Halo 3 impressions
PC Authority playtests the Halo 3 campaign in four-player co-op mode, and tries out a newly unveiled multiplayer map, called “Narrows”.
Halo is a phenomenon in console gaming. As the best-selling Xbox game series, it is one of the biggest game properties in the free world. The much-anticipated third title in the series, the first on the Xbox 360 is already breaking records before its release with over one million pre-orders already secured in the United States, immediately ensuring a giant profit for the game.
At the Australian unveiling of Halo 3, games journalists and some mainstream press were in attendance for a guided tour of new Halo features and for hands-on time with the game before it releases to the public.
Top of the list was the new four-player cooperative mode, which is no longer limited to split-screen play, now supporting local networked play and remote play over Xbox Live.
Four Master Chiefs working together have outrageous firepower, so the Bungie representatives, Lars Bakken and Frank O’Connor said that they encourage everyone to play the four-player Co-op game on the “Heroic” setting.
We saw a section of the Halo 3 single player campaign set on Earth, called Tsavo Highway. This continues the thread of events from Halo 2, where the player got to fight through a fictional-future-Africa, where the Master Chief, the part-robot protagonist of the game fights for control of highly developed urban areas around the city of New Mombasa. No sign of the residents, though – it’s still set in a faintly sterile world, although new foliage and trees have been added to the landscape. Certain earth and rock textures weren’t as cohesive as we’d like – competing with recent games like Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, Halo 3 environment detail can end up looking fairly jaggy. However, there was a lot more simultaneous action and greater numbers of foes combined in each battle, while frame rates remained steady. Going from a darkened cavern out into a sun-bleached desert scene, High Dynamic Range effects cause the sunlight to appear overwhelmingly bright for a moment. Other cosmetic details are greatly improved, such as swarms of Banshee fighters winging through the sky over battlescapes.
The Master Chief and the Covenant Arbiter characters return in Halo 3 and can be chosen as the player model during Co-op play.
New enemy assets lend new variety to the battles, such as giant carrier ships animating through the landscapes, hovering anti-gravity sniper platforms and rolling combat motorbikes, reminiscent of creations from comic books ala Judge Dredd. Also, fixed rapid-fire weapons that can be broken off their mounts and used by the heroes are another new dynamic, as are new stick grenades that attach themselves to the floor. New spherical bombs along the lines of a satchel charge sit and sizzle before creating a giant explosion, while a new vehicle variants of the Warthog jeep have a big rollcage over the rear tray, (akin to a troop-carrier vehicle) which carries a crew of four players, for co-op. Finally, new transparent shield generators add a dynamic that will protect players or a vehicle for a number of seconds, allowing them to survive intense bombardment. The range of new weapon and vehicle additions serve to completely flesh out the Halo arsenal and add to a better impression of an epic war-like setting. In fact, there are so many individual weapons now it is somewhat overwhelming during an intense battle trying to identify what weapons are being fired and by whom.
The last multiplayer map to be unveiled, “Narrows” which was an exclusive Australian unveiling reminded us of older Quake 3 Arena maps such as The Longest Yard, where players step into energy launchers to be catapaulted between two forts, joined by a narrow bridge. It is a decent map, one without vehicles, but unlikely to supplant the favoured “Blood Gulch” map set in the box canyon, that is endlessly replayed online.
Halo 2 was criticised for not having enough of the Earthly campaign, which everyone seemed to enjoy, and a lot of the alien-spaceship environments, which were prone to a design complaint both original Halo games suffered from, where they had repeated map segments “glued together”. This created a peculiar sense of deja-vu as you played through the same identical set of corridors over and over, with slightly different combinations of enemies and blockading obstacles placed inside. It’s also easy to get lost and disoriented in such an environment, when the corridor ahead and the corridor behind are pixel-identical in every way. We’re happy to say, we didn’t see any of that “Lego-brick” map construction syndrome during the Halo 3 playtest.
Non-gameplay innovations in Halo 3 include a feature to record your gameplay and play it back, with the ability to pause and move the camera around the environment to take screenshots. Video, screenshots and game variants (with a combination of rules chosen by the player) can be uploaded to a special “File Share” that Halo enthusiasts can share with their friends on Xbox Live. Also, a level editor will allow players to re-populate existing map geometry with different enemies, obstacles and vehicles to create new experiences for themselves and their friends. Microsoft has obviously realised the value of the enthusiast gaming community – who often serve to increase a game’s popularity and commercial lifespan because of their own additions, extensions and continued attention to it, when given the tools to add to the game and its levels.
Halo 3 will initially launch on Xbox 360 and will be released on PC afterwards, on an undisclosed date.
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