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Halo 3 is an award winning first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie Studios and published by Microsoft, exclusively for it's own Xbox 360 console. The game brings to an end the story started in the previous two games, Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2. The game was released onSeptember 25, 2007 all over the world, except Europe and Japan where it was released the next day. Microsoft put out 4.2 million copies of Halo 3 on its first day to make sure there were enough copies.

The game's story is based around a future war between a fictional alien race known as the covenant and the human race. The player takes the role of Master Chief, a genetically enhanced super soldier who fights for mankind. The player is helped through the story by marines and another alien race known as the elites. The game had many new features that were not in the original two games including extra vehicles, weapons and equipment.

Sales of the game added up to over $300 million US dollars in it's first week. More than a million people played the game on Xbox Live in the first twenty four hours of its release. By January 1 2008 it had sold over 8 million copies making it the best selling videogame of 2007. The game was mostly very well reviewed in the press. It recieved a 94 out of 100 rating on Metacritic, a website that puts many reviews together and gives an average score. According to Metacritic this means the game had 'universal acclaim'.

Gameplay

An Xbox 360 controller with the games controls pointed out

The gameplay in Halo 3 is similar to the gameplay in Halo and Halo 2 but with added features. It is a first-person shooter that takes place mostly on foot but with sections of vehicle based fighting. A player can carry a range or weapons including sniper rifles, rocket launchers, grenades and alien weapons such as beam rifles and needlers. Unlike the old games, during multiplayer all weapons a player is carrying can be seen on the player. This includes side holsters for pistols and larger weapons that can be slung across the players back. Halo 3 also introduces 'support weapons', large two handed weapons that slow the players movement but do a lot of damage. Two examples include the new to Halo 3 flamethrower and a heavy machine gun. Halo 3 also included a map-editor called forge where players could create their own arenas and battlegrounds to fight in. Almost all weapons and objects in a level can be moved or deleted in forge mode. The game also has theater mode which lets players record some of their best kills or plays from multiplayer mode. The last 20 games played are automatically saved, although this feature needs an Xbox 360 hard drive to work. These films can be uploaded to Bungie's website where other people can download them and watch them on their PC.

Story Mode

Halo 3's story mode contains nine levels. It finishes the story of the Halo trilogy. The story can be played alone, with a friend on the same console or with four players over Xbox Live. The first player takes control of Master Chief, the second player plays as the leader of the Elites, Arbiter and the last two as elites themselves. There are skulls hidden through the levels, that if found by any of the players change the gameplay in some way. For example one skull makes confetti and balloons appear when a player gets a headshot and another makes all the enemies talk in a silly voice.

Multiplayer

Halo 3 multiplayer can have up to four people on one console, or up to sixteen players over Xbox Live. Games vary from kill everyone deathmatch modes (called Slayer in Halo) to eight versus eight capture the flag games, where on team must take the enemy flag back to their base to score a point. Aside from these there are also, two versus two gametypes, four versus four and eight versus eight. There is a ranking system in Halo 3 that matches players with other players of the same ability, to make sure it is a fair game. The ranks are based on real life military ranks. The lowest is corporal but players can progress all the way up to general. Because often Halo multiplayer is played with strangers online there is a mute option, which lets any one player blank out the voice of any other player if they are being insulting or annoying.

Story

Setting

The game is set in the same fictional world as the rest of the Halo series. Most of the game take place in the future year 2553, over 500 years from now. In the storyline humans have developed faster than light travel, and now live on many planets and moons of the Solar System. On humanity's first try to build a settlement on a planet around another star they met the alien Covenant. The Covenant declared religious war on humanity. During Halo 2 the Covenant discover Earth. At the start of Halo 3 the Covenant are launching a full-scale invasion of Earth.

The Halo of the game's title is the name of a series of planets 'built' by a mysterious race called the Forerunners a long time before the game. The Halo's are the last defence against another alien race known as the Flood. The Flood want to use every living thing in the galaxy for food. The Halo's are actually giant super weapons, that when activated kill all life in the galaxy. This is the only way to stop the Flood, to starve them by killing all their food. The Covenant are don't know this and are attempting to fire Halos as part of a wrong religious prophecy. In the first Halo game, Halo: Combat Evolved, the humans and Master Chief manage to stop the Covenant from firing one of the Halos. They also destroy one of them in the process. The destruction of one of the Halos starts an emergency. The Halos can now all be fired from one place, using a device called the Ark. The Covenant, still not understanding the truth, launch an invasion of Earth, where they believe the Ark is buried. This is where the Halo 3 story starts.

Characters

The main character of Halo 3, as in all the Halo games, is Master Chief. Master Chief is a super soldier, the last surviving member of the Spartan Project. The Spartan Project was started by humans to genetically, using genes, make soldiers who were stronger, faster and tougher than any normal human. Another character from Halo 1 and 2, controlled by the second player in a co-op game is Arbiter, the leader of the alien Elites. In Halo 2 he is an enemy but in Halo 3 he joins forces with the humans. Other returning characters include the veteran human soldier Avery Johnson, the AI Cortana, the robot 343 Guilty Spark and the Gravemind, dangerous leader of the Flood.

