Zero Punctuation: Halo 3

[Alstan]

"I don't give shit about the multiplayer" is like play The Orange Box without testing Team Fortress 2 or Portal. HL2 Eps2 is the same length as Halo3 but in the first one is acceptable and the second one is horrible. What about "I'm more profesional than that"?
Anyway, even the story is definately the worst of the trilogy, even even the Cortana level (Library level in Halo 1) is horrible, even is not the best looking game... I enjoyed it.
All the vehicle parts are great and I don't agree when you say you're driving a warthog and the marine in the machine gun shoots to buterflies. They always shoot to the highest menace. I prefer to get rid of a Biker brute rather than a tank. I can easily avoid the tank fire, but not the biker. Haunting Scarabs is pretty funny and the enemy AI is good.

You're right when you say that a great game have nothing to excuse, that's the reason why I think Halo 3 it's a hype, but is not a bad as you say. The online is excellent if you play with friends or "not retarded random players".
Finally, I enjoyed with this review as much as the rest, and I still think you're a fucking genious.

 

[satanrules]

Brilliant stuff Yahtzee. I can't decide who I enjoy more, you or Maddox. Every so often someone comes along with just enough genius to stir things up (which so badly needed stirring) that it makes me sign up for an account on whatever website and congratulate them personally.

I have this theory which is proven daily by the hoards of mindless twits who willingly swallow all the tripe fed to them by their favorite companies. Take a piece of fruit like a grapefruit and put it on TV every day at the same time, and then create some mass marketing hype to surround it. Pour millions of dollars into the thing by giving it a name and some flashy bullshit slogan and advertise it everywhere relentlessly. What was once a piece of ordinary fruit will become the greatest thing since the advent of electricity, not because it's something useful that will have a profound impact on all of our lives, but because people are genuinely STUPID. You think the word POP in front of music means it's good? Wrong. Anyone who has even the most rudimentary background in music will tell you it's shit because it's talentless drivel which has been hyped and marketed to a group of slow-witted drones who can't tell the difference between one note or beat or another.

There's literally no difference with videogames nowadays. The average gamer will choke down whatever is fed to them via the internet or television because thinking for yourself has become a thing of the past. If it weren't we wouldn't be having this discussion and Yahtzee wouldn't be doing his spot-on reviews. The mindless slave drones which inhabit the planet need to be told what to do otherwise they are lost. If we didn't have mass marketing hypefest schemes pounded at us every day via whatever source of media, we'd be standing in a corner with our eyes wide open staring at nothing with our brains in sleep mode.

There are a few specially gifted individuals who have awoken to the truth and reality of the situation which is that mankind as a whole is a lost cause, and can be easily guided like lambs to the slaughter or in this case, store shelves, where they flush money down the toilet (give it to major companies which really don't need more profit) at alarming rates. Does Microsoft really need more money? Can anyone really fathom what a billion dollars even looks like? Most of us will be lucky to see 6 figures at least once in our lifetimes, meanwhile the mindless slave drones of the planet are busy buying up copies of Halo 3 so Microsoft can continue their quest of duping everyone into thinking they are a viable videogame choice.

I grew up playing Atari 2600, NES, SNES etc blah blah blah, and never once was I presented with the problem of a software update via the internet every other day to fix an issue which should have been worked out in the beta testing department of said gazillion dollar corporation. They have billions of dollars to waste on retarded marketing schemes which only the dullards of the universe could possibly fall for, but they can't quite work out all the bugs in the software before releasing their "final" version to the public. I'm pretty sure I didn't sign up to be a guinea pig beta tester for Microsoft when I bought a 360. I guess there are a millions of suckers who did though and the big MS is proud of you. They'll reward you with Halo 4 and software updates.

I love to play games online, but I'm not really interested in joining an online community full of 15 year olds whose greatest contribution to the world of gaming is, "lol".

Keep up the good work Yahtzee!

 

[ShadowsSpawn]

ok. I also somtimes right game reviews, mostly games i own or people have told me about and frankly i am usualy disapointed about some games with the hype all over them. halo 3 was one of these games.

Problems:
1. the AI was bug fuck retarded. i saw one of my guy rideing a mongoose then for no resion what so ever turned away from the road and started repetivily raming a pipe. i was quite confused and anoyed by this untill a brute that had fliped his veicial causaly walked over to the mongoose and beet the crap out of the guy driving, much to my joy.

