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Reviews from Amazon
the standard -  - hands down the best game on the 360. and i know because i play it every single day
Warming Up -  - I wasn't a very big fan of the earlier Halo games, but my brother pestered me into buying this for him. It's actually more interesting than I thought it would be. Game play isn't too difficult and the graphics are pretty intense. It's definitely easy to say that I'm warming up to the series.
Master Chief Comes Full Circle -  - There is no reason to state the amount of hype attached to this game, so I'm not going to. Let me say I've hardly ever seen a game that lived up to its hype fully. Many of the greatest games were sequels in an already great game series. The third and final installment of Halo (or so Bungie says) encompasses everything the game developers were looking to add to the second one. And in my opinion, they did everything very well. Here is a short mach up of the game's main parts:
Gameplay 9 of 10: The mechanics feel very good and a lot of the game resembles Halo: Combat Evolved. Everything is intuitive, no drastic changes but many small beneficial additions. Many of the serious physics problems from Halo 2 were addressed.
Graphics 8 of 10: Very good visuals stand out even form other next generation games. Lighting and reflection is greatly superior to many other current games, weapons look more realistic than anything in the game. Much more time was spent on the textures and close up visuals. Colors are vibrant, everything has sharp and crisp lines as long as you have HD or I prefer S-video (because I'm lame and have a CRT)
Controls 8 of 10: Controls take an evolutionary step, with only a couple of buttons moved out of necessity for the special items. The basics are the same as first and second game and as always have little to no learning curve. There are more options on the personalization of the controls now. In my opinion Halo 3 has the best controls for a shooter game and has been copied before.
Music / Sound Effects 7 of 10: The music is just brilliantly done with a full orchestra was added and the original soundtrack has been seriously enhanced and expanded by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori (the composers for all three games). With an orchestra in the background, the game just feels more epic and gives a human quality to the story. The sound effects on the other hand are nothing new or really better than ok, even with the volume way up it is hard to get the full experience. Many of the weapons seem to be toned down literally.
Weapons 8 of 10: Many, many weapons were added. Here is a full list: http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Weapons There are probably more weapons in this game than the first two combined. Unfortunately many go by the wayside because of there ineffectiveness against enemies-especially on multiplayer. If you remember those energy shields you always see the covenant have and you always wished you had one, Halo 3 gives you the option along with a bunch of other new special items: energy drains, deployable cover, trip mines, bubble shields, flares, invincibility, incendiary grenades and a few more. The bubble shield is quite impressive-throw this out and a large sphere will encapsulate you and keep out any and all weapons fire including explosives. However, anyone can walk in.
Vehicles 8 of 10: a very well done fleet of both human, covenant and brute vehicles, quite a few new vehicles on every side along with mostly improved versions of the old ones. There are multiple versions of the Warthog. A new bunch of Brute vehicles such as the chopper enter the fray. And if you hadn't guessed, the Scarab is back. In fact you'll get to destroy four within the game. Phantoms are now destroyable. The tank now houses a separate gunner for the machine gun while some speed is added and evens out the slower rate of fire.
A full list of the vehicles: http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Vehicles
Story 6 of 10: I must say my views on the plot surrounding Halo 3 are blurry. I've played through the game a few times now and cannot understand where it is going. It seems to be overly complex without explain much. The story centers around the Master Chief losing Cortana. About halfway through I really lost interest in what was going on with Gravemind and the Flood and said forget it. Maybe a primer should have come with the game or it did and I failed to read it. Honestly, if someone can give me a synopsis of the storyline I'd really appreciate it. However, the last few levels really pay tribute to the original Halo and gave me a nostalgic feeling. In fact the last level is called Halo and very closed resembles a level from Halo named "Escape from the Control Room" (I believe).
Multiplayer 6 of 10: And now for the thing that made Halo famous. Multiplayer has to be separated into two distinct parts: the gameplay and the matchmaking system. Let's discuss the bad first. Quite obviously the matchmaking system....which can be livable at best. So the process goes:
1) Go to the matchmaking lobby (lets say you have a guest).
2) Click on your favorite type of game (mine is social slayer).
3) Wait until the system finds people within your skill range, ok.
4) Then you get about half the players needed.
5) Then you wait some more and maybe you'll lose the search and have to wait to find another set of people, maybe you get all the people-awesome.
6) Load the map and you actually get to vote to NOT play the map.
Wait are you serious? I just waited like 10 minutes to get these people to play against and were going to have to possibly wait to load a map? Half of the time, the map gets vetoed. Crap. So now you could be 5-10 minutes into waiting before you even load the map you're going to play. Oh yeah, by the way you get stuck with whatever map and game they give you the second time. I don't know why the developers thought this was a good setup. Ideas for improvement: Instead of vetoing a map, why not have a list of acceptable maps and let people vote on which TO play. Matchmaking system is overly complex for unranked games, simplify so people can play more quickly.
Multiplayer combat is really very good. Physics are immensely improved from Halo 2 Everything behaves just as it would in the campaign. Most of the maps are well designed. Many old maps were brought back with visual improvements: Cold Storage, Valhalla (Blood Gulch variant back for a third time), Hang `em High comes back. A really impressive array of game types and number of maps makes multiplayer quite amazing. One gripe-Construct is the worst map in all three Halo games.
Conclusion
A very well thought out and truly fun game-which is something lacking in these next gen games. "Over-realism" is not fun. Videogames are meant provide an escape. Halo has this in spades. A genetically enhanced super soldier that fights aliens in a half ton cybernetic suit of armor-brilliant. And you get to play as him. Overall this game is the best Halo for your money. If you own an Xbox 360 I wouldn't think twice about purchasing this.
Great Game Overall, Halo 4? Halo Movie? - - Halo 3 was a great game and has a great multiplayer experience but does the legendary ending mean halo 4, a new book, expansion, or even a movie, but the campaign was awesome and was very fun so i give it 5 stars
Fun game overall - - Its not as good as people were expecting but thats because of all the hype, its a fun game, the single player mode will keep you busy for awhile but multipalyer can provide hundreds of hours of fun. Even if you don't like shooters much its a great game.
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