Halo 3 - 10 Year Anniversary

[laggyteabag]

In little under a week, my favourite game of all time - Halo 3 - will be 10 years old.

Halo 3 was the first game that I was actually excited for, and it singlehandedly made me buy an Xbox 360, and I cite Halo 3 as the game that made me a gamer.

I still remember vividly coming home from school, running into my brother's room, and seeing him messing around on one of the multiplayer maps in the map editor tool. We then jumped into the campaign on coop, and we finished the game in a day. It was an absolute blast.

Do you have any memories of Halo 3? What is your favourite game, and do you remember the first time you played it?

 

[Yoshi178]

Do you have any memories of Halo 3?

I remember it being the 2nd last Halo Game that was actually good. last good one was Reach.

 

[Mcgeezaks]

Do you have any memories of Halo 3? What is your favourite game, and do you remember the first time you played it?

Of course, I got it at launch and it might be my favorite game of all time. Without a doubt the best game on the previous generation of consoles, I played it frequently for 2-3 years and met alot of friends online, if only Microsoft could get their head out of their ass and release The Masterchief Collection for PC.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Halo 3 is almost then years old. Man, time flies.

I only first played it in 2011 or '12 (can't remember) tho. I was quite late to the Xbox360 party since I like to choose one console per generation as my 'main', picking up the others cheap near the end (if at all), and my choice for gen7 was the PS3.

Anyway, while I've never been all that into Halo, I rather enjoyed 3. I don't really have any specific special memories of it tho, my nostalgia period was 3 console generations earlier. Just a good game among several I picked up during that time.

 

[laggyteabag]

Do you have any memories of Halo 3? What is your favourite game, and do you remember the first time you played it?

I played it frequently for 2-3 years and met alot of friends online

The social and community features were amazing for the time, especially for a console.

I must've sunk a good 100 or so hours into Halo 3's custom games, meeting new people who would quickly become good friends of mine.

Of course, looking back at it, and it all seems super basic, but i'll never forget the crazy modes that people came up with.

 

[Paragon Fury]

Halo 3 was one of my favorite games of all time - I put so many godddamn hours into that game its unreal. I still have my Legendary Edition stuff, somewhere, in a box.

The Campaign. The Co-Op. The MP. It was all so good and so fun. I'd still play it today, if it weren't for the fact that the MCC has terrible population and therefore I'm forced into Halo 5 for my Halo needs now.

 

[Hawki]

Halo 3 is, appropriately enough, my #3 Halo game, and #3 FPS (yeah, I like the Halo games, bite me). I would have been 17, going on 18 when it came out.

The bastard had the gall to come out during my end of year exams at the time, so when I got it, I blasted through the singleplayer in a day or two, after getting the special/legendary/whatever edition (got the Beastiarium with it at least). Over time, my thoughts became more charitable to the game, but first impressions were very mixed.

Of the original trilogy, my view is that Combat Evolved has the best gameplay but worst story, Halo 2 has the best story but worst gameplay, and Halo 3 is somewhere in-between. Many of its levels are great, some (like High Charity) aren't. It's got some of the best story moments in the trilogy (e.g. its ending), and some of the weakest (overall plot issues). Thing is, I bought Halo 3 in the expectation that it would answer the two key questions that had hung over the series up to this point - why the Covenant had declared war on humanity, and what the relationship is between humans and Forerunners. The first question is completely ignored, and we had to wait for Contact Harvest to explain it. The second question is only answered if you manage to track down all the terminals, and is at odds with what the game itself provides. Spark says "you are Forerunner"...except you're clearly not, because the terminals establish the opposite. Similar to how the Forerunner Saga explains what Spark meant by "last time you asked me, would I do it?" moment, there seems to have been a lack of forethought put in by Bungie. I was also miffed that Johnson and Miranda didn't survive, but I've grown to like the ending more.

Plus, all in all, the gameplay's pretty fun. Dual-wielding, deployable items, overall level design, etc. I didn't play much of the multiplayer, as I couldn't get Xbox Live working at the time (and I could play Combat Evolved over PC at the time as well), but it was fun. So, not my favorite Halo game, but still quite a good one. It caps off the trilogy nicely, while Reach caps off the series. Well, should have capped it off, but then Halo 4 happened.

Mind you, I actually quite like Halo 5, so there is that.

 

[laggyteabag]

Spoiler: Another shooter is almost ten years old,

and something I enjoyed far, far more than any Halo. It's just something couldn't get into like practically everyone else. I bought and played through the first two games, which were at least entertaining enough to complete the campaigns once, tried 3's but mostly played its MP at a friend's, and the same for Reach. I can see why people like/love it but I guess I don't like it's tone, and even if I did the fact it's pretty much synonymous with aim assist was enough to spoil my palate.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

I never thought I hear positive comments about Halo in this day and age, I thought Yatzhee and Moviebob has swayed popular opinion of that game franchise as trash.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Ah, Halo 3, the peak of my multiplayer days. Funny, as much as I?m indifferent to multiplayer now, it?s weird to think of the HUNDREDS of hours I dumped into it between Halo 2 and 3. I remember I took two days off work for Halo 3?s launch; I set my out of office to say: ?I will be out of the office for the next two days FINISHING THIS FIGHT!!!?

