... aaaaand we did it! Just under the wire, to boot! Halo 3 has been conquered -- on Legendary, no less -- in but a day. The fight is finished!
And what a finish it was. Brian's touched on this, but I want to reiterate how true it is: This game is the culmination of all things Halo. In practically every way, it's everything you could ever want from a game in the series, and then some. We all already knew about how feature-rich the game is and how it's really over-delivering on what a sequel has to be. But what those who haven't played it yet don't know, though, is how the campaign takes the best of the previous Halo single-player experiences, leaves (almost) all of the bad out and throws the thing into overdrive.
By the end of the game, you'll be knee-deep in loving homages to past moments in the series (the last half of the game, in particular, will have fans of the original's best levels re-living the "glory days") and loving every minute of it. It's striking just how much Bungie's borrowed from their past to influence their best work yet, but it never feels redundant, nor cheap. In fact, the story and gameplay are better for it -- we've truly come full circle, plot-wise, and they've managed to rekindle the game's core by revisiting what made it so special back in 2001.
All in all, it's a truly great game. It doesn't reinvent the shooter genre in gaming, but it does set the bar incredibly high for all games to follow. Simply put, everything it does, it does well.
We've beaten the game, yes, but there is still much to do. It's got nearly an unlimited amount of replay value and despite having played for a potentially hygienically unsafe amount of time today, we are now immediately delving back into the multiplayer.
If we don't show up at work tomorrow, fellow Times staffers, don't say we didn't warn you.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
More multiplayer mayhem and campaign musings
Since you last heard from us we took some time off the campaign to play some more multiplayer. In the lobby screen before the team ranked games it shows how many people are playing online: about 22,000 when we were there. And that isn't counting people who are still playing through the story or playing various other online modes. I can't say it's too surprising considering that more people played multiplayer Halo 2 than any other multiplayer game on the Xbox Live service for nearly every month between when Halo 2 was released in November 2004 and when Gears of War was released in November 2006. The natural migration is to Halo 3.
After fighting against real people we jumped back into the campaign for another level. This was one of the longer levels and was a lot of fun. There were some epic battles that hopefully we'll be able to share here later in screenshot form. In this game every level has been entirely satisfying. You can tell that Bungie really put together all their experience from the previous two games and made the best single-player campaign they could.
In Halo and Halo 2 there were several single-player levels which were either forgettable or boring. The library level from the original Halo is infamous for this. So far in Halo 3 each level is as good as the best of the first two games -- in my opinion anyway.
In my conversation with Bungie's Brian Jarrard he said that Halo 3 is the pinnacle of their game-making achievements.
"For Halo 2, it wasn't exactly what we wanted to make," Jarrard said. They knew there were places for improvement, he said. They made those improvements in Halo 3, he said
The polish and the features really show here and I can't help but imagine how exciting it is for them to have people finally playing their game.
I'll reserve final judgment on the campaign until the end, but so far this has been fantastic.
After fighting against real people we jumped back into the campaign for another level. This was one of the longer levels and was a lot of fun. There were some epic battles that hopefully we'll be able to share here later in screenshot form. In this game every level has been entirely satisfying. You can tell that Bungie really put together all their experience from the previous two games and made the best single-player campaign they could.
In Halo and Halo 2 there were several single-player levels which were either forgettable or boring. The library level from the original Halo is infamous for this. So far in Halo 3 each level is as good as the best of the first two games -- in my opinion anyway.
In my conversation with Bungie's Brian Jarrard he said that Halo 3 is the pinnacle of their game-making achievements.
"For Halo 2, it wasn't exactly what we wanted to make," Jarrard said. They knew there were places for improvement, he said. They made those improvements in Halo 3, he said
The polish and the features really show here and I can't help but imagine how exciting it is for them to have people finally playing their game.
I'll reserve final judgment on the campaign until the end, but so far this has been fantastic.
(More than) Halfway home
After the death-fest that was our journey through the first level-and-a-half, I am proud to say that we've recovered in style. We are now five chapters through the game -- more than half of the nine in total -- and well on our way to meeting our goal of completing it today. Brian hit the nail on the head, saying the game feels incredibly cinematic. And maybe it's because I wasn't a big fan of Halo 2's single-player campaign, but everything we've come across so far feels so much more epic and varied than the previous entry in the series. We've still got a ways to go (and Brian's still gotta find a few more ways to "accidentally" kill me), though ...
That said, we're taking a break for a bit by mixing it up with some custom games and four-player co-op. My favorite part of the Halo series, other than the single-player, has always been the custom matches. This series has continually raised the bar for customizable options in-game, and this sequel continues that trend to an almost ridiculous degree. Bungie was quite generous, providing a whole host of pre-made game options, but with all the tweaks available and the all-new map-editing Forge mode, I feel like I've died and gone to heaven.
