Halo 3 is the third instalment in the Halo franchise. Halo is perhaps one of the most popular and best selling games in the world for the Xbox 360, with Halo 3 taking $300m in its first week alone, and there are plenty of good reasons why!

Gameplay

Halo 3, like the other Halo games, is a first-person shooter which has the player fighting off a wide variety of alien enemies in order to on foot, and in vehicles. Halo 3 is a step up from Halo 2, in the sense that it is possible to dual-wield weapons and pick up usable items known as equipment. Set in the 26^th Century, the game is based on an interstellar war between humans (led by the United States) and a collection of alien forces known as the Covenant.

Single player follows a campaign style gameplay through 9 levels, thus completing the whole storyline set up by previous versions of the game.

Multiplayer mode is perhaps one of the best parts of Halo 3 as, after completing the game, it adds a whole new bit of fun to it and allows for the formation of clans, and playing with (or against) your friends. The campaign from single player can also be played in co-operative mode with 2 players on one Xbox, or 3 players via Xbox Live.

The Review

Compared to Halo 2, the developers seem to have got some bits straightened out in it; for example the narrative seems a lot more detailed and easy to see what’s happening and the ending isn’t such of a cliff hanger compared to previous versions! Halo 3 loses the secondary stories of Arbiter and the Elites, and focuses solely on Master Chief, for a much more intense and enjoyable game than previous releases.

Many gamers were worried that Halo 3 just wouldn’t live up to its immense reputation, but these anxieties were put to rest when a multitude of game review websites and magazines gave consistently high scores for the new game, and decided that the game included the ‘winning strategies’ that the other Halo games had included, just modernised it to keep up with growing competition from other developers.

Best Bits

• Truly immense storyline
• Online play is excellent fun; adds a new dimension to the game
• The map editor allows you to make maps do the most psychedelic of things!