Gaming Halo 3

[BlueYoshi]

[color=darkred]It's all kicking off. I saw people cueing up last night at 12 am.[/color]

[Darks Anthro]

This is my Idea for people who join clans on Halo 3.Their is no clans for Halo 3!!!!!!!!If you want clans go to Halo 2. If your interested in joining a XBL clan.......DO YOUR RESEACH!!!! Don't join any clan with out knowing the rules and restriction. Also Halo 3 is one of the best games I've played on any console followed by Legend of the Dragons for PS1, Conker's Bad Furr Day for the N-64, and Super Mario World 64 for the N-64. I advice people to think about playing with the honor of knowing that Live is not for being the best. Its for making friends acroos the world or down the road. Please read this post carefully and think before making a non-existent clan on Halo 3. Go to Halo 2 for that or join an Official X-Box Live Clan.

[Vigilance]

Halo 3 is one of the best game I have ever played. Yesterday I played the game and finish it in two hour because I play it on easy mode. The graphic to this game is very good. Gameplay to it is still fun as the last two Halo games. The sound to this game is very pleasing. Their is something else added to the game, it is called Forge. It is a place where you can edit maps like put Scorpion Tank, Ghost, Banshee, Mongoose, etc. Its a really cool feature for the game. So if you want to know more buy the game.

[Xyandar]

My friend bought Halo 3 at Midnight the night it came out and i went with him to the big opening at EB Games. He bought it and we played it until we beat it. I must say that the graphics have improved and look beautiful. The environment was amazing. Trees and bushes sway with the wind and leaves fall off trees and stuff...looks nice.

The enemies are awesome. The AI is challenging but not TOO challenging... Some enemies have improved in armor and weapons. Of course there are new weapons, enemies, and vehicles to make the game that much better. The storyline was pretty good... a bit different than other halo games but still awesome. Overall it is definately a good game i'd give it 4.5/5 myself.

[Guest The Blue Jihad]

Legendary is a joke. The AI is a joke.

FYI Bungie: ramping up enemy damage and damage resistance =/= ramping up difficulty

[Xyandar]

Do you mind explaining WHY you think legendary and the AI is a joke because I thought both were well done.

[Guest The Blue Jihad]

Short and sweet answer?

It's a joke because the only challenge in Legendary comes from the absurd damage imbalances. The AI itself is still utterly stupid and operates on the same kinds of simple patterns as before.

[Xyandar]

Yeah I see the slight damage imbalance but at the same time I like the extra challenge. I dont know if you're a Halo fan or not but I was really impressed with this game overall.

[James]

[color=#606060]I bought this two days ago and I'm nearly finished (I'm playing on um...Heroic difficulty? One down from Legendary).

I should preface this by saying that I was never a huge Halo fan; I often felt that the series was overrated.

The first Halo bored me quite a bit, although to be fair I never finished it - I just didn't have the interest to keep going with it. What I played certainly didn't interest me though.

Halo 2 was significantly better, mostly due to the fact that the level design had been improved. It certainly wasn't on the same level as various other shooters, but it was [i]better[/i] than the first game and [i]good[/i] by genre standards.

Lots of things were overrated though. Multiplayer and particularly dual wielding; I never understood why the latter was such a big deal and so "genre changing". I mean, yes, there are some convenient aspects to it...it can work well. But revolutionary? I didn't think so then and I still don't now.

Anyway...I liked Halo 2. I didn't think it was revolutionary or even "better than most" shooters. It was just good and sometimes it was very good.

I'm nearly finished Halo 3's campaign mode so I've had enough time to experience most of it.

While it's true that Halo 3 is "much the same", I think Bungie struck a good balance in general. Halo 3 is a more immersive experience in general; if I had to compare it to anything, I'd compare it to Half-Life 2. In terms of story progression and the way story is weaved into gameplay, Halo 3 seems far more capable and confident at striking the appropriate balance than previous Halo games.

