I asked for super mario galaxy for Christmas but instead my wife got me Halo 3. Since I've always heard how great the Halo series is, I figured I'd just open it and hope for the best. I've played through the first few levels and I don't see what's so special about it. It seems like a blatantly average FPS. My "teammates" are getting in the way (like every FPS with teammates EVER MADE), the weapons are pretty average. The dual-wield thing is pretty cool but not that special. The level design so far is pretty good, but also linear and nothing spectacular. Did I miss some big, deep, meaningful thing that will make this more fun by not playing the first 2?

To be honest, I never got into the Halo thing either.

Multiplayer is the only thing Halo has going for it. Otherwise, yes, it's just average. It is a mystery why it is so popular.

They're rather average games that got the attention of non-nerds over the world. That made the trick.

Nope. You didn't miss anything. It's a generic shooter.

The stuffing is in the multiplayer. The single player has always been boring and generic. Play online with people to get the full experience.

MP is where its at. I do enjoy the cinematic feel of the cutscenes in Halo 3, but besides that, MP is its only strong suit.

It's a game with extremely high productions values. Impressive graphics, great sound, and an engaging singleplayer experience with a fun and simple multiplayer mechanic.

Halo was the first game that really did a first person shooter on a console correctly. It was a fast paced game on a new console that people really gravitated to; it didn't make any steps forward in the genre, but it didn't do anything wrong.

I think that could be argued...

Heavily.

Hum, thanks for the clarification, I'm glad I'm not crazy. (well... not in this case, anyway)

My favorite Halo feature has always been coop. Playing with a friend adds a lot more fun to playing the campaign, even with levels like the Library. Ah, the Library. Good times.

Co-Op and Multiplayer are what makes Halo, Halo.
The story is good for a one through and for getting skulls and points for the new armor.

Since I'm a sucker for e-penis length, I'm going through and getting the skulls and beating the campaign for a third time on a higher difficulty.

But, yeah. XBox Live! is a pretty good service.

I like Halo 3 better than Call of Duty 4, which seems to be the opposite for most people who played both games.

I have to say though, that the "Death from Above" level in Act 1 was pretty impressive and fun. Both games are great, but I just had more fun with Halo 3.

Call of Duty's "Veteran" mode is much harder than Halo's "Legendary" mode, which I beat pretty quickly in.

You want a good SP experience, play Crysis (granted your PC can handle it). The end is a bit anti-climatic, but other than that, it's bloody awesome.

I'm down to three FFA Achievements. All I want is the Security Helmet. I couldn't give a crap about the gamerscore. But God.... How I LOATHE playing Lone Wolves. Once I get those Achievements, I'm never setting foot in that playlist EVER again.

I played Halo 3 for about 20 minutes before deciding that learning to aim on a gamepad again simply wasn't worth the effort. I hated the weapons and the need to constantly swap everything. Somehow Gears of War had a similar system yet didn't infuriate me.

Amen. I've been stuck at a skill level of 43 for over a month. It's basically made me loose all interest in trying to get to General.

I agree with the people who said co-op and MP are what make Halo fun. I've had it since 12:00 AM launch day and I've played single player once. I've played MP at least six times a week. That said, I'm getting bored of it now, but I had a good run. I highly recommend playing with friends. Getting 4 or 5 guys together that you can communicate and have fun with makes all the difference.

I haven't messed with it for a month or so for a variety of reason, none of which have anything to do with the game. To me, the series has always seemed to be excellent. It's just a terribly crowded genre with so many choices that most people will probably never agree on which ones are so "great". I think the big thing for the first game is that it seemed to be the best application of FPS on the last generation consoles. Each sequel seemed to steadily improve slightly and relatively few other console FPS titles have so impressed so many people.

I also think that there is the intrinsic human quality that when something appears to be so over-hyped some become even more critical. For example, I think that Fight Club is probably a relatively good movie but my personal opinion is that it is mediocre with a few redeeming scenes. Others love it.

See, I don't even care about my rank. I finally made Lieutenant three days ago. My Rank is 11. I've been playing since launch. I've purposely been playing mediocre in Ranked matches so I DON'T level up quickly, which makes it easier to get achievements. I got Lieutenant through Social matches with a friend. Rank, numerical or military, doesn't concern me. If I don't ever make it to General, oh well. I'm not there to play competitively like 80% of the players seem to want to do just so they can flaunt their e-penis rank. I'm there to get in a few good relaxing games.

