Halo 3 Has a Great Personality
Halo 3 is a lot of things. It’s an excellent multiplayer game, either in the competitive online play category or with the online/offline co-op. It’s storyline is simple, yet engrossing. Halo 3, as far as overall content, is a very deep game, it’s multiplayer Forge mode can have limitless amounts of replay value. I spent way too many hours last night with our very own Richard and Joe on a single, solitary level. Dying has never been so creative.
Sadly, Halo 3 is also not nearly as pretty as I hoped it would be. Half-way through the single player campaign, I have yet to be wowed by the visuals or audible presentation of the game in any way. It’s really disappointing that a half-game like Warhawk can come off more polished than something as high profile as Halo 3. I draw this comparison simply because I went from playing Halo 3 directly into a game of Warhawk and that’s when it hit me. I’m not saying Warhawk takes nearly as many chances as Halo 3 has, but it sure does come off more polished.
I think polished is the right word for it. Surprisingly, there’s a significant amount of aliasing in Halo 3, something that’s seriously exposed during the in-engine cut scenes on a high definition monitor. I’m not used to seeing jaggies to this extreme coming from my 360; it’s difficult not to notice when the controller is unceremoniously yanked out of my hands for a piece of storyline. The textures in the campaign also seem to be somewhat hit or miss. Objects like boxes or crates that react to you in the environment are blatantly obvious due to their lower-res textures when compared to static items on a level. I’m also far from thrilled with the single player frame rate, which can chug fairly often.
In short, Halo 3 is excellent in the gameplay department or rather, it has a great personality. It’s the kind of game I can bring home to Mom. Unfortunately, I won’t be using it as a display piece for when my friends come by, like Gears of War or even Rainbow Six: Vegas.
That’s okay though, because In the privacy of my own home, when it’s just me and Halo 3, it’s the only way to be.
6 Comments »
Leave a comment!
Heh nice Ugly Betty picture.
I agree with you on the graphics; it’s not as visually pleasing as GoW, but you have to find a balance with the limitations of technology: You can have a big, massive game with a lot of cool replay value features and not that great in graphics, or you can have a smaller game and great graphics to compensate for the dvd disc size.
I think they felt that the graphics weren’t as important as the gameplay in my opinion.
I like the graphics better than GOW. Not everything is gray and brown and all shiny.
Also, a lot of the computing power goes into the physics of everything. Have you noticed that if you ram a skinny tree with a Warthog it shakes? Plants shake and move when you run through them. Watch the grass and tree leaves sway when a strong breeze comes through. The world is ALIVE and colorful. Most things in GOW are just there. Sure the graphics are pretty but they are non interactive.
The only problem I have with the game is the in-game dialog. For some reason I can never hear what anyone is saying during the cut-scenes. The music drowns them out; turning up the volume doesn’t help b/c the music level goes up right along with it.
GOW is stylistic, Halo 3 is not. The only way you know it’s halo 3 is the purple covenant junk lying around. It feels like halo, which has always been devoid of any sort of stylishness.
I’ll take this post in as “boy, i wish they would have spent less time on the gameplay and more time on making it shiner, so I can show it off to my neighbor when he comes over”.
Lets keep in mind, this is supposed to be “THE SYSTEM SELLER” for the 360. This is the game that has to go out there and take the walk down the catwalk and get the general public to drool and lust after it. The past Halos have done it. This one is not as impressive as other titles. You really couldn’t say that before 3. Maybe this is a case of other companies catching up? It does seem like the game is missing a little in the “spice it up” department, but it is undeniably fun.
Maybe we are getting too demanding as gamers at this point?
Blasphemy, The Use of Bloom is excellent for once. The Resolution is amazing, try zooming in on anything in the theater mode. Seamless loading and Not even a hint a slowdown, ever. even [spoiler] when two huge behomeths explode simultaneously. During the Beta I said the same thing that everyone else was saying, “it looks kinda like Halo 2″. But Truly the graphics are flawless.