the Brutes – but all the classics are there. The Assault Rifle makes a comeback, as did the old pistol from Halo CE (albeit, without the scope). The Battle Rifle’s still there, as is the shotgun. Covenant weapons have been given a slight boost in stats, and overall they are pretty damn effective now.

The AI hasn’t changed much at all, and is still pretty crappy – especially those of your allies. Although they do flank to a certain degree, there path finding is incredibly chop-shop work – especially when on vehicles. The concept – in theory- is actually nice. You can sit around and stare at the scenery while the AI drives and even takes the gunner position. Sorrowfully, in practice if you put an AI on the turret and drive around, it’d much rather shoot at the sun or the rocks like some dumb retard on crack than at the SHINY HUGE TANK that’s shooting at us. Alternatively, if you take the turret and start shooting, either the AI drives around like an 8-year-old and bangs every available wall or surface constantly, or it thinks it’s a WW2 Zero pilot and tries to kamikaze right into the enemy tank resulting in much hot, blue death and rag doll physics for all. It’s annoying, really. Halo 2’s AI, while weak, was still better than this in terms of the vehicles – Halo 3 feels like a step back.

Thankfully, that’s just the AI. The vehicles are moderately fun to drive. I like the new Brute vehicles – they look very mish-mashy and cobbled together and for some reason feel a bit more alive than the regular Covenant counterparts. The Hornet is a blast to fly; even more so than the Banshee. I don’t like how they took out the machine gun from the Scorpion, though, but I can see the reason for balance – plus it gives another player an opportunity to ride on the thing without being so horribly exposed/under armed.

Coming to the game play, it’s reasonably a bog standard. Everything is just like Halo 2 and the game handles like your average shooter. Deployable equipment makes for a more interesting experience – although arguably, the only ones that could possibly be called ‘effective’ are the Bubble Shield, the Deployable Cover and maybe the Grav Lift- although the latter is mostly useful in grabbing skulls than anything else. But a bog standard isn’t necessarily bad – it was still fun to play through it, especially smiting my foes with the power of the Gravity Hammer, so I wouldn’t call it an unsatisfactory experience from that point of view. A headshot on an unsuspecting foe is STILL a headshot after all, even if it was assisted by auto-aim!

What I would call unsatisfactory however, is some of the throwbacks to Halo 1/Halo 2 in the levels. Although the Flood level in Halo 1 was fun, it was still significantly repetitive and got tiring quickly. To see not just one, but TWO flood levels here is incredibly annoying. What’s even more annoying is that both are only flood levels. At least in prior games, the other levels that involved the Flood also had Covenant fighting against them AND you, adding a significant dynamic to the whole thing. Remember seeing that fun scene in Halo 1, on the last level? The corridor where the Covenant were camping on one side, while the flood were attacking from the other? It was fun to watch them blow the crap out of each other and just sit by the sidelines – or alternatively dodge and weave through the firefight in an attempt to get through the other side. Both options were fun, entertaining and largely unscripted – yet there’s none of that dynamism here in Halo 3. The only few sequences were you saw the enemy AI fight against the Flood were the Brutes near the last level, when you go to the stupid Prophet Truth. Even then, the Flood were sort of your allies, so it just wasn’t the same.

Especially in earlier levels with the Warthogs, it just didn’t really feel as fun as it was in Halo 2, when you were fighting along the highway. At least then you were in a definite environment – one that had a direction and setting. In Halo 3, it kept being incredibly random – switching from wide open areas to narrow corridors, never truly deciding between each. Although some might like it, I didn’t one bit – especially with the horrible AI’s driving. Each time I came to an open area, it was first unsure where exactly to go, and then on top of that it – getting to where you wanted to go was inordinately difficult. When you were on the New Mombassa Highway in Halo 3, it was possible to just throttle past most of the roadblocks all the while screaming “YAAARGH!” as your gunner tried to kill the dozen ghosts from the 3-4 roadblocks you had just rushed through. And then of course, you get the Scorpion and get to blast your way through everything else, before finally building up to the dead end and the fight against the Scarab.

Speaking of Scarabs, is it just me or were there too many of them here? I mean, fighting the first one was an epic experience, especially with the build-up that came with seeing it appear so many times. But then the experience sort of became “Meh. How many of these things ARE there?” after destroying the second scarab and the third. They just didn’t seem like the incredibly dangerous and destructive enemies anymore and were honestly too overdone. It was as if the folks over at Bungie literally ran out of things to attack you with and decided to just throw double big bosses at you. This smacks me significantly as laziness. Even in Quake 4 (a game that in all rights should pale before Halo 3 but surprisingly shines), you never really saw the same giant boss twice, save for the Harvesters. Instead of the second pair of Scarabs, beating off a Brute armored counter-rush or maybe even a full bunch of Banshees would’ve portrayed them at being a fair bit more competent and yet at the same time more desperate, considering the situation.

