My INITIAL impressions of halo 3 (3 hours in)

T

TyRiKe

CAGiversary!
total play time up to this point of review 3 hours.
-30 mins campaign
-2.5 hours of 4 player team slayer

i'm dissapointed at the first 30 mins of the singleplayer from what i saw. my buddy and i were playing co-op and it only supports 2 players offline, we didn't try 4 player co-op online because we aren't suppose to have the game. also first part of the game was in the 4:3 ratio top/down split screen and not widescreen left/right split like in the beta. the draw distances is not far, you can see things pixelate right in front of you.

but even though i noticed all these flaws, of course the mp gameplay makes up for this. remember how in previous halos, the reiticule would help lock onto enemies. from what i can tell, it doesn't do so anymore. old weapons got toned down i believe, which is a good thing. rewarding the skill players who get headshots and not the people who just pump massive bullets into an enemy. 4 players team slayer is lag free. new maps are nicely built. that's about all i noticed about the first 3 hours. i'll be putting more time into the game this weekend and we'll see if my opinion changes.

this review will be completed later when i finish the campaign and when i put more time into all the new maps and weapons.
 
heh, another shitty single player campaign? I'm not even being a smartass about this, but I honestly thought Bungie would try and attempt to make a decent single player mode this time. Apparently I'm too optimistic.
 
we all know the single player is not what halo is known for. mp is what halo's brand equity is built on. i can see myself putting 500+ hours on the mp (unless the cod4 community develops, in that case it will steal hours from halo 3).
 
[quote name='TyRiKe']we all know the single player is not what halo is known for. mp is what halo's brand equity is built on. i can see myself putting 500+ hours on the mp (unless the cod4 community develops, in that case it will steal hours from halo 3).[/QUOTE]

I dunno. A lot of people will defend the single player to the death and uphold Master Chief's enigmatic personality as Shakespearian.
 
If single player sucks I'm probably not going to buy this. I'm not good enough at MP to play online all the time.
 
I heard the single player starts slowly.

Plus, judging the single player campaign 30 minutes in, is like judging an RPG 2 hours into one. You just can't get a feel the whole thing in such a short play time.
 
Only Microsoft employees can get banned(or in trouble) for playing early.if that's what you're worried about.
 
i'm not going to risk getting anyone in trouble. but i got it yesterday. if i knew i was gonna get it this early i would of asked for the day off so i could play today. but instead i'm here @ work :(.
 
[quote name='SpreadTheWord']I heard the single player starts slowly.

Plus, judging the single player campaign 30 minutes in, is like judging an RPG 2 hours into one. You just can't get a feel the whole thing in such a short play time.[/QUOTE]

You can usually tell if an RPG's good or bad by the two hour mark. Sure, you haven't seen all it has to offer, but you know if it has potential.

And Bungie's track record for single player games is less than impeccable.
 
That top/down 4:3 co-op thing is VERY Surprising. Plus, I thought the whole point of this game was to "Finish the Fight". So, if the Campaign isn't stronger than Halo 2, it's very surprising since that whole line is sorta mute.

As for multiplayer being lag free. No one's playing it yet. Just wait until the 25th when stuff will get REAL fun on XBL, especially with every member getting Gold free for 3 days.
 
before i say anything more about the single player campaign, i'm going to finish it. i did some thinking, i'm guessing i'm going to run into more characters that will be involved in the story so it could add up to 4 player co-op. and of course there's going to be more story. i'm going to try my best to finish up the campaign tonight (if i don't go out) and give you guys a more complete review of the single player campaign. BUT IT'S GOING TO BE HARD NOT PLAYING MP.

the whole 4:3 top/bottom screen split, i'll see if that changes. i only finished the first area where i got my first achievement of 20g called "landfall" or someting like that then played MP the rest of the night. so we'll see tomorrow or sunday when i should finish the campaign by.
 
just to be clear, we were using an xbox 360 elite connected through an hdmi cable to a 46 inch sharp 1080p capable television. and now that i think about it, i don't think the game supports 1080p, that might explain the 4:3 ratio'ed screen. i'll check up on that later tonight. we'll lower the display setting to 720p and see if it goes widescreen mode.
 
quick update

halo 3 does support 1080p
co-op is still top/down and not using the whole screen
map editor is fun to mess with, uses a budget system
bungie already has custom games downloadable, pretty cool
you can't do 4 players on one 360 for co-op, only 2

going to wait til everyone gets a copy so i can have a 16:9 widescreen for co-op.
 
I'm actually really disapointed by the graphics, they really haven't changed the gameplay too much since Halo 2.

My biggest gripes are:
- master chief and the brutes look nice, the human npcs look horrible. They actually look like the xbox 1 models with a bump in resolution. This is supposed be a 360 game!
- extremely bad aliasing
- very noticable pop-in
- the game framerate dips when running in halls and when the game is in 3rd person mode

Overall, in terms of single player experience, I definitely prefer Resistance: Fall of Man and Bioshock more
 
[quote name='Chacrana']You can usually tell if an RPG's good or bad by the two hour mark. Sure, you haven't seen all it has to offer, but you know if it has potential.

And Bungie's track record for single player games is less than impeccable.[/quote]

I have to disagree with you on that note chac, I played FFXII for 2 hours and thought it was TERRIBLE... I wanted to kill a cat with my disc just so it wouldn't work anymore. But after about 4 hours it was just eh, I figured it will get better later on.
 
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