The latest episode of Major Nelson's podcast/blogcast is on the Halo 3 launch. The Major is nice enough to remain spoiler-free, but he says that Halo 3 is a fun game and a fun story-- in case you needed any more reasons to get it. As usual, the blog entry for the audio show contains links to sites he mentions.
As I see them I add more reviews of Halo 3 to the site.
Thanks for the heads-up on these four reviews to Louis Wu at HBO.
As always, you can see a page of just reviews on our Halo 3 Reviews page.
About.com's only real complaint about Halo 3 is that 12-year-olds play it. They gave it five out of five stars in their Halo 3 review.
Calling it the best Halo game yet, Australia's Herald Sun gave Halo 3 a rating of 4.5 out of 5 points.
Let's hope the reviewers at TechTree weren't inebriated when they gave Halo 3 a score of 4.5 out of 5.
Stuntmutt attended the Halo 3 launch party in Waterloo and walked away with a free copy of Halo 3, which he immediately went home and played, uncharacteristically eschewing an open bar.
I went home and finished the fight (going to work the following day after just two hours of sleep). I dashed through on Normal just to see how the story ended and I loved it. I'm now going back through on Heroic and it's even better. Next week, I'll make a start on Legendary. And hopefully, I'll get a chance to play a little multiplayer too.
You have been warned: Stunt starts playing multiplayer next week, so get those rocket-dodging muscles in shape. That advice, of course is for his teammates.
If that's not enough One One Se7en goodness for you, there's a passel of guest strips up on the blog, too.
GeezerGamer has a nice article explaining in detail some of the uses of the file share feature in Halo 3 and how to make them work for you.
Stuff.co.nz calls Halo 3 a masterful conclusion but does, of course, have to add some obligatory, if odd, caveats:
Halo 3 isn't perfect. It's obvious more of the scenarios this time have been designed for their potential for online play rather than to advance the story.
Reviewer Tom Cardy gave the game five stars out of five.
No pun intended, 411.com thought Halo 3 met expectations:
Though it could easily have been swamped by the hype and buried by unrealistic expectations, Halo 3 weathered the storm very well. The game, even with the few flaws, is as close to the perfect FPS as you can expect to see this console generation. Not only does it have a very solid single-player campaign that improves on every aspect of the past two, but it takes real steps forward in both multiplayer and additional features. It's quite possibly the best all-around game that the 360 will see this generation, with features that other games will be forced to imitate and gameplay that will still be entertaining far down the road.
They gave it ten points out of ten, a "virtually perfect" rating.
Just a reminder-- now that Halo 3 is out, if you've played it, you'll want to edit your spoiler settings so you aren't missing out on posts that include spoilers.
Login, go to My Account, click Roles, then choose one (and only one) item that reflects your preferred default spoiler display for the front page.
Also, if you've played Halo 3, why not submit a user review?
Geek.com finishes off their review of Halo 3; it's got separate sections on campaign, forge, and multiplayer.
Halo 3's strength is in its multiplayer, they say:
If you're looking for an outstanding, unstoppable multi-player FPS, then Halo 3 is the game for you. Gears of War has a large and dedicated multi-player fan base and it looks fabulous, but the controls are not intuitive and so it's not pick-up-and-play easy like Halo is. Sure, the bumper and X buttons might throw people off for a little while, but Halo set the standard for where FPS gameplay was going, and H3 continues that legacy.
They rate it just short of a "Geek pick" because they ascribe much of the interest in the game as nostalgia for the original Halo.
Major Nelson had to take a break from putting up the Live Activity weekly totals for awhile due to Xbox Live maintenance, but the latest list shows Halo 3 in the top Xbox 360 game slot, above Gears of War. Halo 2 retains its spot as the top original Xbox game, ahead of Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, although there is no longer any note about combined lists.
The totals are of "global unique users connected to Xbox Live".
The Anennberg School for Communication at USC's Online Journalism Review interviews Claude "Louis Wu" Errera at HBO about what it's like to run an online community for a game like Halo, and why mainstream media outlets have been slow to pick up on trends in that area in the article Lord of the Ringworld.
OJR: Newspapers still sort of treat Halo and other massively successful game franchises as underground or outsider. A lot of the reporting is like "Gee, games make a lot of money, who knew?" Why are journalists so far behind the curve? What would you like to see in mainstream media reporting about games that's not there now?
I think journalists might be behind the curve simply because gaming became a successful adult entertainment outlet relatively recently. Not that long ago, video games were the domain of kids - I think there are just a lot of writers that haven't noticed the change. It's becoming clearer with every runaway success, though.
Thanks for the heads-up to GhaleonEB at HBO.
GameSpy stops playing Halo 3 just long enough to wax lyrical about the game. There are viewpoints from several staffers, but here's one that stands out. Associate Console Editor Sterling McGarvey was bitten by the bug that disables the Resume feature when moving a hard drive from one console to another:
It's not all rotten in the state of Denmark, however. After jacking a Wraith to Gabe's amazement, I proceeded to mow through legions of Brute forces with alarming ease. That was because I'm playing on Normal. What can I say? I can't organize enough guys on my schedule to burn through four-player Legendary. Yet. I'm sure that I'll be far too green to play well online in time for Wednesday's upcoming 'Spy-Hunter, but what else is new?
Playing on Normal because you've no help or time for Legendary? There's a solution to that problem. It's called Heroic.
Gamestyle gives Halo 3 a perfect score, but that doesn't mean it's a perfect game:
The craftsmanship here is astounding, but unfortunately the game is not perfect, as there are a couple of shortfalls. The first is the game's storyline, which throws players in at the deep-end and requires prior knowledge in order to fully appreciate it. This isn't a problem for fans, but anyone else who wants to enjoy the game will be wondering what is going on.
Call me crazy, guys, but it is a sequel. There were two other games. Expecting to know exactly what's going on in Halo 3 without having either played the other two, or at least done a bit of reading, is like expecting to walk into a showing of The Two Towers and know exactly what's going on without having seen the first two films. It's nuts.