2. to me, gears of war set a high graphics standed when it first came out, halo 3 wasnt that great looking. i loved the enviroments (except for the cortana level) but it could have been so much better. it realy took the out of me pisses to see a game with such a high budget and large work team has such a shooty looking final product.

3. shit house connection for online play. I to live in Australia and i somtimes have problems with my connection. but halo 3 sets a new high for shoty services.

good points.

1. the story ends. yes there a plot holes because the 2nd game story mad about as much sence as some one actuly paying for sex from a fat person but but it ends it! but unfortunitaly there is no doubt microsoft will use these plot holes to continue to fund there nuclear factories.

2.balenced multyplayer. yes the connection is as good as a brick is at swimming but the level layout and shield system is wonderful and makes it a exelent game to play over a system link with a large group of friends

3. extra features like the forge and playback are some of the coolest features i have seen in a game.

yes! halo 3 is a run of the mill shooter which is incredably unrealistic, so you cant compare it to 2142 or other games where you cant take much more damage than falling over in your bathtub. all in all halo 3 in my books would get a 7 out of 10 even this might be to high a rating because the single player is so shit but all togeather with forge the playback and it fun social aspects (dissregarding the 10 year old school dropouts that seam to grow like a cancer over the x box live comunity whos constent chatter makes me want to go drown kittens) but if you look at it not for its shitty campain youl find it playable provided your wereing protective gear.

 

[TheKittenStrangler]

Couldn't be anymore true when you said BioShock > Halo 3.

 

[beddo]

A few things;

Regarding tone, Half-life 2 is exactly the same. I mean where did Ravenholm come from!? Talk about inconsistent.

Doesn't "give a flying sh*t about multiplayer" but will review Tabula Rasa an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online)

"Everything it's done has been done before and better" by which games? I seem to remember that Halo was an innovator in FPS games. It introduced a limit on the number of weapons you could hold which added a strategic value. It used hotkeys for grenades and melee hits. The AI was phenomenal in comparison to other games in that era. The streamed loading didn't break the flow of gameplay (Half Life!). It flawlessly implemented in-game vehicles and introduced co-op play into the fps genre in a big way. No game ever used bump and cubic mapping as well imo.

I can't stand when people are biased against games without good reason. Just because it's a Microsoft title doesn't mean it's bad! I think that Yahtzee is jumping on the anti-Microsoft bandwagon.

To be honest, imo Halo 3 is much better than say Half Life 2, you're not constantly stopped by loading screens, the vehicle sections felt forced and very repetitive; drive, stop to open a gate, drive, stop to open a gate. The scripted moments were so obvious it just broke the reality. Storyline!? Don't get me started, who even knows the storyline to the Half-Life series!? Honestly the G-Man and his employers! Could it be more nineties cliché!

Graphically, it excels, the theater mode shows that they are not afraid to show off the skill of their work. Technically speaking the graphics may be weaker than GOW however, it is a proprietary engine and not the unreal 3 engine, it still has parallax and normal mapping, HDR and depth of field. Besides, GOW was pretty lackluster in aesthetics given the toolset, how many shades of brown and grey are there!? The environments were stunning and in many cases epic.

In terms of gameplay, it is good fun. There are so things that 'wow' you, like when the first Scarab arrives on screen, it's exciting. Admitted, the flood levels are a bit weak in terms of design and gameplay but the rest is simply phenomenal. Yahtzee talks about and end boss, Halo 3 doesn't really have and end boss, it's not traditional in that way. Part of what was great about Halo CE was that there was no 'uber' character; there was a group of enemies each with their own traits. It didn't need to rely on boss levels and weak points to feel like a game.

One thing I do agree on, it's not as good as Bioshock.

 

[Fordo]

A buddy of mine works tech support for Xbox 360 and was telling me a of HUGE issue they're having right now relating to XBox Live and Halo 3. I was hoping some Xbox owners could shed some light.

From what he told me, not only do halo 3 owners HAVE TO PAY 15 DOLLARS FOR NEW MAPS that have come out for Halo 3, but the user's account has to be above the age of 18 to download them because of microsoft's new mature content rules, which went into effect 12/7/07.

I've been told by him that Microsoft refuses to upgrade accounts to adult status accounts to get to this content, even with a parent's permission, effectively requiring customers under 18 to create new IDs that have a fake age on it. The downside to this is of course, you lose all your saved 'points' and possibly games you paid to download?

Thoughts?

 

[Louis Wu]

This info is actually wrong.

