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Halo 3 was ahead of its time

Nothing will beat the magical feeling this game had when it came out. I must have spent over 200 hours ONLY playing custom games with complete randoms that I added to my friends list after every custom game.

The amount of creativity that the community had when it came to the forge maps and modes was astounding. Infection maps, cops and robbers maps, obstacle courses, races, and so so many more. It was such a blast, I miss it so much but I know it's likely no shooter will ever build such a creative and vibrant community.
 
I know people who have looked down on halo as being simplistic but then praised more recent games for adding theatre modes etc

Halo 3 really was the complete package and I don't think there's really been a game since that has felt so complete and so fun

As a side note It's hard to remember what a big deal rendering films is now - it's kind of crazy bungie we're doing it like 8 or so years ago though

Novel Mike said:
Yeah it certainly had some impressive features that certainly were ahead of their time.

The game as a whole though I didn't really find all that impressive, the campaign was okay like most FPS campaigns. The Multiplayer was good but I still think the series peaked at Halo 2 and Halo 3 overall felt less like Halo 3 and more like Halo 2.5 which is one reason I think Modern Warfare so easily took over the best FPS from it despite Halo 3 having a much bigger hype cycle and a much more impressive launch.

So while certain features still stand the test of time today I think they needed to refine the overall gameplay more to really have kept the audience they wanted but the gameplay in Halo 3 was extremely similar to Halo 2 (thus everyone calling it Halo 2.5 in reviews back then also the graphics just weren't impressive at all by that point) when fans expected it to evolve into something much greater but it really was just more of the same. To a lot of people that was enough but to others... Well again, there was a reason why MW took off the way it did. I'm not trying to say Halo should've been like CoD though, my point was that clearly people were looking for some fresh and new gameplay so when Halo 3 was more of the same they stuck around until something new came along (MW) and jumped into that and they've surprisingly held onto a rather large fanbase year in and year out to this day.
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Heh you are remembering wrong, halo 3 regularly competed for the top spot with all the CoD games, GTA and Gears it really was a monolith

Just randomly googled for a top played list and this is from December 2008 well over a year after release:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/majo...6/live-activity-for-week-of-december-8th/amp/
 
If only the BR had stayed hitscan, it would be the perfect game. To this day, I still haven't figured out how to use the BR effectively but can still crush it in Halo 2 on MCC
 
Im_So_Pringles said:
Halo 3's feature suite TO THIS DAY doesn't get touched by 9/10 shooters. So much shit to do in that game.
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This. I mean even the Halo games after it did't come close to it at launch.
Halo 5 had at launch only 3 fucking gametypes for 4v4.


And Bungie dropped the ball aswell with Destiny, no voice chat at launch, no custom games, no theater, no forge, no real community feeling through screenshots ingame etc
 
I'm not spiritual or a superstitious person or anything but....

I literally had a dream about Halo 3 last night then I wake up to this thread
 
All of that sounds great, which makes it unfortunate that I hated playing Halo 3, especially when I loved 1 and 2.
 
Remember when people liked something and PC gamers came in and shat all over it in every thread.

Theatre mode!
 
Sanjay said:
So Halo 3 Multiplayer is what you should have gone with. Because the campaign was a turd.

Halos multiplayer replay system was really great if not the first for consoles back then.

I would like to mention another game that was way way ahead of its time and that would be Perfect Dark, its user logging, stats keeping and multiplayer options were crazy good.
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I don't know what the hell are you talking about but Halo 3 campaign was amazing and easily the best in the series and one of the best in fps games. Even after all these years I still remember the amazing memorable missions with the vehicle fights and the double scarab fight. Halo 3 had both amazing campaign and multiplayer.
 
OP, With the exception of Halo 5 forge, 343 has managed to regress on every point you've made.

Novel Mike said:
Yeah it certainly had some impressive features that certainly were ahead of their time.

The game as a whole though I didn't really find all that impressive, the campaign was okay like most FPS campaigns. The Multiplayer was good but I still think the series peaked at Halo 2 and Halo 3 overall felt less like Halo 3 and more like Halo 2.5 which is one reason I think Modern Warfare so easily took over the best FPS from it despite Halo 3 having a much bigger hype cycle and a much more impressive launch.

