Campaign

Halo 3 consists of 9 levels, and can take anywhere from 6-10 hours to finish based on your skill level, difficulty settings, etc. Although the campaign isn't to lengthy, it offers great replayability, with skulls to collect, and hey..who wouldn't want to brag to their friends that they just beat Halo 3 on Legendary. As for when you get bored of the campaign, that's where the skulls come in. As you collect them, you can enable certain things like enhanced enemy AI (dodge grenades quicker, etc), and enemy health being doubled. Enabling these skulls makes it more fun, and much more challenging at the same time. Another great thing about the campaign is that you can play 4 player co-op, online or off, with your friends. It is very fun, and definitely adds to the replayability aswell.

As for the downs of the campaign, although the enemy AI is great, your teammates and the Arbiter aren't exactly the same. There was times when they would be running into walls, not responding to enemies shooting at them, etc. It wasn't too annoying, but this could have been fixed. Also, there is a decent amount of backtracking (going backwards to areas you've already been in), and I found this quite annoying at times.

Overall, the Halo 3 Campaign experience is incredible, with only a few flaws, but this is just where the game begins.

Graphics

Well, while the graphics in Halo 3 are not among the best on the Xbox 360, they are still something beautiful to look at. It's clear that Bungie was not going for a dark and gritty Gears of War super realistic type shooter here. The visuals in Halo 3 are very bright and colorful, which offers a sense of uniqueness. Most shooters this generation seem to have a very dark and brown look to them, so Halo 3 kind of stands out, and grabs your attention, which is nice.

The thing that I like about the visuals is the explosions, and gun effects. They are, in my opinion, beautiful. The three biggest problems that I have with the visuals are the textures, character models, and a decent amount of jaggies.

Overall, they are certainly not anything that will amaze you, but they are still beautiful, and unique.

Sound

Gun effects, and explosions both sound great, and each different weapon and grenade definitely has a bit of uniqueness, so you can tell the difference between each one. Voice over is very well done, and matches each different character perfectly. It's also pretty funny to listen to the enemies talking, and reacting to what's going on. The music is easily the best part of the audio in this game. It is simply incredible. There is no game out there that can beat Halo 3's soundtrack. It sounds great in the menu, it comes in and slows down at the perfect moments in the campaign, it really enhances the experience.

There is absolutely no flaws with the audio in this game, it is just fantastic.

Gameplay

Anyone who has played Halo knows this is where the game shines the most. The halo series has always been about the gameplay. It has always done a triple A job in this department, and it continues to do a triple A job with Halo 3. There is very few first person shooters out there that can match the gameplay of Halo 3.

First, we'll start off with the weapons. Each one is very different, unique, and fun to use in it's own way. Halo is definitely one of those games where you use a different weapon for each different situation. It also innovates a lot in the weapons category. There is nothing like hitting someone with the gravity hammer, and watching them go flying, or shooting a vehicle with the spartan laser, and watching it blow into pieces. The grenades are also fantastic, and fun to use. Throwing a sticky onto a vehicle, and watching all 3 guys fly out, and hit the ground..it is just a great experience.

Next, well, the vehicles. The vehicles are also very well done, and fun to use. There's the Warthog, which can fit 3 people, mongoose, which can fit 2 people, the aircraft, The Ghost, and much more.

Now, on top of the gameplay, there is also 2 very innovative features that add even more onto the game's fun factor. These are the Forge, and Theater. First, the Forge. You can edit any map, and save it. You can change where the weapons and vehicles are, you can move explosives around, you can basically change the entire look of the map, then save it, and play it with friends whenever you want. The Theater is also very fun to play around with. Halo 3 automatically saves every mission or online match you've played to the hard drive as a video, and in the theater, you can watch the footage, edit it, see it from the enemies perspective, and more. Both of these features are great, and I could spend hours just using these two features alone.

Overall, Halo 3 is the most fun first person shooter I have ever played, and there is really nothing like it gameplay-wise.

Online

There are very few games that come close to the online in Halo. Before you even get online, you can completely customize the look of your spartan, you can change it's color, armor, and much more. You can have a max of 16 players, and there is a lot of maps to play on. The maps are very well done, and each one is very unique, and has it's own fun things to do on it. There's huge maps like Valhalla, where you can fly aircrafts, and have, well, I forgot what they are called, but those things which you can use to jump high up into the air, and if you're lucky enough, snipe someone while you're doing it, down to small ones like High Ground. Their is also a wide variety of fun and unique match types as well.

Their is just nothing like playing Halo online with your friends, or making fun of 13 year olds who cant stop shouting "VETO!!!!" in the menu's, and as I said in the campaign section, you can play online 4 player co-op through the entire campaign, which is just as fun as playing online matches.

Closing Comments

Halo 3 is a great ending to what has been one of the best, if not the best first person shooter trilogy or series in history. It is the defining game for the Xbox Platform. It was one of the most highly anticipated games of all time, and it did a damn good job of delivering.