Hell, this was the level with the friggin’ Mongoose for heaven’s sake – you could’ve made the enemy forces such that speed (not even stealth – just pure speed and driving) would be a more important thing over firepower or trying to destroy everything (which would’ve led to your doom). Imagine the AA Wraiths being protected by an outer, impenetrable ring of armor – and the only way to get in is to race past it before they noticed, go up a ramp and jump right into the ring holding the Wraith. All the while your going “WOHOO!” as you make a safe touchdown beyond all the forces, toast the AA Wraith and then forced to make a quick getaway through a series of ramps and jumps as Ghosts do the same and come to chase you down from behind. How much more dramatic and tense would that have been compared to running around the legs of a Scarab and cursing the AI buddy that can’t shoot for peanuts?

And then there was the copycat last level. Sure, the “get away from the explosion before it all goes to hell in a Warthog over a race track full of huge obstacles” worked awesomely well in Halo 1, but the execution here was not only stale but also repetitive. Going a little bit of the way in the Warthog would’ve been good and a nice throwback to Halo 1, one that’d fit in almost perfectly – but they went and made the course too long and too repetitive. Even though Halo 1 had a repetitive course as well, it was spaced out such that you never really noticed it all that much – and at the end of each repetitive segment was something new. That, and watching as not just the Flood, but the Covenant and Forerunner Sentinels duke it out in a free-for-fall was incredibly entertaining. If they could’ve done something more than just the Flood vs. Sentinels (maybe had some Brutes or something), not to mention had they done a shorter version of the same track (inclusive of HUGE jump) and then maybe switched the pace to something a bit more different it’d have come out as something far better.

Still, I guess it was fun enough. It could’ve been loads better, but it was still fun. I’d normally review multiplayer as well, but since I haven’t gotten XBL just yet (and the temptation to play with high-pitched foul-mouthed 13 year olds is thankfully lacking) I’m going to leave that part out of the review. However, what I will include are the two things Bungie finally did right: the Theater and Forge.

Forge is essentially a modder’s dream come true. It’s a special mode that allows you to load up any map and then modify everything in it – from scenery, to weapons placement and even spawn points. Gone are the days of soft modding maps and risk being banned from XBL – in Forge, you can pretty much edit a lot of options, creating any number of permutations and combinations for online or offline play. However, it’s more of a semi-modding tool than a fully-fledged one, though, so it’s not the be-all and end-all of modding by a long shot. Without the ability to add bots or AI, it’s actually fairly useless in single player, so the only real place it shines is in multiplayer mayhem.

However, the other neat addition is the Theater. Although not exactly new, you can use the theater to record movies and replays of any online match or even the campaign (although when watching campaign replays you can’t rewind) from any angle, allowing you pause, forward or rewind to the really juicy bits. You can take screenshots and even movies/clips and then upload them to others. Although there isn’t a way to transfer it from your Xbox 360 to the PC without a TV capture card, its still possible to share it with your friends on XBL. I can see this (and Forge) being an incredibly awesome tool for those that may dabble in Machinima. Gotta wonder just how long it’ll be before the folks over at Red vs. Blue use this to make more series. Maybe there doing it now, I really have no clue.

That’s about it as far as a “review” is concerned; from here on out: its rantin’ time!

What bugs me most about Halo 3 is not it’s spotty AI, game play or even the shortness of it’s campaign – it’s the utter lack of effective story telling. I brought Halo 3 neither out of desire of multiplayer, nor out of desire of meddling with Forge. I brought it out of the desire to finally finish this fight, to find out what happened to the Master Chief, Earth, Halo and the hot chic…er, I mean Cortana.

Now, I’ve read most of the Halo novels and absolutely loved the story. Although it doesn’t compare to titans like System Shock or pretty much anything from Arthur C. Clarke, Halo presents a fairly good, action sci-fi story to read and just enjoy. The amount of solid back story they’ve given to the game is pretty good; but it’s a pity they haven’t actually used any of it in Halo 3.

Bungie had an opportunity here, with all the advertising and marketing and what-not to make something truly epic and downright awesome. They had the backstory, they had the characters – the protagonists, the antagonists, everything. Halo 3 could’ve really lived up to the hype and stolen all the single player acclaims from BioShock …but honestly? Bungie goofed. Either that, or they really don’t care about a good story. Either way, there are so many wasted opportunities in this game’s story that it’s nothing short of a crime.

From the very start itself, everything was incredibly abrupt. You’re simply thrown into the fight, with no indication of what happened to Earth in the events after Halo 2. There’s no recounting of how the Arbiter and Johnson managed to get back to Earth; nor of how Earth itself is still alive after the Brute invasion. I could go on and on, but you get the picture. Things were simply too abrupt a start in my opinion – and truthfully, not as dramatic as it could’ve been. I also don’t like the fact that they’ve taken out the multiple viewpoints they had in Halo 2. Playing as the Arbiter then gave a nice feeling of dimension and depth to the entire thing. It struck me then of being similar to Half Life: Opposing Force in many ways – save a fair bit more fluid. In Halo 2, we got a chance to see from the inside, the Covenant fracturing into two. Although such details weren’t exactly possible here in Halo 3, Bungie could’ve still done something easily similar – if only to portray just how much of a battle-turner the Master Chief really was.

