Halo 3

This Week: Halo 3

The Ad campaign for this game was insane. They had these old soldiers talking about how Master Chief saved their lives, they had live action trailers of battles, and even a giant diorama detailing the battle.

The ad campaign was enough to make me pre-order my copy and get my lazy butt in gear finishing Halo: CE and Halo 2.

As a result, this is one of the few games I was ready day one for. I attended a midnight release party at GameStop ready to pick up my copy of Halo 3. I went ALL out and bought the

Standard version, that came with nothing.

Yeah, by the time I was fully invested in the Halo series, it was too late to get any of the fun and fancy editions. And I was two years into college, so I was broke as all hell. I believe I was working walmart at the time.

I had either class or work in the morning, so after picking up the game, I played 1 level and then went to sleep. After completing my obligation for the day, I then burned through the game in about 2-3 sittings. I would say it is probably my favorite Halo game. It focused completely on Master Chief, the ending was satisfying, I liked the Warthog run in this one much better than in Halo:CE, and it decently wrapped up the story while also leaving the possibility for more.

I played a little multiplayer, but again, was not very good at it. Having the ability to play online allowed people from all over the world to T-bag my face. One time I started a match, everyone on my team bailed and I was fighting alone. I think I managed a kill or two. I figured since I was obviously fighting alone, the other team would be cool and let my corpse lie alone.

Now, this was back on the Xbox 360. Achievements were a fresh thing with the system and I remember looking over my gamer score and found after playing all the way through Halo 3, I had only one achievement. Fear the Pink Mist. For killing 5 enemies with a Needler.

Yeah, you got NO achievements for beating the game on Easy. Halo 3 did not spare your feelings. You want to just play the story and call it a day, then do so with no gamerscore like the b**** you are!

One of the things that was introduced in this game that I got very little use out of was all the extra gear beyond grenades and guns. I almost never used the bubble shield, the flare, the EMP, none of it. Playing on Easy, I was never in enough danger to actually need it and in multiplayer, I was so bad that I couldn’t effectively use them in a tactical way.

It’s like that one time I was playing some fighting game and after getting my but handed to me for the 15th match in a row, I paused the game and asked, “How do I block?”

After playing Halo 3 and getting my butt kicked in multiplayer for a week or so, I put the game away to finally rest and watch the sun rise on a grateful universe.

After Halo 3 we had Halo Wars and Halo 3: ODST. I bought both and because Halo Wars came out first, I had to play that before I could play ODST. Well, I got 2 levels in, lost a level, and then never picked it up again.

So resulted in me missing out on Reach, despite buying it, Halo 4(didn’t buy that one, I don’t think), and Halo 5. I kept wanting to catch up, but in my own. . . my own. . .

So when I got the Master Chief Collection, I figured my comeback was in place. I would play from first to last. And this time I would balls to wall it on LEGENDARY.

And after getting my ass kicked in Halo CE on level 2 and giving up for 5 years, I finally dropped it back down to easy and did the replay.

Now after playing with the God-like graphics of Halo 2, Halo 3 came as a shocking downgrade. Getting a near photo realistic Master Chief and then taking several steps back was disheartening. I heard from a coworker that supposedly the graphics were good enough on Halo 3 that it would be too much to upgrade the graphics for only a minor improvement.

Once I got past all my characters not looking as good as they used to one game ago, I really enjoyed playing Halo 3 again.

Also, this time around, I got a bunch of Achievements for beating it on Easy, so suck it 360 version that simply wanted me to do better.

This time around, I finished Halo 3 and kept my momentum up by going right into Halo ODST.

Next Week: Halo can still be fun without Spartans or Halos, right?