You know those games that were really bad? The ones where everyone is in universal agreement, or so it seems? Well, what if everyone was wrong? What if those games didn't suck? That's the task I've been left with - trying to figure out if those games really are that bad by subjecting myself to them. Well hey, someone's gotta do it.

Tonight begins what I’d like to call a reverse look: rather than look at simply the worst of the worst out there, we’re also going to be looking at some of the most praised games and asking the same old question: Does it suck?



Basic Info

Halo 3
Developer - Bungie
Publisher - Microsoft
Console - Xbox 360
Year - 2007



The premise

The final installment of the Halo trilogy, we find Master Chief crashing to the jungles of Africa. Cortana is MIA and the Covenant is moving to activate all of the Haloes in the galaxy, destroying the Flood and taking every other living thing with it. It’s up to our good Spartan friend to stop them all, no matter what the cost. Not too much else to it. Pretty cut and dry.

Here’s the biggest problem with Halo 3 and it’s story: it’s flat. It has more clichés than I really, really care for. The ending is, in fact, not an ending at all. And in the end, the story is just Master Chief plowing through aliens to save the world. Really, you can try to pretend there’s more to it than that, but Bungie apparently abandoned the idea of a complex story in Halo 3 for one that could be written on the back of a napkin in a bar.

The characters also suffered. The Arbiter is not exactly the bad ass we remember him as in Halo 2. Master Chief isn’t supposed to be a character who talks, thanks in large part to having Cortana around to do the talking for him, but since she’s missing for 75% of the game, Chief’s silence is more hindrance than help. I never really felt any sort of attachment to MC as I did to Sgt. Johnson or pretty much ant other character in the game. Plus, weren’t we supposed to be fighting on Earth and not on the Ark for the whole damn game?

The game



There are three basic modes to the game. To begin with, let's dive into mutliplayer. It's pretty much what you'd expect: mindless killing fun against other human players. It's also what you'd expect from Xbox Live, with your good players, sucky players and total douchewads. The maps themselves are fairly balanced with a number of different attack points and potential strategies to victory, though some maps seem to have one weapon that is king above all others, and whoever gets that weapon seems to be able to rack points up more quickly than everyone else. The worst part of multiplayer, though, is the TruSkill ranking system, or those numbers you see next to your name when you pop onto a certain playlist. What makes them so bad is that they only judge you based on if you won or lost. Never mind the fact you could have outscored everyone and had teammates who did nothing; you are treated as if you got rolled all the same by hacking off a point every two or three losses, regardless of circumstance. That's what actually ruined playing without my friends on Xbox Live; I kept getting stuck on teams with people who couldn't play and kept getting hammered so bad on my score that I just stopped playing random all together.

Forge is a pretty open and creative feature; additional DLC packs have only helped add more fun to this mode. I’ve seen some incredibly amazing things done via Forge in Halo 3 (as well as my fair share of shit), but this is the only part of the game I can say with confidence does not suck at all.

That leaves us with the single-player experience, which is something to be desired. It’s basically nine levels of mowing down everything in your path while keeping your little ass alive. I know, you’re thinking that’s the whole thing behind FPS games, but Master Chief is always on the offensive and always has the higher ground. You’re never stuck defending yourself or having to use some kind of strategy; it’s just fire and forget. Adding in a few tweaks or twists here would have been immensely beneficial.

Level design, however, is relatively linear and not very inspired. “Cortana,” in particular, stands out as a memorably bad level. Never mind the sphincter doors: backtracking, plus a never-ending flood of enemies, plus nothing but tight, cramped corridors that either loop around or force you to take a certain path, equals an awful level in every sense of the word. More variety and having at least one killer, unforgettable level would definitely have helped ease the feelings that Bungie was asleep at the wheel for parts of the design phase.

The controls

Halo 3 thankfully doesn’t suffer from overmapping issues, and actually controls pretty well for a FPS title. The triggers handle weapons firing, the A button is for jumping (a logical choice based on years of how games used to place the jump button), and none of the button positions really seem odd or out of place. The default set-up also allows for better on the fly reaction, which in FPS titles, can mean life and death. Moving on…

The graphics and sound



Not much to criticize here. Some of the game’s levels are really bland on textures, but most of the animations run smooth, there are few if any clipping problems, and the game’s soundtrack is pretty amazing. What voice acting there is from other characters is decent, with the only thing keeping it from being great being the actual script itself. But really, that kind of loops back to the fact of having a flat story. It’s hard to have kick-ass dialogue without having writers who can put out a kick-ass storyline.

The conclusion

While appropriately lauded for its console multiplayer, the single-player campaign mode leaves a lot to be desired. For what was supposed to be the finish to the fight, things were not very memorable. There just wasn’t enough punch or substance to the storyline for Halo 3, and in my mind, the game suffers a bit for that. It also suffers from a pretty linear level design: things feel tight and constrained, as if you only have one path to the end and you have to take it, no questions asked. If it were any other game besides Halo 3, I might overlook these things a bit more, but being the “final part” of one of the biggest gaming trilogies this generation means you have higher expectations to meet. Bungie didn’t quite bring their A game this time around.

FINAL VERDICT: Moderate suck. Great multiplayer, decent controls, somewhat unfulfilling and shallow storyline. Still feels way too linear in level design. Could have been a lot better. Oh, and TruSkill sucks balls.