Is it just me that Halo 3 (campaign) is a bit disappointing

[Krosis Priest]

Not trying to be a contrarian, I just thought "wow Halo 1 and 2 were so great and 3 is apparently the best one, so it's gonna be awesome!" and then it wasn't.

It's actually my first time playing through all the Halos (either I lived in a cave or just Halo wasn't that known when I was growing up, probably because not many people had consoles). I'm playing in story order, and basically my feelings so far:

Reach - great, if depressing story, and the gameplay was... good. Nothing mindblowing, but good.

CE - took me a moment to get used to the oldschool design, but then I just had a blast. Classic oldschool FPS with giant balls and a surprisingly deep and well-written story. It really felt like I was reliving something I missed 20+ years ago.

Halo 2 - wow, this really felt like something ahead of its time. The story got 4x more complex and interesting, the mission design is awesome and I barely noticed the limited ammo because there were so many awesome guns to grab all the time. The cliffhanger ending was weird, but besides that it was basically 10/10.

Halo 3 - ...eeeh? The entire story is basically what should be the last two missions of Halo 2 drawn out to be the whole campaign. All the coolest weapons from H2 (SMGs, carbine, beam rifle) appear much less or feel much weaker. Arbiter is now basically just a bot and sometimes objective marker. Ammo limits are stupid and the MA and Covenant weapons are basically the only ones that can hold more than three magazines or so. Vehicles sections are way too long and boring. The massive buildup to killing Truth is just a cutscene in the end. Genuinely the only standout and interesting mission (which improved my opinion by quite a bit) is the Cortana/Gravemind one, the rest feels like a rushed expansion to Halo 2.

Just my two cents. Will definitely be continuing with ODST and Halo 4, but Halo 3 is maybe the second game I've ever played about which I've heard nothing but massive praise and ended up... a bit disappointed compared to the less praised games.

[Aspen]

Halo 3 is widely criticized by those with a brain as being the third act of a story which is missing its first two acts. Halo 2, conversely, is a 3 act story without its third act. Looking at it from a pure storytelling standpoint, it’s best to try and cut out Halo 3’s fat in your mind and look at it more as Halo 2 2.

As far as the gameplay goes… Personally I’ve always felt a bit disappointed with it as compared to some aspects of Halo 2. The setpieces in Halo 3 were much more impressive, the maps were stunning, the graphics and art still hold up very well today, etc. Yes, the weapons *do* feel a lot less… punchy? I guess? But I personally appreciate how the vehicles and enemies sorta make up for the lack of diversity in what you can use against them. Equipment is cool too.

[☆ id/SweetRin ☆ [JP]]

Halo 3 out of reach-halo 3, excluding anything that wasnt made by bungie. Halo 3 was the game out of the entire series I never went back and replayed, and i believe it has many reasons why i didnt like it. It's story was not the best even if it was the third act of halo 2. Halo 3 if this even was considered a third act of halo 2, i would expect to still see more of the arbiters point of view such as halo 2 did very well at. Halo 3 forgot about this factor entirely. Not a bad thing but it removed a point of immersion and spoiling that halo 2 given the players.

My reasons for not enjoying halo 3 which are my personal reasons alone. Brutes, going from fighting elites to brutes wasn't something I took to very well. As halo to me growing up was a game about fighting elites. Brutes just felt like a lazy dumb down version of the elites. lore wise they where ment to be this but this is besides the point. Halo 3 also failed to include my favorite weapon which was the brute plasma rifle. Halo 3 introduced scarabs i really found uglier and worse than the ones shown in halo 2. Despite halo 3 having the best last level out of the entire series. Halo 3 left out a lot of things that would of made me love it. Now i understand the lore which halo 2 set fourth which I do not contest should be what happened in halo 3. Its just not what i grew up seeing halo as. Reach brought that back what i viewed halo as a game is and was. Now i do hold a strong love for halo 2, i just dont like halo 3 as it just didnt hit as it should of for me. Its not that halo 3 is bad by any means, its just that the transition didnt sit well with me overall and still dont.