For example, one of the first custom games we played was a variant on rocket deathmatch in which gravity was lowered, ammo was infinite and everyone was invisible if they weren't firing. This lead to some pretty tense moments, as people weren't sure who was lurking around the corner. Or, rather, some rather hilarious moments, like when two players unintentionally collided in mid-air:
We'll probably play a bit more random games for a bit before heading back to the campaign. Hit us up with a game invite, if you're on!
That said, we're taking a break for a bit by mixing it up with some custom games and four-player co-op. My favorite part of the Halo series, other than the single-player, has always been the custom matches. This series has continually raised the bar for customizable options in-game, and this sequel continues that trend to an almost ridiculous degree. Bungie was quite generous, providing a whole host of pre-made game options, but with all the tweaks available and the all-new map-editing Forge mode, I feel like I've died and gone to heaven.
For example, one of the first custom games we played was a variant on rocket deathmatch in which gravity was lowered, ammo was infinite and everyone was invisible if they weren't firing. This lead to some pretty tense moments, as people weren't sure who was lurking around the corner. Or, rather, some rather hilarious moments, like when two players unintentionally collided in mid-air:
We'll probably play a bit more random games for a bit before heading back to the campaign. Hit us up with a game invite, if you're on!
Time to stop and admire the scenery
We just finished the third chapter -- about a third of the way through the game. We figured this would be a good time to check out the saved films and screenshot feature on Bungie.net. That screenshot above is from the first 10 minutes of the game. Does the scenery look familiar? Times columnist Brier Dudley would say so. Honestly it's a little difficult to stop and smell the roses when you're being shot at.
We died In retrospect that first level was a little rough. We did quite a bit of dying before we started to understand the enemy artificial intelligence. We're playing on Legendary, the hardest difficulty, and sometimes I forget that I'm playing against a machine and not some other human across the Internet. But if you are able to take down without being taken down the game has plenty of rewards.
New with Halo 3 is a cooperative scoring system that awards points for kills against the computer AI and subtracts points if you die or "accidentally" kill your teammate. Each player has his or her own score and the game keeps track of your totals for each level. You can check out my campaign history here and Nate's history here. As you can see I haven't been doing as well, but in my defense Nate has been stealing all my kills.
We have much more to talk about, but honestly, I want to get back to playing the game. We'll check back in a bit.
- Brian Alexander
First level complete: achievement unlocked
We just finished the first level on Legendary, and as Nate told you, it wasn't easy. It's going to be interesting to see how far we can get today, with all the dying and whatnot.
My impressions of the game so far are very favorable. The game is very cinematic -- a top notch production worthy of its seat as the biggest entertainment event of this year. We'll have more of these impressions later.
Completing the first level was my first achievement in the game. As you can probably tell by our Gamerscores (look to the right) we're achievement junkies. I think we'll be trying to get all 1,000 points out of this one ... eventually.
- Brian Alexander
My impressions of the game so far are very favorable. The game is very cinematic -- a top notch production worthy of its seat as the biggest entertainment event of this year. We'll have more of these impressions later.
Completing the first level was my first achievement in the game. As you can probably tell by our Gamerscores (look to the right) we're achievement junkies. I think we'll be trying to get all 1,000 points out of this one ... eventually.
- Brian Alexander
Legendary = actually, a bit tough
We're still in the middle of the first level here, but a few notes:
#1: Those Jackal snipers (remember them from the Earth levels of Halo 2?) are every bit as deadly as they used to be. Be prepared for some spotting-by-death tactics if you're going through on Legendary.
#2: While this isn't the best-looking game out there, it certainly is no slouch. The attention to detail and the small effects are quite stunning. For example, in a quick multiplayer match last night in Sandtrap, one of the new maps, you can even see wind kicking up sand if you look closely enough. The lighting in this first level is also pretty spectacular, with the sun blinding you momentarily as you come out of darkness. It's one of those games that doesn't "Wow!" you with the initial look, but everything is so consistently solid in both art direction and overall quality that it's hard not to be impressed.
#3: Similarly, though we're playing over the Xbox Live together, we've encountered zero lag. As veterans will attest, this makes tagging your buddy with a plasma grenade just that much easier.
#1: Those Jackal snipers (remember them from the Earth levels of Halo 2?) are every bit as deadly as they used to be. Be prepared for some spotting-by-death tactics if you're going through on Legendary.
#2: While this isn't the best-looking game out there, it certainly is no slouch. The attention to detail and the small effects are quite stunning. For example, in a quick multiplayer match last night in Sandtrap, one of the new maps, you can even see wind kicking up sand if you look closely enough. The lighting in this first level is also pretty spectacular, with the sun blinding you momentarily as you come out of darkness. It's one of those games that doesn't "Wow!" you with the initial look, but everything is so consistently solid in both art direction and overall quality that it's hard not to be impressed.
#3: Similarly, though we're playing over the Xbox Live together, we've encountered zero lag. As veterans will attest, this makes tagging your buddy with a plasma grenade just that much easier.
We are underway
... and he's already trying to kill me.
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