The final chapter in the Halo Trilogy was release last month on the 25th of September. What I expected was basically an improvement upon all things Halo 2 and I was mostly not disappointed.
The one place that I was slightly disappointed; however, was the part I was looking forward to the most. In the first Halo, there were cut scenes throughout the game that told an engaging and mysterious story. With Halo 2, the cinematics really took over and made for a much richer experience than the first. The storytelling in Halo 2 is one of my favorite parts. The storytelling in Halo 3 is… fine… nothing more.
Everyone was anxious to see what happened after the ridiculous cliff-hanger in the previous game, and that is all we really get. That is nice, but there aren’t any new characters, no motivations explored, and one major player in the story that makes no appearance at all except for a few voiceovers. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t as good as Halo 2, which I found to be very, very good.
That said, this is the first Halo game that I managed to complete on Legendary (read: very, very, hard) difficulty. I played through the first time on Normal, and that was way too easy for me having put significant time into the first two games. I ingested the whole thing too quickly and didn’t get much out of it. The second time through was on Heroic, and that makes sure you have to stop and think about what you are doing. It was much more satisfying. The transition from Normal to Heroic was actually harder than from Heroic to Legendary.
Now comes the dilemma. The only thing left is to go play online – which would surely be a rocking good time, but I’m not sure if I want to put up with the other players. Despite the M rating on the game ( for 18+ only ), the online game is dominated by preteens that feel the need to barrage you with every bit of cursing and filth the learned on the internet that week. It doesn’t matter if you beat them or not. Now I’m a big boy and I can take it, but why?
Now, they did put multiplayer cooperative mode in for the campaign this time which is extremely right up my alley. Anyone wanting to get in on some of that, look me up!
9:19 am on October 20th, 2007 1
BillyActionforce, I mean face, it is now my life goal to beat you at Halo, without having to pistol whip (out of all the times I killed you last night, I think about 90% was by pistol whipping). I’m going to train hard for our next meeting, and all hell will break loose-hopefully not on me?
4:33 pm on October 21st, 2007 2
I’m not sure if you will be able to read this without logging in, but this link goes to my career stats for ranked online matches. You’ll see that almost half my kills are from beatdowns. There are two reasons for this. First, that is what I like to do. Second, I’m not very good with the long range weapons. Until I get good with them, I’m not going to kick much butt online, but it’s sure a lot of fun!
The real secret to beating me at Halo is to put in Halo 1. I’ve never been very good at that. I was even surprised at how different Halo 2 was from Halo 3. The third seems to be the best of both worlds.
Thanks again for hosting everybody – it was a good time. I’d like to do it at my place one day, though I don’t have a white space to put that projector on. Either way, I’ll definitely have to tread more lightly in the future. Apparently I beat the sense of fulfillment right out of Nate. I’d hate for my awesome skillz to negatively impact Trinity’s band!