The last few weeks have seen more important videogame releases than
the entirety of the last year, and a few days ago, arguably the biggest
release of all hit store shelves: Halo 3. Bungie’s long-awaited
finale to their much-lauded trilogy has already managed to break all
kinds of sales records, and had a Pokémon game not also
been released this year, it would be a lock for best-selling game of
’07. Unfortunately, since Ashlee Simpson also sells tons of albums
every time she pauses from blowing Pete Wentz long enough to release a
couple tracks, sales records are no determinant of quality.
The good news is Halo 3 is exactly what fans of the
Halo series wanted in a sequel: It takes the best parts of the
first two games, adds one of the finest iterations of Xbox Live
multiplayer functionality ever created, and covers all of that gaming
goodness in a glossy sheen of pretty graphics, excellent sound work,
and well-designed maps that lend themselves to multiple playthroughs of
both the campaign (which helps when you have friends with whom to play
through the game in four-player co-op mode) and the multiplayer.
The bad news is that Halo 3 is exactly what fans of the
Halo series wanted in a sequel. These games—unlike the PC
first-person shooter titles they liberally steal from—lack any
creativity. Halo 3 is an amalgam of things that came before
wrapped in a glossy sheen, but that’s all it is. You’ll find no
originality, nothing before unseen, and nothing that will blow your
mind with how stunningly new it is—and if you didn’t like
Halo or Halo 2, nothing in Halo 3 is going to make
you smitten.
Even lacking innovation, Halo 3 is still intensely fun.
Between a single-player campaign that’s easily better than the
second—though not as good as the first—and a feature-rich
multiplayer component, there are excellent reasons why this game is
going to be the game on the 360 for years to come.