Halo: still pretty good. The third installment continues the series
tradition of good shooting, incremental gameplay improvements, and an
interesting story for a shooter. Unfortunately, it also keeps alive
some of its faults, like some repetitive tasks and environments, minor
steps backward in some areas and the continued inclusion of the highly
uninteresting Flood. I get the desire to mix things up so you're not
fighting Covenant the whole time, but seriously, the Flood is boring. I
like the story aspect of the Elites changing sides, but unfortunately
that takes away the most interesting opponent in the series. Brutes are
tough but not as smart, making combat a little less strategic in some
cases. Having the Arbiter around most of the time is cool though, it's
nice to have an ally who's actually worth something. I didn't like how
you're arbitrarily limited to two grenades of each type now. Yeah, now
there are four types so you still have a max of eight, but when you
don't find the last kind until late in the game, you're left holding
six most of the time and wondering why you can't fit a couple more
normal ones in the same suit.
In general though, Halo is still a
really good time. They expanded the vehicle sections, adding multiple
new types to play around with. Some of the best fun in the series comes
from cruising around, pursuing enemies on large battlefields with
explosions happening everywhere. There are new and returning weapons
also, and I think they struck a pretty good balance. The game's a
little short, but that's okay, I prefer that to pointlessly padding out
levels with infinitely copy-pasted corridors. I mentioned repetition,
but that's mostly held in check except for the aforementioned Flood and
the gigantic walking fortresses known as Scarabs - you encounter them a
little too often, although taking one down is pretty cool. Graphically,
it's not as flashy as some other current generation games, but it looks
nice. There are some really great looking lighting effects, at least.
The music is as interesting as ever, and voice acting is decent,
although I never like changing voice actors between sequels (is Julie
Benz too famous now thanks to Dexter?)
and some of the dialogue tries to be cool but is just a little silly.
The story is suitably epic and really pretty detailed if you get down
into it, and they do a nice job of concluding the trilogy, although I
wish there was a real end instead of an obvious sequel hint. Guys, you
can make a new story without leaving ends untied. Multiplayer is pretty
cool, although I don't really care about online play that much. I don't
love Halo, but it's a very solid, entertaining series.
