I'm very nostalgic for this game. This was my first time playing it.
Because I can't think of any media release since, video game or otherwise, that felt like such an event. (An Avengers? Star Wars 7? Certain WoW expansions?) Or maybe that says more about my age and friend group in 2007. Or the sodas I was drinking.
And I'd say it lived up to expectations. Shooting bad guys is fun, and grenades feel useful and balanced. Only one level made me angry when it refused to end. I did the accidentally-return-to-the-start-because-the-environment-has-no-landmarks thing again, in the same level. There's a comically easy boss fight towards the end, which is odd but I prefer it to the opposite. Basically, this is what I wanted from Halo 2.
The story ends the only way it possibly could have. Maybe a little too neatly. But it shows an ambition in storytelling that I don't think was there in the previous entries, even though it seems unpolished by today's standards. But hey, it was 2007. Seems like that was the year everyone everywhere was figuring out what video games stories could be. Modern Warfare, Bioshock, Super Mario Galaxy, Mass Effect, Portal. As much as I grumbled about the story and writing of the series before, Halo 3 improves on the faults of the previous entries, and it deserves to be on that list. As a transitional moment, if nothing else.
Because I can't think of any media release since, video game or otherwise, that felt like such an event. (An Avengers? Star Wars 7? Certain WoW expansions?) Or maybe that says more about my age and friend group in 2007. Or the sodas I was drinking.
And I'd say it lived up to expectations. Shooting bad guys is fun, and grenades feel useful and balanced. Only one level made me angry when it refused to end. I did the accidentally-return-to-the-start-because-the-environment-has-no-landmarks thing again, in the same level. There's a comically easy boss fight towards the end, which is odd but I prefer it to the opposite. Basically, this is what I wanted from Halo 2.
The story ends the only way it possibly could have. Maybe a little too neatly. But it shows an ambition in storytelling that I don't think was there in the previous entries, even though it seems unpolished by today's standards. But hey, it was 2007. Seems like that was the year everyone everywhere was figuring out what video games stories could be. Modern Warfare, Bioshock, Super Mario Galaxy, Mass Effect, Portal. As much as I grumbled about the story and writing of the series before, Halo 3 improves on the faults of the previous entries, and it deserves to be on that list. As a transitional moment, if nothing else.