Absurd Singularity

Now prior to the 360, I viewed the original XBox with scorn and my only exposure to Halo was the very occasional "Halo Nights" that an aquaintance would throw where I would show up and promptly become the guy everyone went after if they wanted a free kill. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not a FPS guru. While I'm not adverse to the genre, I'm not hog-wild crazy over it either. While I've played most of the popular FPS titles to date at one point or another, it's mostly been just the one player campaigns that I've shot my way through. I've avoided the main draw of FPS's for the most part and that would be the network play. Mainly because my attention span with FPS's does not usually hold long enough for me to become any good at them against other people. And secondly, I really suck when it comes to fighting in 3 dimensions. Forward, back, right, left, strafing I'm ok with. Once you throw long parabolic jumping into the mix, I'm a fish out of water. So my forays into the Quake/Unreal Tournament/Halo hyperactive bouncy-bouncy, race-for-the-dominant-weapons style of network play usually ends with the same result, being p0wned and taunted by ten year olds. Ten year old girls at that.

So while I'm not expecting anything new if I decide to try out Live play with Halo 3, I figured I'd get the game anyway just to see what all the fuss was about. Based on what I've seen so far with the one-player campaign, not all that much. For starters, there's the main character, simply named "Master Chief" so that anyone who plays can project themselves into his combat boots. Whatever. It's a guy in futuristic green combat hardsuit. He doesn't talk like me so why would I think I'm him? Yeah yeah, main characters in FPS's aren't known for their backstory and individuality but Master Chief just seems so... generic.

Moving on to the controls, been there, done that. Pretty much every console FPS uses the same control scheme these days so nothing major here. It works well, end of story. I'm still not as accurate as I'd like when compared to using a mouse but you do what you can.

Visually, it's pretty much well-reviewed that Halo 3 won't win any visual awards. It's just good enough to be deemed HD worthy. The gun and explosion effects will be familiar to fans of the series and are probably a bit more flashy than before but the majority of the visual upgrade will be noticeable in the background scenery. Not like you'll pay much attention to the background scenery to begin with. Aurally it's ok too. Best part is probably the random background chatter coming from your allies and enemies. Some of your fellow marines are regular wise-acres. Musically, I thought it was fine. Erin said it was too somber. Reminded her of a funeral dirge.

Play-wise, I went through it pretty much like any other current FPS: onward march! It's basically one long forward advance interspersed with pockets of heavy resistance where you'll die a bunch of times at. Although some of the sections were supposed to be huge, wide open areas, you really don't get the feeling that it's that massive simply because the area of conflict is still restrained to a relatively narrow area within. Plus I often felt that I was just running around in loops at times. They introduced items in Halo 3 such as bubble shields, anti-grav lifts, cloaking, invincibility and such but you can pretty much get through the game for the most part without them. There's maybe one or two areas that are definitely made much easier with them though.

I know having movable/destructible environments is a big deal with FPS's but my first time playing this game I ran into an issue with this relatively early on. I'm crouched, hiding behind a stack of metal containers that's on a slightly higher elevation while shooting at the enemy when, just as the last enemy combatant goes down, a nearby explosion knocks the topmost container down over my head. So now there's this big metal container that's touching the ground on one side and then resting against the other container on the other, forming a nice tee-pee over me. Well, guess what, I can't get out of this blasted position! I can move forward and back but I can't crawl completely out for some reason. Shooting the container doesn't help, neither does punching. I can't wait for an enemy to come along and finish off my sorry ass cause I just killed all of them. I can't kill myself cause I was out of grenades. It would've been pretty comical if it wasn't also damn annoying at the same time. So I had to restart the level. =p

Length-wise, unless you're completely inept, you can get through the normal mode in about a day so it's not exactly a lengthy final battle. Seems like having a pretty-looking game comes at the expense of actual game play time these days.

But it's not that I didn't enjoy playing it. I was entertained throughout. It's just that I still don't quite get what makes Halo so popular (or even different) compared to similar games like the Unreal Tournament franchise. *shrug* I felt no more attachment to this game than I did to Resistance: Fall of Man on the PS3. Apparently network play is where it's at so I guess I'll have to venture in and play eventually. Let me know if you want my XBox Live ID so you can pad your stats. ;-p