I know this was a rant but i thought maybe expressing my reasons for not finding halo 3 the best halo out of the entire series would give more light to why someone else may not enjoy it as much as other halo games. Halo CE i dont talk about much as to me it dont feel like halo, and thats not halo CEs fault its before it had the fluid nature of how halo became known for its gameplay. Halo 2 is what i wholesomely believe is the halo that set halo off and is the reason xbox was able to edge in against the ps2 in direct competition when sony own the market of that era.

Halo 3 ODST i didnt like, but that is personal reasons i will keep to myself to not cludder up my post to much as thats an entire different subject.

[rcf5089]

I thought game play and weapon balancing in 3 was much better and level design is much better than 2, but you are right that the story is weaker. It is just the final act of Halo 2, and I wish they had at least one Arbiter centered level. They played it safe to cap off their Trilogy. Still really like Halo 3

[Snark]

Originally posted by Aspen:

Yes, the weapons *do* feel a lot less… punchy? I guess?

I think it's cause they started balancing stuff with multiplayer in mind. Which is why with each installment the weapons became less satisfying to use. In CE you have a killer plasma pistol, but in 3 the plasma pistol is nothing more than an emp gun you can tickle enemies with.

[OutSIdeOfTheBoX (chrisvig71)]

halo 3 disapponted me too... for me it's: GREAT first half, very, very good first half... weak second half, i found it a bit flat...

[Swiggy]

Halo 3 was great imo. But like the others said, it fell flat. Should have been a much longer campaign and Arbiter should have had missions too. Hell adding arbiter missions would have probably extended 3 enough to feel proper.

[King Feraligatr]

Halo 3 is tied with Halo 1 as my favorite Halo, but it does have its problems. Story is the biggest one. Still, it's a nice game.

[angstlicht]

Originally posted by Aspen:

Halo 2 2.

one of the smarter things to say about H3, silly as it is.

Here's how the Halo 3 hype went on for me back in the day:

-2006 announcement, visor reflection looks pretty great
-2007 summer beta with crackdown 1, visor reflections are gone, but the player legs animate to correspond to terrain changes and you can see a holstered secondary! And custom games let you increase player run speed and splatter people on foot, this is pretty alright
-actual game comes out, has a quasi busted lighting engine that's all over the place in fidelity, ugly facial models even for the time, and there's only one good level in the whole game, the covenant
-post launch, Bungie & ms begins Operation: Ruin Halo Forever with their map pack price points, culminating in the 2009 "ODST=ODLC" schism, where gaming itself was rent in twain. You were expected to pay 60 bucks for H3 ODST because it came with 6 slayer maps that aren't fun, this all but ruined Halo as an IP to this day. If you are an original Halo fan and buy a Halo product after this event, you can practically feel the cynical behaviorist contempt the product itself seems to have for you.

People often don't like to admit this, but Halo 3 was the precise dividing line between tolerable multimedia and endless MTX gruel. From it's remix-heavy soundtrack to its hasty repurposing of arbiter, truth and miranda to uncanny if not entirely botched dramatic functions, the game feels like dust and echoes of a better time, that time being 2001-2006.

H3 also has isolation, the worst multiplayer map ever made by human beings, which is in circulation to this day.

To be clear I actually do like the campaigns of Halo 3 and ODST, but the writing was on the wall even back then that this was a denouement.

[Krosis Priest]

It's interesting because I swear that all I've been hearing on the internet before was universal praise for Halo 3 and how it was the supposed perfection that 343 then dared stray away from. Thanks for the replies and that I'm not completely crazy :p

H3 also has isolation, the worst multiplayer map ever made by human beings, which is in circulation to this day.

Oh god it's that one. Yep.