I never thought I hear positive comments about Halo in this day and age, I thought Yatzhee and Moviebob has swayed popular opinion of that game franchise as trash.

Cynicism is the native tongue of gamers (I can?t even call it out without sounding cynical myself

If it?s bad, that?s par for the course.
If it?s good, it sucks because it?s not great.
If it?s great, it sucks because it?s not perfect.
Perfection is unattainable; dissatisfaction for all. Those people over there appear to be enjoying something; they must want to hear my 38 reasons why they shouldn?t?.

Games like Halo, GTA, even CoD that manage to do a lot of things great to merit themselves a dedicated mass following get flack because gamers just need something about everything to ***** about. Play what makes you happy; to hell with what ?they? say or what ?the popular opinion? might be.

 

[Cycloptomese]

I've got nothing but love for the Halo franchise. My son and I have always played through Halo games in split-screen co-op as soon as they release (damn you Halo 5), with the exception of CE. He wasn't old enough to hold a controller when that came out. Halo 3 was the high point for me. I really like Halo 4, but it didn't feel like the stakes were as high at that point. Also, I didn't have the emotional connection in Halo 5 because of the lack of Cortana.

But yeah... A great game, Halo 3. I remember the first time experiencing the late game. Coming around a corner in an outdoor environment and looking over a valley from a cliff and seeing two scarabs drop out of the sky. That was a great feeling because we knew that what was about to happen was going to be amazing. No hornet for me. I'm going for that mongoose. Those ramps are there for a reason.

 

[Fijiman]

I actually miss playing Halo to some extent or another. I've not had reason to touch the series in a long time though.

 

[BreakfastMan]

God damn, I guess it is. I remember the hype around it back in the day. It seemed like the biggest thing ever back then. Ton of fond memories playing the campaign and multiple splitscreen with friends.

 

[Zhukov]

Good God, you're making me feel old.

Always preferred the original myself. Halo 2 felt like a step down in quality and Halo 3 felt like a rehash. The ones after that... umm... existed? I think?

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Jesus I feel old now.

As for me, since I can't play FPS on console's worth shit, I never got past Halo 1 since I didn't want to shit up my PC by installing Windows Vista or Games for Windows Live to play Halo 2. I'm actually kind of bitter that Microsoft haven't put both the whole Fable series and three old mainline Halo games on PC.

And truthfully until I read the fluff behind the Spartan project I was really fond of the game, a sort of melding of various bits of sci-fi with a nice look about it. After reading that fluff though, it can go fuck itself.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

ODST was my favourite Halo, but I did quite enjoy Halo 3, since it was my first outing in the franchise. I... don't remember a whole lot of what happened in it since, well, 10 years ago and I've got a shoddy memory, but I do recall having an awful lot of fun in one level where you got to pilot Choppers around, and then getting stone-walled hard by one level that had you fight through a flood-infested ship. Was a... fun game, but oddly inconsistent with the difficulty.

 

[laggyteabag]

And truthfully until I read the fluff behind the Spartan project I was really fond of the game, a sort of melding of various bits of sci-fi with a nice look about it. After reading that fluff though, it can go fuck itself.

Interesting.

Mind me asking what it was about that particular piece of lore that ruined it for you?

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

And truthfully until I read the fluff behind the Spartan project I was really fond of the game, a sort of melding of various bits of sci-fi with a nice look about it. After reading that fluff though, it can go fuck itself.

Interesting.

Mind me asking what it was about that particular piece of lore that ruined it for you?

The first game more or less implies to me (to the best of my recollection) that the SPARTAN project was a move of desperation and made in the early days of the Human/Covenant War: a ghastly action but one intended to ensure we won against a genocidal enemy.

Then I watched one of the movies - I think it was Forward Unto Dawn - and it is revealed that the SPARTANs were created to help crush a rebellion of other humans. I admit it's arbitrary moral lines being drawn, but I couldn't accept that something as awful as the SPARTAN project was the cost of war against an inter-colonial insurgency made up of other humans.

 

[Yoshi178]

ODST was my favourite Halo, but I did quite enjoy Halo 3

i have bad memories of ODST.

from what i remember of it, ODST just felt like a walking simulator for the most part walking from point A to point B in a city having 5 minutes of action and story, then rinse and repeat.

it was a short game and if it were $20AUD DLC that would have been fine since the game was basically just an expansion DLC pack Halo 3, but bungie charged people including myself full retail price for that game on a 360 disc rather just having it be $20 DLC which just felt outrageous for what didn't feel like a full and complete game.


the story of ODST was fine, but because the gameplay was short, average and felt like it shouldve been a $20AUD DLC pack rather than a full price, $100AUD game that they charged ($100 because Australia Tax), it just ended up feeling like a complete and total rip off and i will always despise ODST because of that.