Plot

Halo 3 begins where Halo 2 left off. The player once again plays as Master Chief as he falls towards Earth in an escape pod. He crashlands in Kenya near the city of Mombasa. He is found by a squad of marines led by Avery Johnson, the commander from Halos 1 and 2. The player and the marines fight their way through invading Covenant force to a human outpost. Here they find human forces making a last attempt to stop the Covenant from activating a portal they found buried in the Kenyan desert. They are unsuccesful however, and the Covenant open the portal to the Ark, where they will be able to fire the Halos and destroy the galaxy. Just after the Covenant fleet of spacecraft leave the portal, the biggest ship, known as High Charity, crashes into the city of Mombasa. High Charity has been taken over by the Flood. The player as Master Chief, must fight their way into the ruined spacecraft and recover the robot Cortana who can tell them the way to re-open the portal and follow the Covenant. Once the player is successfull the the humans re-open the portal and head after the Covenant to stop them firing the Halos. Joining them is 342 Guilty Spark, one of the robots who helped build the destroyed Halo from the first game. Once through the portal the player and his allies discover the huge, planet size structure known as the Ark, where all the Halos can be fired from. Led by 343 Guilty Spark the player makes their way to the centre of the Ark where the Covenant leader, the Prophet of Truth is preparing to fire.

Just as the player arrives to stop the Prophet of Truth, the repaired, Flood infested ship High Charity, arrives in an attempt to take over the Ark. The player, Arbiter and Johnson now take out all the Flood in the area before Arbiter kills the Prophet of Truth and prevents the Halos from being fired. During the firefight however Johnson was killed by a Flood parasite. There is no time for the player to rest however, as he must now head to the nuclear reactor at the center of the Flood infested spacecraft, High Charity in an effort to kill the Flood. Once this is complete, the player and Arbiter must go and activate one Halo ring. This will destroy the Ark and kill all the Flood in this area of the Milky Way Galaxy whilst saving the rest. The player and the Arbiter head off to activate the single Halo and save the Galaxy. When they arrrive 343 Guilty Spark warns them that activating this Halo will destroy the whole Ark and the Halo itself. The player ignores the warning. This angers 343 Guilty Spark who attempts to kill the player and save 'his' Halo from being destroyed. This is in effect the final 'boss battle' of the game. The player defeats the robot, and activates the Halo. A countdown starts but it too late for the player as Master Chief and the AI Cortana. They manage to board a spacecraft to take them away but it is caught in the explosion and is split in two. Master Chief is assumed dead.

If the player has completed the game on the hardest diffuculty settting, Legendary, they can watch a different ending where Master Chief and Cortana survive the explosion.

Design and Development

The first work was started on Halo 3 before the release of Halo 2 in 2004. Through 2004/2005 Bungie refused to confirm they were working on Halo 3, only saying that they had a 'new project'. The game was officially announced with a trailer at E3 2006. While details of the multiplayer were openly announced and talked about before release, details of the story were kept mostly secret until the day of the launch. There are over 40,000 recorded clips of NPC, Non Player Character, dialogue in Halo 3. That is more than twice times as many for Halo 2. Seperate sound recordings were made for nearby and distant gunfire to make a more believable experience. Like Halo 1 and 2 the game has it's own especially recorded classical soundtrack. The music was recorded with a 27 piece choir and a 60 piece orchestra.

Marketing and Release

Copies of Halo 3 on display in a store, shortly before the midnight opening

Various marketing ideas were used to promote the release of Halo 3. A Beta, unfinished version, of the multiplayer mode was released with the Microsoft game Crackdown a few months before the actual release. The advertising campaign cost an estimated $10 million US dollars. The 'Believe' campaign was a high profile launch on television, radio, billboards and other high profile places. It focused on the epic quality of the games storyline. The game's tagline or key phrase was 'finish the fight' . Pepsi also announced a new energy drink called Game Fuel. It had an image of Master Chief and the Halo 3 logo on the packaging. Bill Gates, the owner of Microsoft personally sold copies of the game at a Washington game store.

Sales

Halo 3 sales reached $170 million within 24 hours, making it the biggest selling entertainment product launch in US history. It beat the previous record set by Halo 2 in 2004. It was the best selling video game of 2007 in the US, despite only being available on Xbox 360. On January 3 2008 Microsoft announced Halo 3 has sold 8.1 million copies worldwide.

Reviews

Halo 3 was mostly given very good reviews in the media. On Metacritic the game has an average score of 94 out of 100. This was an average from 74 reviews. The multiplayer was often given praise and IGN said that the multiplayer was 'the strongest of the series so far'. The music to the campaign was also highly praised, along with the voice acting. The main bad points from reviews were the short length of the story mode and the AI of your allies. Byran Vore of gamecritics said that some parts of the story mode were 'embarrassing'. Nevertheless he still said the full game was a 'masterpiece'.