Part of that probably does come down to presentation, admittedly. Halo 3's visuals are a step-up from Halo 2 (obviously) and as part of that, animation related to pushing forward the story is also improved. I think the overall effect is that the world feels a bit more alive - again, I'd compare it to Half-Life 2. Halo 3 is a bit rougher and less polished than Half-Life 2 when it comes to some aspects of presentation (especially facial animation), but still, it's an improvement overall.

In terms of gameplay...it's really hard to put my finger on what's better about this game.

I mean, for the most part, it really is just the same as previous titles. The interface is better, the weaponry is (in places) a bit more polished...there's a bit more variety and the pace is slightly better. It almost seems like there are lots of little improvements that ultimately add up to become more than the sum of their parts.

I haven't played multiplayer yet so I can't comment on that.

A.I. was mentioned here too. As far as I'm concerned, the A.I. is pretty much what you'd expect in a shooter. Is it innovative? No, not really. Enemies tend to be much better at physically dodging your attacks in Halo 3...but other than that I don't see much improvement. Some enemies are made tougher with extra armor and stuff, but really, none of this is a big improvement.

I read a lot about the enemies using tactics based on heirarchy. I didn't really see evidence of this at all. Enemies pretty much have set positions that they patrol and some enemies are quite good at dodging attacks (particularly grenades). But this dodging is about the only aspect that seems relatively clever. I didn't notice any real team behaviour or anything remotely like it.

Does that hurt the game? I don't think so. As I said before, it's pretty standard fare. You could only be disappointed with it if you were expecting something more. And if you were expecting something more, you're probably expecting too much of Halo. As I said earlier, I don't think this franchise has ever truly lived up to the hype.

Anyway, from what I've played, I definitely think it's the best Halo yet. Much nicer visuals (not quite on the Bioshock level, but probably somewhere around the Half-Life 2 level - again), better weapon balancing (for campaign at least), slightly improved enemies, improved story presentation and significantly better level design... it's all really a series of minor updates that come together to make a more engaging game.

In many ways, I think Halo 3 is what the first Halo should have been. Then, perhaps, it would have been at least highly evolutionary.

Still, I'm happy with it. It's the only Halo game I've bothered to buy and I'm glad I did. I've definitely been enjoying it all the way through; it hasn't bored me at all or annoyed me with pointless repetition. So I'm pretty happy with it and I'm sure Halo fans will be too.[/color]

[silpheedpilot]

[SIZE="1"][COLOR="SlateGray"]I daresay Halo 3 could quite possibly be one of the greatest games ever made.
Hands down, without a shadow of a doubt, easily.
I'll fight anyone who says its overrated because, well, it deserves the hype it gets. It really does. It's so accessible and so refined and has so many things going for it. Great story, amazing multi-player options, many standards in the FPS genre taken to a new degree.

Either way. The single-player itself was quite amazing. I beat it, oh, 6 hours after I left the midnight launch at 2 on the Heroic difficulty which sored me because half-way through I said to my buddies; 'Wow. This is pretty easy for Legendary.' and I get the reply; 'Oh, well, cause it's on Heroic'
So, oh boy, I gotta go back and beat it on Legendary sometime.

I'm not gonna lie and say I bought the game solely for the story because, well, it'd be a big fat lie. The multi-player was a big component as to why I bought Halo 3 in the first place other wise I would have just rented it.

I've played extensive multi-player on Halo 2 and Halo 3 gets my seal of approval in multi-player, what with all the game options and matchmaking options. Not to mention the fact you can save films and make screen shots.

Just about every weapon that has appeared in the Halo series makes it into this game with some balance changes. The Battle Rifle for one is AS lethal as before, though, it still sets itself apart at medium to medium-long ranges. The Assault Rifle isn't nearly as garbage as before and it makes for a good standard weapons. The SMGs are sexy now. They do far more damage, shoot far more faster, and don't recoil quite as much. The original pistol also returns but it's not the beast you'd expect it to be though knock down a foe's shield and one shot, even in the pinky toe, will kill him; tip for all you comboers out there.
The maps are alright. Bungie needs to release new ones quite quickly because about 4 out of the 12 are playable without utter frusteration. Some are just designed poorly.

