- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
To bungie and all those who work there,
Yeah, I played the crap out of Halo 3. I played the crap out of all of them. I took 2 days off from playing to really think about the game so I could get a good judgement of the game that was unbias. Halo 3 is a great game, with an incredible amount of polish and so many great features it almost makes your head spin, but now I've come to the problems of the game. There ARE more areas that feel more open and vehicle oriented, like Halo CE, but that made me think of the reasons why I loved Halo so much.
This is why, in my opinion, the Campaign for Halo and Halo 2 were actually more fun that Halo 3's Campaign. (Note, this is all done from the perspective of playing on Legendary) First off, the length. After playing through the game, I realised it was short. A single mission will take roughly 25 to 30 minutes to beat, minus 2 missions that take roughly 40 minutes. In Halo CE or 2, there were more, longer mission, and I know length of game isn't always an issue, but I really feel Halo 3 is just too short.
Second, and this is the main reason. My friend and I can sit down and play Halo CE's Campaign any time. When he comes over, we can just sit down and play any of the missions, even the ones people say they hate more than Saddam (I'm looking at you Library), and it's just plain fun. If I MYSELF sit down to play the Campaign of Halo CE, I have a ton of fun. When I go to talk to my Uncle about everything Halo, we have very specific conversations, and those are about battles. Very specific confrontations in Halo CE and Halo 2 that were just so hard we had to come up with picture perfect strategies to get past them.
For example: In Halo CE, on the mission Truth and Reconciliation, the part of the mission just under the Covenant Cruiser, to the part when you just get inside, to the part in the docking bay are all really hard, but that's why their fun. We would all talk about how we got through that part of the mission, what we did, and how many tries it took to get right. It's great to hear what your friends and family come up with that you didn't even think of.
Again, during Halo 2 on Cairo Station, there's the one docking bay where there are 2 Grunt turrets, and a whole bunch of Elites at the other end of the room. What I did was completely different from what my uncle did, which was completely different from what my friend did, which was still different from what my uncle's friend did. It's just great to see how versatile the level design was for such a small, yet incredibly hard room.
In Halo 3, myself nor my uncle have come to a single point in the Campaign where we said, "That part was really hard. How'd you do it?" We just played the game and got through with very little problems. The only point we did mention was on the mission Cortana where you come to a spiraling starcase like room with Pure Form Flood on the ceiling shooting at you with their spikes, but we both noticed the Cloaks in the previous room, and the Cloaks half way up the room in question, making that part a walk through. We weren't challenged like we wanted to be, and it wasn't that fun. The games great, and will appeal to the every man, sure, but what happened to my problem points? I WANT to be stuck on a part of a level where I have to think really hard, and play really well to get through it. I miss the Elite that took 4 headshots, or the Jackal that could kill me in 8 shots and could get those shots off in one second. It didn't make for good gameplay I'm sure, but it was still hella fun.
Now, I know the skulls are meant to make the game harder, and I really should test whether or not I'll get to a point that challenges me truly when I have them turned on. I would have to turn on the Tough Luck, Famine, and Mythic Skulls, just so the game's harder without being silly or out of the ordinary. Maybe then I'll get what I'm looking for.
There are still memorable moments, don't get me wrong, such as when my friend was flying a Hornet with me on the side, then he got me close enough to jack a Banshee, but there aren't memorable segments of missions. That's what I miss the most. Halo 2's Campaign may not have been that great at all (in my opinion), but it still had memorable segments. The multiplayer isn't in question. It's still just as fun as Halo 2's, if not far better... yeah, it's far better.
This isn't really a question, or really me asking/telling you to do something, I'm just informing you, or at least I hope I am.
Also, nobody uses the Sniper Rifle or Energy Sword on Constuct, you might want to tweak it somehow. Just a thought.