Halo 3 [360]

Arguably the most anticipated game ever, Halo fans finally get to "finish the fight" and find out if the world ends in this final installment of Bungie's shooter franchise. Picking up from the cliffhanger at the end of Halo 2, Master Chief's mission is to stop the Prophet from finding an artifact called "The Ark", and prevent him from using the Halo weapon to annihilate the planet. Unfortunately, you've crash-landed in the jungle and need to get yourself out of there first. As you progress through the game, you'll travel to various diverse locations along the way, occasionally taking control of several vehicles to break up the standard shooting action.

The missions themselves are fairly standard. You'll mostly be putting down the Covenant forces, but occasionally need to arm bombs or disable enemy defenses. There are also a few timed-escape levels as well to keep you moving. The levels are quite large, and have some generally good designs. There are a lot of missions that ask you to backtrack though, and this definitely makes some parts of the game feel like filler to bump up the play time. Your squad-mates aren't always dependable either, and you are often paired-up with the Arbiter, who seems to go Missing In Action quite a bit. The game allows for up to four-player co-op though, which is most welcome, especially at higher difficulty levels.

Visually, the game keeps the same general style as its predecessors, but definitely benefits from the Xbox 360's capabilities. Jungle levels feature plants that bend as you brush by and gorgeous water effects in the form of waterfalls, rivers and pools. More barren locales in the game are enhanced by smoke, dust and blowing snow effects. While it doesn't seem there was any facial mapping done, the character animations are top-notch. The game streams in level data during each mission and, while the frame rate hiccups a bit now and then, it's certainly better than watching a loading screen. The Head's-Up Display could have been better though, since objective locations aren't always shown, and players are often left guessing their way through levels that should be easy to navigate. The game's sound is mostly what you'd expect, with various vehicle and weapon sounds mixed in with friendly and enemy voices. The music is handled especially well, and fades in cinematically at key moments during the action.

Naturally, series fans are going to be interested in some multiplayer action as well, and on that score, the game doesn't disappoint. With support for up to sixteen players and some truly large levels, there's a lot here to keep fans busy for quite some time. Standard Slayer (death match) and Capture The Flag modes are joined by seven others, including Infection, where players kill Flood creatures or infect humans and Juggernaut, a kind of reverse tag where killing the Juggernaut player (the target) makes you the next Juggernaut. The game also has some added features, such as the ability to record gameplay and allow players to upload clips to share with friends. There's also a mode called Forge, which a basically a real-time level editor, allowing players to customize the levels as they play. Multiple players can take part via split-screen or over Xbox Live as well.

While this is certainly a comprehensive package, it does seem that all these extras come at a cost to the main Campaign mode, which is much shorter than expected. Most players will likely get through the game in eight to ten hours and, though the story's ending should satisfy most, it's unfortunate that the journey along the way isn't a bit more substantial.

8/10