First, the stuff I didn't like. There was some.
--Hunters were criminally under-used. The few times I fought them they were formidable, so I with they were in there more. I think there was even Hunter Flood - once.
--Bungie still couldn't find a way to make Drones interesting to fight, though the giant swarms that came out were pretty cool. Taking on a small, rapidly moving airborne target isn't really feasible, so they usually just landed on a surface to be killed eventually. Fighting them was still annoying, not fun, which is why they probably only showed up about four times.
--Why do Wraiths blow up when I punch the driver to death? I did one or two smacks too many a few times and blew the whole thing up - something that takes more than half a dozen Fuel Rod shots to do (from the front or side).
--I wish the Arbiter would go down in battle and then stay down the rest of that fight. It felt a little cheap to have him constantly springing back up, knowing I had an invincible AI buddy to rely on.
--There are minor AA issues, but I literally noticed this like, twice. That's the last complaint about the graphics I have - the game is utterly gorgeous.
--There were a couple of bad lines of dialog. I never cringed anywhere in the first two games - the writing was solid. Here I think the writing is the best in the series, but two lines made me wince. The first was at the start of the second level, when Keyes is laying out what will happen if the rings fire. The Chief chimes in with, "The rings will kill us all." Since Keyes had just said that, the timing and delivery made it redundant and jarring. Late on in the game, Keyes repeats the exact same lines over the radio - as if we'd forgotten what would happen. I know they're trying to establish the stakes, but we knew them already. I harp on these because the rest of the game is incredibly well-written and they stood out. Also, I'm nit-picking for negatives.
--I wanted to see Gravemind in Halo 3, not just hear him. So much of this game looks like the conceptual artwork, I wanted to see him because his concept at was pretty amazing, and his Halo 2 implementation was not.
--Snipers were more fair in this game, but they were introduced in giant clutter that was annoying in Sierra 117 that irked me initially.
--The final run was wonderful in concept: a throwback to the end of the first game, but - as appropriate to Halo 3 - on a much bigger scale. However, having the floor blow out from under me was not fun, and it happened far too many times. Towards the end of the run it turned into trial and error rather than judgment and skill, a first for the series.
That's about all the complaints I got. On to the good stuff.
--Um, everything else? To be more specific -
--I need to listen to the soundtrack (hint hint), but I think this was Marty's best work. The scores from Halo 1 and 2 got together and had genetically engineered super-babies. My favorite track in the Halo series is Brothers in Arms, so when the opening strains of that started churning in The Storm I was ecstatic. The scary music was terrifying, the action music rousing and, much like Halo 2, a strong emotionally current runs through it. Brilliant, diverse and well-implemented stuff.
--There are many memorable battles in Halo 1 - sniping in T&R, landing on the beach in Cartographer, the ending siege of Two Betrayals - but not so many in Halo 2. It was a consistent game, but not punctuated by epic encounters. Not so in Halo 3; I mean, holy shit, where to begin!? The ending of mission one, the Brute pack in the barracks of mission 2, like, all of Tsavo Highway and the Storm. The epic vehicle battles in missions six and seven - holy fucking shit. It's Halo on a grand and beautiful scale, and it's exactly what I always wanted from the series.
--The varied mission objectives. In Halo 1, there were a couple of goals that didn't involve just getting to the goal - short out the conduits, blow up the engine room, escaping. In Halo 2 there was one - cutting the tether to the gas mine. Halo 3 really mixed it up, even if some of the goals really were just big battles. The Scarab fights, the ending escape, taking out AA tanks and guns - it felt like I had a series of objectives that didn't all end with "get to the end" and that helped me stay engaged.
--The story. It didn't play out the way I expected it to, on nearly every level. Some were minor, like having to go back and re-arm the bomb in mission 2. Others, like the third shield generator tower not going down and fighting alongside the Flood floored me. Keye's death, fighting Guilty Spark, the arrival of two Scarabs - all good stuff. Overall I left happy, feeling not just that I played a good game, but that a good story was told. I'm happy.