On the subject of Campaign... I've run through it start to finish at least nine or ten times now, and individual levels more than that. And this isn't counting co-op.

This post is full of wrong and fail.

I'd say it's rather hard to argue that Halo was the first game to do an FPS on the console correctly. Has any game enjoyed the success that Halo (and its sequels) has received on the console? The closest is Timesplitters 2, and even that was a limited success.

To date Goldeneye is the only console FPS I've enjoyed enough to play all the way through.

Get out.

Turok1 on N64 was also pretty awesome.

I'm not saying those games weren't fun, but the graphics were pretty horrid, not to mention the sound and environment. As much fun as you were having, you never felt like you were fully in control or really engaged in the environment.

I played Goldeneye on a friend's N64 a few times years and years ago.

I thought it sucked. =/

Die.

I'm not a big fan of FPS on console either, but I played through the Medal of Honor: Airborne and Frontlines: Fuel of War demos from some magazine demo disks and I can do it okay, now. Still nowhere near as accurate as a mouse, but meh, I don't have the money lately to constantly upgrade my computer. Plus, a lot of games nowadays require XP which I don't have (only windows 2000). I am hoping I can get better at the controls as I play more.

Can you play coop on Halo3 w/out internet connection? It seems like the SP only works with one player, I can't find a split screen option or anything.

(And yes, the swapping is really, really annoying. There is no ammo for the starting machine gun anywhere, so as soon as I run out I have to drop it and use these silly purple-blob shooting guns which totally suck. Argh.)

Not really. SOCOM, Timesplitters, the Unreal games...it's not the first to do it correctly on a console. Just the first with the marketing.

It's a good game though. I just am not a huge fan.

You can play up to 4 player split screen co-op.

But seriously, why no internet connection?

Socom was third person and after Halo, and Unreal never came out on consoles?'

I'll give you Timesplitters, but it still didn't have the production values or general reception that Halo had.

Also, I'd like to make clear, I'm not a huge fan of the Halo games, I've played them and recognize their strongpoints, but it doesn't do enough to suck me in (Not like my sweet, sweet baby TF2 does)

At the time the graphics, animation and sound were top-notch for consoles, certainly better than whatever jaggy-fest was released for the Playstation. The music is still some of the best ever released. The levels, both single and multiplayer are more varied than most FPSs before or since, and has been one of the few games I've ever considered constantly replaying in order to unlock cheats. The difficulty ranges perfectly, from some of the easiest (the first couple levels on agent), to satisfying difficult (unlocking invicibility), to downright impossible (beating Aztec Temple on anything above agent).

I don't know what you expect by being fully in control or being engaged with the environment, since all games have some sort of technical limitation, but when Goldeneye was released, and playing it on a new TV, I didn't know how games could possibly get any more real.

My conclusion is that you were probably a Playstation fanboy fatty or you never had a childhood.

Because he's probably spent enough on the console and the game that he sees $50 a year to play it online as unreasonable. :-P

Raising in rank was a lot of fun when I first started playing, it gives you something to shoot for. The insane difficulty in the higher ranks, though, just sucked the fun right out of it. Now I pretty much just play social with my friends and have fun.

See, I think that's stupid. A lot of people make that argument...then go back to their WoW game. If you're gonna have a 360 without live, you either hate online play, are a miser, or just suck at life.


I thought the first Socom was before Halo. I generally group tps with fps. Maybe I'm thinking of Ghost Recon.

But Unreal definitely came out on the consoles, with a bit of a twist.


I think it had the production values, just not the reception. The reception is solely, in my mind, due to marketing--it came out on 3 consoles instead of 1, had online play, and was crazy fun.


Amen brother.

I think the xbox comes with a 1 year free xbox live. I don't have it hooked up to the network yet because I have a hard time shelling out 100 for a wireless adapter. I decided I'm going to run a cable, I just haven't gotten around to it yet, I have a wife and family so the days of running cables across the hallway and living room floors are over

Is there a way to do deathmatch with some bots? We are playing split screen deathmatch but with only two of us, all the maps are really too big.

Yeah, the wireless adapter price is ridiculous. A few of my friends just use their laptops as wireless bridges, seems to work well.

No bots Some of the maps are better suited to small amounts of people, somewhere in the area where you pick maps it says how many people they're ideal for (you'd be looking for the ones that are 2-6 people). Off the top of my head, try Guardian, Construct, Narrows, or Epitaph.