This review is from my buddy LuckyIrish423.

Halo 3 continues Master Chief’s mission to finish the fight and end the conflict between the Covenant, the Flood, and the entire human race.

Bungie has brought all of it’s promises to life and brings the Halo universe to a whole new level. Halo 3 accomplishes an assortment of goals that were set out by Bungie. Halo 3 was designed well enough to enable both casual fans and hard-core fans to enjoy the game. They have achieved this diversity of gamers by altering the difficulty and setup of online. The campaign in Halo 3 has been changed by making the easy difficulty easier and heroic and legendary slightly harder. The online is setup so you can’t play people who are more skilled than you or less skilled than you unless you choose to.

Finish the Fight

The campaign is well designed and follows the Halo atmosphere. The story is involving enough to give you a satisfactory ending to the Halo franchise. The graphics are some of the best there are on the 360 and add a new demension to the Halo universe. The levels are detailed, and essential to the story of the game. However, more times than not there are those moments where you ask yourself, “Is there a reason I am doing this?” The campaign has alot of backtracking that gets very repetitive. The co-op campaign is one of the most enjoyable campaign experiences there is, but is almost essential. The reason for this is, because your partner in single player campaign couldn’t shoot himself with his gun down his throat. He also seems like he has been smoking that plasma gun of his, because he will stop and stare at walls while you are fighting for your life. Unless you want to want to see him get obliterated by enimies, he serves no actual purpose.  The campaign is also rather short, but has a higher replay value than the past two because of the ability to play for points and play with skulls.

New Toys

Halo 3 has expanded it’s horizan for vehicles, weapons, and abilities. They have broght back some old favorites, but none are as fun to use as the new ones. They added the spartan laser – a laser than destroys whatever it hits. A flamethrower has been added– a weapon that burns and causes enemies to catch fire. There are new gernades such as the spike gernade that will stick to anything it is thrown at. The energy swords are improved as well. You can now have “duels” with two swords attacking each other at once. The gravity hammer has been added–this will send anything you hit in the facinity flying. Aside from weapons, Bungie has actualy implimented a feature for the “x” button. Players and AI will be able to use equipment such as the bubble shield, deployable cover, and a health regenerator. Another favorite in the halo franchise are vehicles. The Brute Chopper– a mortercyle like vechicle and the elephant– a goliath transporter are just a couple of the new additions.

Howdy Neighbor

The multiplayer is massive, and this time around has 11 maps at release and a pack available for download. These maps have a range of biomes, including desert, forest, urban, and waterfront.

The maps each have their own unique features. The elephants and the man-canon are some reasons why you may want to return to a certain map. There is a large ammount of options availabe for you to play; slayer, capture the flag, infection, etc. Each game type has it’s own ranking system as well which is nice if your better at one game type than another. The ranking system is large and will take a good amount of time and skill to reach the higher ranks. There are no bonus’s for the ranks, so unless you want to make your self feel special there is realy no point in playing ranked. The matchmaking features in Halo 3 are pretty much the same as they are

Halo 2 meaning you have no real control over what you play. Halo chooses what map and gametype you will play and if you don’t like it you can quit the match (for the right price of course). The good thing about set servers is that there is hardly any lag or host advantage, but if the Bungie servers go down then you cannot play anything. What will keep people playing multiplayer over and over is the ability to customize your own maps to your liking and play them with your friends. It is called forge and you either build maps before you play on them or while your playing on them. This adds a real depth to the experience you will have online.

Popcorn anyone?

In my opinion, this is the single greatest feature in Halo 3, and that is the Theater. It should be implimented in every major multiplayer game. You can film and edit anything you do in Halo 3 including the campaign. Have a sick headshot? Create your own videos, and send them off to your friends or post them for others to see. All of those memorable moments that you wish you could watch again can be saved. You could spend hours watching clips of video alone. The only downside I have to this is that you need to be on Halo 3 in order to view the clips.