For example, if in the start you were able to play a Terran Marine or ODST instead of the Master Chief, and base it on activities just hours before when the MC was on High Charity, you’d be able to construct a picture of just how desperate things were on Earth as you fought in retreat after retreat in the face of superior opposition even as the Elites turn to help them, and Sgt Johnson arrives. It’d add a bit of backdrop to the situation when he finally arrives – imagine seeing it from the second perspective on the battlefield as your entire battalion is being forced into retreat, rather than the random camera; the Prophet’s ship arrival – a star in the bright sky; growing steadily larger – and then the second one breaking off and landing elsewhere.

If Bungie had done all of that first, and then moved to the crash site and revealed the form of the Master Chief finally coming in, imagine just how many hoots and shouts that would’ve brought in? It would’ve improved the entire thing twice over, at the minimum. That feeling of pushing the Brutes back would’ve been a lot more substantial in the subsequent campaign when you played as the MC and single handedly beat them back.

If you really wanted to show just how badass the MC is, you could even have a third perspective – one amongst the Brutes, sent specifically to kill the Demon. He could’ve been the Master Chief’s shadow, following his footsteps and swearing vengeance for the Covenant as he smashes through the human lines in hot pursuit. Although the quest for revenge really isn’t much of a plotline, it’d go to show just how devastating the MC’s effects on the Brutes were, as well as the Covenant as a whole. It would also go to show just how dangerous the SPARTANS as a whole were considered. You could have up played just how badass the Chief was…but again, another wasted opportunity.

Speaking of badass, I really, really, REALLY hate what they did to Sgt. Johnson. I mean, seriously, I’m furious not at the fact that he died, but that Bungie gave him such a pussy death. For the love of GOD, this is Sgt. Johnson – short of the Chief himself, he’s pretty much the most badass soldier in all of Halo. Rather than just have him lying on the floor saying “let me go out in a bang” like in some romantic chic-flic, he should’ve gone out in a tremendous blaze of Glory. Say what you will, but Bungie could’ve really up played his death into something incredibly epic. Instead of just watching him die to the bastard that was the Monitor, imagine if Johnson had stayed behind to hold back the Flood? In after awesome, climatic battle against waves of Flood where he first starts with a machine gun, switches to a shotgun and then goes down to knives and grenades, if he had gone out via triggering a large bomb (maybe with a full bunch of fusion barrels?) and taking a full chunk of the Flood with him, it would’ve been a far, far more fitting end. Hell, the sheer number of one-liners one could put there, not to mention the badassery! Sgt. Johnson was simply made for that Rambo-esque death sequence, and I don’t care what you say – I’d have gladly parted with my hard-earned money just to see that one cut scene over everything else we’ve seen in H3 till now. I don’t care how long that cutscene would have to be – the simple sight of Sgt. Johnson singlehandedly kicking the collective asses of all the Flood in a last blaze of glory is akin in awesomeness to seeing Arnie’s last stand against the original Predator, or Lt. Jean Razak’s demise in Starship Troopers: Roughneck Chronicles.

Still, as disappointing as it all was, the ending cookie after the credits is what really did it in for me. Condemning the MC to an endless, uncertain fate in a hulk in the middle of nowhere? God, Bungie, if you wanted a reaction, you’ve very well got one. The ending was definite closure – but it would’ve been better if you left him dead and finished it. But then I forgot, how else could you milk the franchise without the MC? Other than Ensemble Studio doing the prequel Halo: Wars, that is.

The endings were really too abrupt though – too many loose ends remained open, while the memorial scene really didn’t grab me either. The only thing that did was Cortana’s look on her face as she watched the Chief go back into the freeze pod. Poor girl; she’s left floating out there with nothing to do, save watch the MC sleep. That was really the only saddening bit to the entire story – and even then, only due to the resemblance from the Futurama episode where Fry’s dog ends up waiting for him and never forgetting (the only Futurama episode ever to bring a tear to my eye out of sadness as opposed to laughter). Otherwise, they took what could’ve been an epic fight of the ages, and turned into a middling performance with only a few good bits.

Its why, in my mind that Halo 3 will never be an over-hyped game that was bad. It’s an over-hyped game’s that, while not living up to the marketing scheme, is still actually fun to play. It’s still not something I’d recommend to buy if you don’t have access to (or don’t want to play on) XBL or Multiplayer, though – but its definitely worth renting or borrow, if only to have the joy of using sticky grenades on your foes and smiting them with glowing hammers of DOOM!

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