All in all, the new story is good, the graphics are wonderful and pleasing to the eye and of course the multi-player still rocks the house and makes CS:S look like a game not even played anymore.[/COLOR][/SIZE]

[James]

[quote]I'll fight anyone who says its overrated because, well, it deserves the hype it gets. It really does. It's so accessible and so refined and has so many things going for it. Great story, amazing multi-player options, many standards in the FPS genre taken to a new degree.
[/quote]

[color=#606060]If you think about how much hype this game actually got...more than Gears of War and probably more than even Half-Life 2...can you really say that it lives up to that hype 100%? If it's the most over-hyped game in history, it should also probably be far and away the best game in history too, lol.

I mean, I think Halo 3 is great. It really is very refined and polished in many respects - you can see the years of evolution in the franchise all coming together in Halo 3. But it's not a revolution and it does little to dramatically advance the genre (at least in single-player; I [i]do[/i] think that the Forge concept is awesome, even though I haven't played multiplayer yet). So I'm really referring to the core gameplay in the single player mode there.

The shortness is a bit of an issue too. Heroic difficulty isn't quite enough, but Legendary...I don't know. Do I want to play the game with the same exact A.I., except the enemies just take more hits to kill? That's not more "difficult" as such, it's just more annoying. To each his own, I guess.

Even incorporating my experience with Halo 3, I can probably safely say that no FPS game has impressed me as much as Half-Life 2 did. At least, Half-Life 2 set a single player standard that other games haven't really matched yet. The only exception might be Bioshock, but Bioshock has a fairly different focus than either Half-Life 2 or Halo.

Having said that, Halo 3 is still quite different to Half-Life 2 in some respects. The world is far more static - far less interactive. The game is more specifically focused on blowing up everything in sight, which means there is pretty much no puzzle solving whatsoever.

This aspect is not necessarily a negative, it just means that Halo 3 is a very specific type of shooter. It does what it sets out to do very well, but I wouldn't say that it redefines the entire genre in any particular way - mostly it seems to borrow concepts that already exist and implement them all incredibly well.

That alone is very positive and makes the game great fun, but it doesn't make the game revolutionary in the way that a great deal of media have portrayed.[/color]

[silpheedpilot]

[SIZE="1"][COLOR="SlateGray"]I don't know. If you ask me I look at Half-Life 2 as kinda sub-standard. The weapons were kinda lame, the vehicle sections were really weak, the story was convoluted beyond repair.

Now, I'm not saying it was a bad game in any way because I guess it's still the 'BEST FPS EVAR!!' but it's kinda like an F-22 Raptor fighter jet compared to a F-15 Strike Eagle.

The F-22 is TOO stealthy, it's TOO agile, it's TOO powerful.
The F-15 is just powerful enough to do it's job and it does it to the T without all the red tape that the cost of the F-22 entails.

So Halo sets out to create an accessible and refined gameplay experience with amazing multiplayer while Half-Life 2 set out to do it all in one fell swoop with amazing AI intelligence and all these amazing puzzle sections combined with all these intense combat scenarios and to me I just felt unimpressed because it wasn't that amazing.

I still get the feeling that people hate Halo cause it's the best. You can blame the 'poor AI' and 'poor level design' all you want but I look at Call of Duty, Half-Life 2, and other FPS in the exact same way.
Call of Duty had some of the nicest level design ever. As a matter of fact; France never looked so good but those Nazis just loved standing there and getting shot in the head.
Those combine soldiers sure are smart! They strafe.
Splicers? My god! Nothing has ever ran at me and tried to hit me with a pipe before! Revolutionary![/COLOR][/SIZE]

[Guest The Blue Jihad]

Straight-up, I loathe patterns. Doesn't matter which game. If I can see the slightest little hint of an AI pattern, I'll exploit it like crazy.