Halo 3 owners have to pay for new maps, yes. The latest three cost 800 MS points, which works out to $10 in the US at this moment.

The ESRB enforcement applies to only R-Rated, M-rated, and unrated trailers and demos in the XBL Marketplace - it does NOT apply to paid-for content.

 

[CMadness]

A few things;

Regarding tone, Half-life 2 is exactly the same. I mean where did Ravenholm come from!? Talk about inconsistent.

Doesn't "give a flying sh*t about multiplayer" but will review Tabula Rasa an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online)

"Everything it's done has been done before and better" by which games? I seem to remember that Halo was an innovator in FPS games. It introduced a limit on the number of weapons you could hold which added a strategic value. It used hotkeys for grenades and melee hits. The AI was phenomenal in comparison to other games in that era. The streamed loading didn't break the flow of gameplay (Half Life!). It flawlessly implemented in-game vehicles and introduced co-op play into the fps genre in a big way. No game ever used bump and cubic mapping as well imo.

I can't stand when people are biased against games without good reason. Just because it's a Microsoft title doesn't mean it's bad! I think that Yahtzee is jumping on the anti-Microsoft bandwagon.

To be honest, imo Halo 3 is much better than say Half Life 2, you're not constantly stopped by loading screens, the vehicle sections felt forced and very repetitive; drive, stop to open a gate, drive, stop to open a gate. The scripted moments were so obvious it just broke the reality. Storyline!? Don't get me started, who even knows the storyline to the Half-Life series!? Honestly the G-Man and his employers! Could it be more nineties cliché!

Graphically, it excels, the theater mode shows that they are not afraid to show off the skill of their work. Technically speaking the graphics may be weaker than GOW however, it is a proprietary engine and not the unreal 3 engine, it still has parallax and normal mapping, HDR and depth of field. Besides, GOW was pretty lackluster in aesthetics given the toolset, how many shades of brown and grey are there!? The environments were stunning and in many cases epic.

In terms of gameplay, it is good fun. There are so things that 'wow' you, like when the first Scarab arrives on screen, it's exciting. Admitted, the flood levels are a bit weak in terms of design and gameplay but the rest is simply phenomenal. Yahtzee talks about and end boss, Halo 3 doesn't really have and end boss, it's not traditional in that way. Part of what was great about Halo CE was that there was no 'uber' character; there was a group of enemies each with their own traits. It didn't need to rely on boss levels and weak points to feel like a game.

One thing I do agree on, it's not as good as Bioshock.

Blind fanboyism for the win. Halo:CE was not innovative in the slightest. If you actually played games like Rise of the Triad, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Team Fortress Classic, and many others you will find out that everything in Halo had already been done. Saying Halo 3 is better in Half-Life 2 is just laughable and completely reeks of "Teh Halo Love".

 

[beddo]

Blind fanboyism for the win. Halo:CE was not innovative in the slightest. If you actually played games like Rise of the Triad, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Team Fortress Classic, and many others you will find out that everything in Halo had already been done. Saying Halo 3 is better in Half-Life 2 is just laughable and completely reeks of "Teh Halo Love".

Well I guess it's easy to label someone as a 'fanboy' because they challenge your ideas of thinking, it gives you an ill conceived reason to ignore them. Your response is stereotypical of l33t PC gamers who dismiss decent games through a bizarre form of gaming elitism.

Actually I did play, over my earlier years, the aforementioned games apart from Team Fortress Classic. They didn't really innovate anything, mostly just tried to improve on Wolfenstein and Doom, apart from a leap into true 3d I can't think of anything particularly memorable about them, save perhaps dual wielding and the somewhat peculiar and rather ineffective melee kick in Duke Nukem 3d. Perhaps you're tragic enough to believe that paying strippers in a game can be equated to 'innovation'.

I quote you as such;

"Halo:CE was not innovative in the slightest"

How then do you explain self-regenerating shields in some form or another in almost every FPS and in many action games since its inception in Halo?

Moreover, are you suggesting that the inclusion of Vehicles in Half-Life 2 has nothing to do with a knock on affect from Halo?

Well firstly, you need to know how to express yourself as what you wrote; "Halo 3 is better 'IN' Half-Life 2" clearly isn't what you meant. I quite clearly said in my opinion Halo 3 is better than Half-Life 2, I can re-iterate if you like; in my opinion Halo 3 is better than Half-Life 2; especially concerning online multi-player. If you wish to contradict me you could give an argument rather than try to destroy my spirit with your savage use of 'Teh Halo Love', lolzor; w00t, I can g33k speak too, Beddo ftw!