So while certain features still stand the test of time today I think they needed to refine the overall gameplay more to really have kept the audience they wanted but the gameplay in Halo 3 was extremely similar to Halo 2 (thus everyone calling it Halo 2.5 in reviews back then also the graphics just weren't impressive at all by that point) when fans expected it to evolve into something much greater but it really was just more of the same. To a lot of people that was enough but to others... Well again, there was a reason why MW took off the way it did. I'm not trying to say Halo should've been like CoD though, my point was that clearly people were looking for some fresh and new gameplay so when Halo 3 was more of the same they stuck around until something new came along (MW) and jumped into that and they've surprisingly held onto a rather large fanbase year in and year out to this day.
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In what universe did MW "easily" take over Halo3.

Halo 3 was most played xbl game 3years straight. Despite juggernauts like COD.
 
OrbitalBeard said:
Halo 3 was the absolute pinnacle of both Bungle and the Xbox brand.
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Totally. I bought my Xbox 360 at the time just for Halo 3.

And then I bought this:
controllerc.jpg
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I miss everything about this game.
 
Reach expanded the feature set.

Reach is a monster of a game

Campaign
Matchmaking
Customs
Firefight
Forge
Theater

and to top it all of a huge modular armoury for character customization

Plus some a fairly decent amount of new game modes.
 
Halo 3 was by far one of my most favourite games of all time. Some of my fondest gaming memories was playing hours upon hours a day of random custom game variants with friends on forge maps and playing team slayer trying to get my level 50.

Bungie knew how to make great games!
 
Yeah, Halo 3 was really ahead of it's time. All of the components worked like a really well oiled machine. Art-style, level design, gameplay (vehicular and on foot), AI and soundtrack were all just perfect. It was a great way to end the trilogy.

MP was also just crazy good, especially the MLG part about it. But also casual modes like BTB and Social in general.

What are some features or aspects of Halo 3 that you liked or think were ahead of their time?
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Physics come to mind:

  • ragdolls
  • punching somebody into oblivion
  • Gravity Hammer launching
  • building "tornados" with crates and gravity launchers
  • Trash Compactor like the 1st post says
  • random stuff like exploding a vehicle and the broken parts of it flying across the entire map and splattering somebody

and etc. etc.

Collingwood said:
Shame the BR was still shite in 3. Didn't get fixed until 4.
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If you consider the easiest BR with tons of aim assist and bullet magnetism to be fixed that is... Halo 4's BR is literally the worst in any Halo game. Everyone can use it, it requires no skill and it sounds really awful.

Halo 3 had at least a balanced BR, where you couldn't just shoot people across the map. It also not being hitscan, but projectile based was what it made it so satisfying and skillful to use. Shame that the netcode was so fucking bad in 2007, because H3 on dedicated servers plays like a dream. Provided that you manage to get onto one in the MCC.

They should really try a future Halo game with projectiles again. It works in other games, too.

bobs...onGaf said:
As a side note It's hard to remember what a big deal rendering films is now - it's kind of crazy bungie we're doing it like 8 or so years ago though
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No Campaign Theater SINCE Reach. Then you also had the Modder Lord Zedd embarassing 343i by making Campaign Theater work in Halo 4. 343i's and Microsoft's reaction? Banning the modder for life time.

Lets also talk about how bad the Theater in Halo 5 is. Apart from still not having Campaign Theater, you also have to deal with the fact that the Theater is not showing your perspective from the game, but it shows the servers perspective. In Theater, you are literally shooting the air and getting hitmarkers, something that we had to deal for a while when watching the Halo Championship Series online tournaments. It was straight up awful to watch.
 
IHaveIce said:
This. I mean even the Halo games after it did't come close to it at launch.
Halo 5 had at launch only 3 fucking gametypes for 4v4.


And Bungie dropped the ball aswell with Destiny, no voice chat at launch, no custom games, no theater, no forge, no real community feeling through screenshots ingame etc
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Wait what? Destiny had voice chat since the Destiny alpha.


Halo 3 was fun but imo Halo 2 was better. I put so many hours into both though over the years. 343i will never top a Bungie Halo game.
 
Completely agree. People can debate whether 1, 2, or 3 had the better core gameplay, but 3's suite of out of game features pushes it to the top for me.
 
Great OP, and I appreciate your love for the game. I only play single player so it was pretty forgettable to me, but those are rad features.

I am sorry to say what I remember is being a little disappointed in the jaggies and low res graphics at the time.
 
God damn I want a Halo 3 anniversary so bad. I might even buy a useless scorpio for it.

