Bungie

So I finally got around to playing half an hour of Halo 3: ODST last night, and while I'm not planning to write a review of it any time soon, I wanted to comment on the weird experience I had with the game.

I was playing a friend's game, so I just sort of dropped in medias res, and had no idea what was going on plot-wise, so I'm not going to bother commenting on that aspect. What I will say is that for the first fifteen minutes of my playtime I had a blast. So much fun that I couldn't remember why I'd hated Halo 3 as much as I did (by which I mean "not really that much at all").

Game Description: Halo 3 is the third game in the Halo Trilogy and the thrilling conclusion to the events begun in Halo: Combat Evolved. Master Chief returns to finish the fight, bringing the epic conflict between the Covenant, the Flood, and the entire human race to a dramatic, pulse-pounding climax. The Covenant occupation of Earth has uncovered a massive and ancient object beneath the African sands—an object whose secrets have yet to be revealed. Earth's forces are battered and beaten. The Master Chief's AI companion Cortana is still trapped in the clutches of the Gravemind—a horrifying Flood intelligence, and a civil war is raging in the heart of the Covenant. It's all been building to this—a desperate, final war that leads to a soul-shattering climax of epic proportions. Take control of Master Chief to defeat the Covenant and destroy the Flood to prevent the annihilation of the human race.

The advertisements for Halo 3 promise an epic tale of tragedy, sacrifice, and heroism that Halo 3 really had no hope in hell of ever delivering. More troubling, however, is the fact that after playing the game, I can say with some certainty that they promised a game that Bungie didn't even bother trying to produce.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Blood and Gore, Mild Language, Violence

Certain to be one of the year's biggest games, Halo 3 is on everyone's radar. In anticipation of this upcoming blockbuster, GameCritics.com was fortunate enough to interview one of the extremely talented minds creating this eagerly anticipated title, artist extraordinaire Shi Kai Wang.

Halo 2 lets me down as a sequel because it fails to improve upon most of the archaic design features that could be forgiven in the original, and gives Halo fans less of an experience in almost every area. It is a good game compared to the class of 2004, but it is no Halo and should be marked down accordingly.

But despite such overwhelming expectations, Halo 2 is essentially a bigger, badder version of the first—nothing more, nothing less. It refines and expands upon many of the original's strongest concepts, stumbles over a few repeated missteps, and offers an experience distinctly similar to the first that fluctuates between modest tedium and prodigious epic.

Game Description: Halo 2 continues the story of Master Chief, the heroic super-soldier who defied the invading alien Covenant and survived. The Covenant leaders within Halo are angry at this unheard of event. To save face, they launch an invasion of our planet. Earth's defenses are breached, and we're all in danger—unless Master Chief can lead a small military squad to victory against Covenant forces, in all-out guerilla warfare!