 

[error17]

Halo 3 is an over rated game, there it was created by Bungie using the skill and already mastered Counter-Strike only adding it in the presence of the mastered Half-Life, so what kind of mixture is Halo 3? It is an over rated game by far, its a game realesed that is too old for today, everyone needs to move on from its bitting lame stroyline and copy cat FPS multi people game.

Yahtzee has the right to have his stats as I am, He is to the bullet correct about Halo 3, It is enjoyable, but shit it is a fucking sad game when it comes to the fans and campaign.

I'm starting to wonder - what were they doing for three years?

 

[broadband]

the halo franchise is just acouple of average games that practicly have the record of the most overrated game ever.

and is ridiculous try to compare halo 3 with half life 2, halo 3 barely have single player, it relies on the multiplayer for survive, like unreal tournament or quake, meanwhile half life 2 is all about singleplayer with a inmersive storyline.

also in the storyline of half life 2, you control a normal man that survives all those situations thanks to his suit, trying to get back a consumed earth where the humans are slowly exterminaded like in concentration camps.

the halo storyline is about a clichestic hero in literaly a shiny armor that practicly has no real name, trying to save the world from shiny aliens that looks like pulled out from a toy store, and other aliens that are practicly a zerg rip-off, like some kind of drugged US comic-esque hero or something.

if you think on it we can say that master chief have stuff that gordon freeman lacks and viceversa, like a face and a name in the case of MC and a voice in the case of Gordon

 

[NeoSpriggan]

Okay, first of all, great review yahtzee.
Secondly, agreed with pretty much all of it, and i have played all Halo's, which to this day i still see as mediocre. And i would like to point out one thing, games are made of two parts, single and multiplayer. If the most important half is how yahtzee and i see it, single player of course, then the game does not deserve even a 9/10. Both parts must shine before it can be considered the best thing ever.

 

[brenikai22]

I like just got halo 1 (i.e. the REALLY ancient original) and I hve to agree the series just keeps keeps on being inconsistent!

 

[beddo]

I like just got halo 1 (i.e. the REALLY ancient original) and I hve to agree the series just keeps keeps on being inconsistent!

How is the series inconsistent?

 

[DarkangelUK]

The review lost all merit for me within the 1st 30 seconds "Part of the problem is i've never actually played a Halo game up until this one, maybe you need all the backstory to get the experience all the other reviewers were apparently having"... yes.. yes you do. The thing that separates this game from many other fps game sequels is the fact it has a proper continuing story that's carried from game to game. All the way through the review Yahtzee consistently tells us he just doesn't understand what's happening.. why it's horror head munchers at one point, then fighting aliens the next.. why he's asked to do certain things with no explanation. Had he actually played the previous games, known the story and got to grips with what was actually happening.. then he'd completely understand everything that was happening. I think he was completely thrown by the proper sequel-esqueness of the game. Playing only Halo 3 and trying to understand everything is like watching only LOTR: Return Of The King and wondering why you have no idea what's going on or why people are doing what they're doing.

One of the big attractions to Halo is the story... and I don't mean just what you get from the games.. it goes far beyond that. There's the 4 books and also the comic, and they're all tied together... the game, the books and the comics build the overall picture. The engrossing story is what makes people look past the gameplay and visual flaws and still enjoy what's happening. It's my thoughts that if you don't know the whole story (and I mean the books and comics included... hell even the 10 year viral marketing that's been going on as well), then you can't make a fair comment on whether it's good or bad.

Top notch reviews, this is the only one I've disagreed with.

 

[J-Val]

The review lost all merit for me within the 1st 30 seconds "Part of the problem is i've never actually played a Halo game up until this one, maybe you need all the backstory to get the experience all the other reviewers were apparently having"... yes.. yes you do. The thing that separates this game from many other fps game sequels is the fact it has a proper continuing story that's carried from game to game. All the way through the review Yahtzee consistently tells us he just doesn't understand what's happening.. why it's horror head munchers at one point, then fighting aliens the next.. why he's asked to do certain things with no explanation. Had he actually played the previous games, known the story and got to grips with what was actually happening.. then he'd completely understand everything that was happening. I think he was completely thrown by the proper sequel-esqueness of the game. Playing only Halo 3 and trying to understand everything is like watching only LOTR: Return Of The King and wondering why you have no idea what's going on or why people are doing what they're doing.