I'll even take a win10 only port of the mcc at this point (which I still love to have on my x1).

And for the love of all that is sacred, Microsoft, just add a 1080p complete version of Reach to it. And where the fuck is Odst firefight.

Now that this is out of the way, yes, halo 3 is the highest point of console fps.

Stellar multiplayer aside, that 4player coop campaign (with modifiers too) is something special, even with that terrible cortana level.

No other game ever came close to that. A masterfully crafted sandbox so simple you could almost do anything in it.
 
Mass Appeal said:
Wait what? Destiny had voice chat since the Destiny alpha.

Halo 3 was fun but imo Halo 2 was better. I put so many hours into both though over the years. 343i will never top a Bungie Halo game.
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Iirc you couldn't talk to people unless they were in your fireteam. Even during matchmade strikes. Eventually they patched in a second voice channel, so that you could communicate with randoms you encountered.

This made the Tower experience pretty disappointing imo... these are the guys that had the brilliant "proximity voice" in H2.
 
Bungie are gawds at making good games (not perfect). To this day 343 can't even come close to the Halo 3 package. Microsoft handed their baby to a very incompetent team.

I do miss Halo 2 the most, though.
 
You are going to make me cry, I miss Halo 3 so much. One of those games I consider perfect (like Super Metroid). It also had a cooperative (local or online) campaign.

It made me buy a noisy 360 but no regrets, I had so much fun like when fooling around with vehicles and explosions or those weird modes like, for example, one with hammer as the only weapon. And thosebig team matches. I bought the master chief collection but it is just not the same. I felt spoiled everytime I played it: you received all of that without shitty microtransactions.
 
Akai__ said:
If you consider the easiest BR with tons of aim assist and bullet magnetism to be fixed that is... Halo 4's BR is literally the worst in any Halo game. Everyone can use it, it requires no skill and it sounds really awful.

Halo 3 had at least a balanced BR, where you couldn't just shoot people across the map. It also not being hitscan, but projectile based was what it made it so satisfying and skillful to use. Shame that the netcode was so fucking bad in 2007, because H3 on dedicated servers plays like a dream. Provided that you manage to get onto one in the MCC.

They should really try a future Halo game with projectiles again. It works in other games, too.
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You are right about everything except H3 BR being balanced. It can't be random AND balanced. The unpredictability of the third bullet literately decided the outcome of 1v1s

MLG had to 'balance' this by upping the damage such that the third shot was insignificant.

A new, projectile BR with static spread would be a dream come true.
 
My favorite Halo 3 moment:

I had stopped playing Halo 3 for months, but my manager at work at the time invited me to play with a bunch of his friends. So I was playing, but man, I was RUSTY. Just sucking wind, and we had this kind of dry Brit on our team who was one of his friends. I enjoyed the dry humor a lot, though, and he was insanely good.

Okay, so at one point, there's 8 of us, so we decide to do four teams of 2. I'm paired up with the dry Brit. So we're playing, I'm on the other side of the map getting items, and I hear him on the headset going, "Oh no, I'm being double-teamed."

So I said, "What? Okay, hold on. I'm coming!"

And he went, "Oh? Oh, you're coming? Well, don't I just feel so much better now that you're coming to save me."

And I went, "...wait, wat?"

If I'm gonna get pwned, I want it to always be like that. We ended up having a hilarious night overall. xD~~
 
I just can't believe how rare it is for games to have theatre modes and replays of matches these days. It's just mindboggling. It's such an incredible feature. Would be wonderous in R6: Siege in particular.
 
My friends and I system linked and played a few matches of this last week.

4 v 4 was just as great as we remember. Easily the GOAT multiplayer for me. Guardian will always remain a fantastic map for multiple modes.
 
Zakalwe said:
Still really bummed how Bungie innovated and lead console multiplayer design, then forgot it all for Destiny.

Hoping D2 launches with a more extensive MP suite, but I doubt it. :(

Their community engagement remains good in other ways, though. They constantly feature players in their weekly posts, and focus on lots of community activities and achievements.
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Destiny's bread and butter is the Co-op it's really well done imo.
 
My favorite memories of Halo weren't even really the game itself, it was more the community and my friends and going for level 50's. I played Halo 3 every night for hours for probably 3 years straight playing team doubles with my friend. I think Halo 3 might be my most played game ever.
 
I don't know the name, but when I fought the fucking huge robot spider for the first time and I understood that was possible going inside it I was more than amazed, one of most epic moments in my gaming life past gen.
 