Though then again, I also exploit human patterns in multiplayer, so maybe I'm just an *******.

[Charles]

I'm surprised with just how good the visuals in this game are. Basically, a bunch of subtle elements work together well enough to make Halo 3 just as astounding as Bioshock and Gears of War--just in different ways. The lighting engine and colors, in particular, are what gives Halo 3 a very distinctive "mood." For example, some levels look very saturated and washed out, while others look extremely lush. Little touches, like the way your character's eyes adjust to the light, add to the experience. The overall art direction is better than its peers--probably superior to Bioshock's simply because Bioshock had a very "plastic" look to it. A lot of people are heavily criticizing the visuals--going as far as to call the game "Halo 2 HD" but they obviously haven't played the game. Currently I prefer the visuals over what I've seen of Killzone 2--simply because Killzone 2 looks so drab and gray.

I'm with James in the sense that I have always felt that the Halo series has been somewhat overhyped--at least in terms of basic mechanics. Over a period of intermittenly suffering through the first Halo's singleplayer, I finished it--but could not bring myself to finish the Halo 2's campaign. However, as of today I have already finished Halo 3's singleplayer. The key differences this time around are the pacing and level design, I think. The best shooters, I find, tend to move the player from one well-designed room, to the next, while applying a different level of strategy in each one. The Halo games features some great basics--like some of the best AI in the genre, the recovering health meter, and vehicles--but the way it was all structured was poor, to say the least.

Like Gears of War, Halo 3, on the other hand, almost asks the player to solve a puzzle each time they progress to a new checkpoint. On the higher difficulties, I found myself modifying my strategies and approaching each room in a variety of ways until I found the best method of progression. Although it could be argued that the other Halo games were structured similarly, the difference here is that the shooting was not made cumbersome by endless repeating corridors or needless backtracking. Furthermore, the vehciles were varied enough to break up the standard action in the way that they were meant to. Bungie has finally made a very open-ended shooter that actually works on an epic scale and the first "great" Halo is the result.

I haven't played much online yet, but the ability to veto maps, remain with people you've played with, and the overall customization/sharing, really helps this one live up to the hype. Definitely more feature-rich than I was expecting.

[John]

[quote name='silpheedpilot'][SIZE=1][COLOR=SlateGray]Splicers? My god! Nothing has ever ran at me and tried to hit me with a pipe before![/COLOR][/SIZE][/quote] I could really see that changing after that previous post of yours. :)

[James]

[quote]I still get the feeling that people hate Halo cause it's the best. You can blame the 'poor AI' and 'poor level design' all you want but I look at Call of Duty, Half-Life 2, and other FPS in the exact same way.
Call of Duty had some of the nicest level design ever. As a matter of fact; France never looked so good but those Nazis just loved standing there and getting shot in the head.
Those combine soldiers sure are smart! They strafe.
Splicers? My god! Nothing has ever ran at me and tried to hit me with a pipe before! Revolutionary!
[/quote]

[color=#606060]I can't speak for those who "hate" Halo, because I certainly don't. But it's probably not the epitome of first person shooters either. And I should also point out that I don't think the A.I. in either Half-Life 2 or Bioshock was revolutionary. I simply mean that Halo's wasn't - not that H-L 2 or Bioshock's were.

Half-Life 2 actually brought a lot of new elements to the table and implemented them well, where Halo 3 (and all Halo games, really) have a tendency of standing on the shoulders of great games and incorporating popular elements that already exist.

As I said though, I think Halo 3 does this incredibly well - and there's merit in that. But when people suggest that Halo somehow redefined FPS games...I don't really see much evidence of that.

In terms of A.I. and stuff...I think you illustrated my point. Most FPS games contain enemies that use pretty basic A.I. Expecting more of Halo is probably expecting too much.