One of the big attractions to Halo is the story... and I don't mean just what you get from the games.. it goes far beyond that. There's the 4 books and also the comic, and they're all tied together... the game, the books and the comics build the overall picture. The engrossing story is what makes people look past the gameplay and visual flaws and still enjoy what's happening. It's my thoughts that if you don't know the whole story (and I mean the books and comics included... hell even the 10 year viral marketing that's been going on as well), then you can't make a fair comment on whether it's good or bad.

Top notch reviews, this is the only one I've disagreed with.

A sequel game, just like a movie or book, should at least give a basic explanation of the plot from the previous one. I've played Halo 3, and it is tempting to describe the beginning as akin to being dumped, naked, in the middle of the woods. And even if you have played the other games, the pace is so disjointed and frenetic that you barely understand what is happening. I also highly doubt all the reviewers who gave Halo 3 such a high score played the previous games. In fact, the second-lowest score reviewer has played all of them.
And Halo's story is probably one of its worst factors, being the generic, uninteresting Sci-Fi dross about aliens and armageddon, attempting to look smart by throwing religious words all over the place. Why so many people praise it and call it "epic" is beyond me.

no we dont need more pple defying the mainstream, take a look around and you will realise that actually more pple hate halo than like it.

I'm no Halo fan, but even I must admit that Halo is the most popular - not to mention overrated - thing since Jesus Christ.
A Metacritic score of 94, legions of rabid fanboys and most of my school aren't defying the mainstream.

Also, am I the only one whose annoyed at how many times Halo 3's rather mediocre multiplayer is used as an excuse for its bad singleplayer, including;
"Still, judging a game like Halo 3 on the single-player campaign is like taking a movie to task for its opening credits. Halo 3's multiplayer is its reason for existence." - The Onion

 

[DarkangelUK]

A sequel game, just like a movie or book, should at least give a basic explanation of the plot from the previous one. I've played Halo 3, and it is tempting to describe the beginning as akin to being dumped, naked, in the middle of the woods. And even if you have played the other games, the pace is so disjointed and frenetic that you barely understand what is happening. I also highly doubt all the reviewers who gave Halo 3 such a high score played the previous games. In fact, the second-lowest score reviewer has played all of them.
And Halo's story is probably one of its worst factors, being the generic, uninteresting Sci-Fi dross about aliens and armageddon, attempting to look smart by throwing religious words all over the place. Why so many people praise it and call it "epic" is beyond me.

I'm trying to find an example of a movie or game that does actually explain the previous instalments to the viewer/player, and tbh I'm struggling. A perfect example is Half Life 2.. wake up on a train and away you go, made worse by a mute player who is told everything by the fellow characters in a manner that assumes you know everything that's happened already. The comic explains explains exactly why you're dumped in a forest at the very beginning, can't say there's many other games give an alternate medium to explain a story and give you something to tide you over until the game's released.

The praise of the story is probably beyond you because you don't know it.

 

[linkages555]

HI my name is Daniel, and i saw the yathzee review of halo 3, and after that i saw this huge comments and i thought they maybe gonna be fans from the series(game) criticizing him... and that was i got.... hell and with ridicusly long replys, so i must comment to speak my word...

Im a fan from the halo series ... i am HUGE fan and i thought that halo is an awesome game, great graphics nice gameplay and good controls. but since life is not like i imagined it, there are people who doesnt think the way i do about games, music, and life... but that´s ok i should ,i must, and i do respect others opinion, yathzee only did a review of a game, you dont have to get angry or get serious about the review because the guy mented to do it hilariously funny and thats what you got, i personally like the review because overall is GAME not LIFE a GAME !!!!!!!!.

on the other side i dont get why you hate halo 3 or any halo series ... i get it if you dont like it or its not gameplay tipe you like , or the story, whatever, but dont come to a computer to call halo 3 a shit just because you didnt like it (games are suppose to be fun .... not to make you angry)... other thing what the hell with the pc V.S console wars for FPS theme, again a game suppose to be enjoyable not became a console war

conclusion : i like yathzee review it was hilaiously awesome, he got an opinion i got mine so i dont get angry for what he said, i learn from it ... overrall its just a game its your choice if you want to enjoy it or not ... yathzee if you evere come to pass this reply and read it... i would like you to tell that you are doing a great job keep ot going. even do you didn like halo 3 i respect your opinion