[butcher.8]

Halo 3 was the left over parts that they couldn't fit into Halo 2 because of time constraints, so you're not wrong. It was underwhelming to me as well as someone that played it at the time. It was unattractive for a 360 game, too short and not many campaigns were particularly fun or memorable. I'm all about Halo CE mind, I didn't particularly love any of the campaigns after that, except ODST's, which was a little short, but it was the only other Halo campaign that satisfied me.

Halo 2's campaign was my biggest disappointment, it was really ugly in it's original incarnation (before the remaster), horrible pop-in, textures, fov, environments etc. I know all about the development difficulties that had, but the game needed a few more years to bake, I blame Microsoft for forcing it out before it was ready.

If it'd been the halo 2 that was promised in the E3 demo, then count me in, but for whatever reason they couldn't get the stencil shading based engine to work (even though that's since been proven to not be exactly accurate) and Halo CE had 6+ years of development, so it's hard to compete with that masterpiece, but still....most disappointing game of my life. D

on't get me started on dual wielding, playing as Arbiter (a character I like) for over half the game, horribly bugged and ugly cinematics (on xbox anyway) and a cliffhanger ending that was incredibly unsatisfying and more so spoke to a troubled development than artistic choice.

I could go on about how much I hated the changed to weapon and grenade balance, how the change of physics engine may have been to one more realistic (Havok) but wasn't nearly as fun. Horrible new enemies like the Drones/Buggers and sniper Jackals. A story that was too ambitious for it's own good arguably, certainly I much preferred the more intimate feel of the first game and ODST (those too also have the best music imho, not coincidentally).

There was plenty of good points about Halo 2 of course (and to a lesser degree Halo 3), like the mp (which I didn't care about, unless it was split-screen on a couch, so CE was better for me), the cool additions like hijacking a vehicle, the bubble shield, destructible vehicles (although an indestructible Warthog with CE's physics was missed), the Ghost's boost and general improvements making it very fun to use and others I'm sure.

None of them are bad games of course, but for me CE will always be a 10/10, with the others being merely good or decent (or garbage if we're talking about 343).

I'm still waiting for a true spiritual sequel to Halo CE, with it's beautiful and epic pacific northwest vistas and sandbox like environments (rather than only linear corridors like the latter games), for now I'm loving the game in VR, seriously makes it new again, took me a bloody week to get working with other the mods though, but that's another subject...

[Commander Moron]

Yeah I finished the halo 2 campaign (loved it with the exception of one or two levels that I had lots and lots of trouble on) but can't bring myself to beat halo 3, I just don't like it.

[☆ id/SweetRin ☆ [JP]]

Originally posted by Commander Moron:

Yeah I finished the halo 2 campaign (loved it with the exception of one or two levels that I had lots and lots of trouble on) but can't bring myself to beat halo 3, I just don't like it.

I don't like halo 3 much either, but halo 3 does have the best last level out of the entire series. I do recommend playing it to completion at least once. Besides some of the good visual landscapes of the one level. I just can't say you will play any part of the game again besides the very last level.

[BOREDPEACHƴ]

You forgot the 6 pack of mountain dew.

[Average Alchemist]

I agree. I didn't realize when I played it as a kid, but when I replayed Halo 3 a few years ago with friends I realized that it was a let-down compared to Halo 2.

-Cortana is somehow both absent and a nuisance at the same time, which is a shame since she was a handy way to provide levity or exposition in 1 and 2.
-Despite all of the build-up, Arbiter is just kind of there. His biggest contribution is killing a character in a cutscene who should've been a bossfight.
-Despite all of the build-up, Gravemind just talks menacingly at you.
-Johnson gets 1-shot by Wheatly
-Brutes no longer have a character to represent them, and they're easier to kill than they were in Halo 2, so they go from being serious villains to being nameless mooks.

[JohannZA]

It's designed for split-screen co-op play (much moreso than the previous games). And in that way it is a better experience than Halo 2 (or any other Halo).