I suppose one of the bigger differences is that in Half-Life 2, the Combine talk to each other, they relate with NPCs and they generally seem to be more lifelike (and sinister - just remember the opening train station sequence in Half-Life 2).

There are a couple of enemies who have that element of realism in Halo 3, but it isn't consistent.

And there's no question that Halo (the first game) suffered from generally mediocre level design. Halo 2 improved this somewhat and I think Halo 3 has nailed most of it.

Level design shouldn't really be brushed aside, either. It's a pretty fundamental aspect.

I suppose my overall point is that Halo 3 is a great game - certainly the best Halo. But Halo as a franchise has always been massively overrated. Sometimes the games that Halo has borrowed ideas from are not given their own due credit, which is a shame.

Overrated doesn't mean bad, it just means overrated. An overrated game can still be brilliant.[/color]

[Japan]

[COLOR="DarkRed"]After playing and beating the campaign mode I have to say: Grunts are freaking awesome and I LOVE how melee weapons kick butt. I suck at targeting and shooting but I am pretty good at melee attacks.

I could of sworn I heard a grunt hum the halo theme. I also love how they said things like "Monster!" and, "Feet don't fail me now." I really love the gravity hammer. The recording of gameplay is awesome and I hated the Flood. Reminds me of Silent Hill or Resident Evil.[/COLOR]

[Allamorph]

[quote name='Japan_86][COLOR="DarkRed"']I also love how they said things like "Monster!" and, "Feet don't fail me now." [/COLOR][/quote]
[FONT=Arial]My favorite is [I]"He was my best friend!"[/I]

(I'm posting around here more than usual. Odd.)

[B]Edit:[/B] I take that back. My all-time favorite came back in Halo 2. I was co-opping with a friend of mine, and we were cleaning Covenant out of someplace or other with blue walls, and he decided he was going to charge up into this tower thingy that we knew had about five or six Grunts in it. No problem, right?

The minute he busts into the tower, a Grunt pastes him with a stickie to the face. And just before my friend died, I [I]swear[/I] I heard the Grunt say [I]"Well, [U]that[/U] sucks."[/I] Funniest thing I ever heard.[/FONT]

[Guest Sakurazukamori]

[quote name='Tombstone'][COLOR="Navy"]I'm curious. Did anybody get Halo 3 yet? Does it live up to the hype? What are your thoughts about it?[/COLOR][/QUOTE]

My expectation about Halo 3 was high once I got it. I started playing it till 4 in the morning, then slept for an hour, and went back to school…came home and played some more. Yet, even though its good…I’m still sticking with Gears of War. I was doing story mode with some of my buds and then, my character was glitching, tend to lag on me and started to die out of no where a couple of times. I got irritated.

I bought it in the day of the launch. Though I work in the launch so I got mines pretty quick ^_~!

[quote name='The Blue Jihad']Legendary is a joke. The AI is a joke.

FYI Bungie: ramping up enemy damage and damage resistance =/= ramping up difficulty[/QUOTE]

Legendary edition of Halo 3 (the helmet) was pretty corny in my perspective. I bought the original one only.

Legendary? Hmm all I can say…Halo is something I got interest due to the second one…so I have no Idea for the first game, only heard people’s opinions really.

[quote name='silpheedpilot'][SIZE="1"][COLOR="SlateGray"]
Either way. The single-player itself was quite amazing. I beat it, oh, 6 hours after I left the midnight launch at 2 on the Heroic difficulty which sored me because half-way through I said to my buddies; 'Wow. This is pretty easy for Legendary.' and I get the reply; 'Oh, well, cause it's on Heroic'
So, oh boy, I gotta go back and beat it on Legendary sometime.
[COLOR][/SIZE][/QUOTE]

6 hours! So you spend an all nighter? Gah, If I didn’t have school I would have gone further wit the game. Gotta say now that’s impressive.