I don't know how exactly, but Bungie are among the best at galvanizing a community around their games.

Korosenai said:
My favorite memories of Halo weren't even really the game itself, it was more the community and my friends and going for level 50's. I played Halo 3 every night for hours for probably 3 years straight playing team doubles with my friend. I think Halo 3 might be my most played game ever.
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Pour one out to the good old days.
 
I thought Halo 3's mechanics were bleh and it wasn't that greatly designed, but even though I disliked the game I still played toooons of hours of it because forge and theatre mode were freaking awesome! I with more games would include features like that.
 
Trup1aya said:
You are right about everything except H3 BR being balanced. It can't be random AND balanced. The unpredictability of the third bullet literately decided the outcome of 1v1s

MLG had to 'balance' this by upping the damage such that the third shot was insignificant.

A new, projectile BR with static spread would be a dream come true.
Click to expand...

Statements like these are why I think that the whole spread thing is overblown. In which scenarios does this happen? In longe range battles, where your enemy is or isn't moving? Because I can't think of a single encounter that I lost, because only the 3rd bullet didn't hit my target in short to mid range battles. If I missed a perfect 4 shot in a 1vs1, it would mostly be because I fucked up, my opponents had a better strafe, a better BR or the 2007 netcode was in their favor. All of these things are much much more frequent than your 3rd shot not hitting.

Kikorin said:
I don't know the name, but when I fought the fucking huge robot spider for the first time and I understood that was possible going inside it I was more than amazed, one of most epic moments in my gaming life past gen.
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The Scarab. The best sandbox fight in the entire Halo franchise.

So many ways to approach and kill these things. Bungie threw almost everything at you, to beat this "boss-fight".
 
I would love all multiplayer games to have the features of Halo 3. Never cared much about the series overall, but that game was great.

LAN parties playing the infection/zombie gametype with super fast zombies on the big open maps ... 🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽
 
Just imagine what would have been included in Halo 2 had they had time. Saved Films for one was an option in the beta version of H2, although disabled.
 
It's said to think that this is what Bungie is capable of, and then look at Destiny 2.

My friends and I must have sunk hundreds of hours into 3, co-op and multiplayer. This hasn't happened in a Halo game for me since.
 
VlaudTheImpaler said:
All of them from 1-3 definitely felt like it to me. No other game franchise has ever gotten me to carry my xbox and tv/CRT monitor around with me. Man. Those where the days.

In fact, I don't think I'll ever spend as much time, energy and focus on any other game or franchise in my entire life.
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Well put. I have the same experience.
 
Halo 3 was the fucking best. Co-op Campaign? Split screen console online matchmaking? GRIFBALL?! Infection became an actual mode! The Brute Chopper, still my fav vehicle!

And Bungie.net I agree was definitely ahead of the game. I used to compare my Rumble Pit and Team Slayer stats so often.
 
To this day, I'm pretty sure there isn't an FPS or TPS that even comes close, features wise, to Halo 3 or Reach for that matter. So many big & different communities in those games. MLG/competitive, grifball, infection, race, forge, & firefight. I'm sure I'm missing some niche ones as well. Pretty crazy.
 
Akai__ said:
Statements like these are why I think that the whole spread thing is overblown. In which scenarios does this happen? In longe range battles, where your enemy is or isn't moving? Because I can't think of a single encounter that I lost, because only the 3rd bullet didn't hit my target in short to mid range battles. If I missed a perfect 4 shot in a 1vs1, it would mostly be because I fucked up, my opponents had a better strafe, a better BR or the 2007 netcode was in their favor. All of these things are much much more frequent than your 3rd shot not hitting
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https://mobile.twitter.com/Vetoed/status/763775656928874497/video/1

Overblown? A scenario where two players can be aimed at each other's head, and each fire 4 shots on target, yet have different results SHOULDNT BE POSSIBLE. (Which is why MLG buffed the damage) There's no argument FOR the gun to be designed this way.

A problem in close-mid? No
Mid-long? YES
Long? YES

Mid-long firefights (where BRs should've been ideal) were a game of chance, and at long range they were inadequate at rewarding skill.

Static spread would still limit the BRs effectiveness at range, and simultaneously remove chance from the equation. It would also reward players with amazing skill an opportunity to 4shot at long range. It would be the perfect utility weapon. It's inarguably a more balanced solution than what we got.
 
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