Halo 3

Remember when GTA: San Andreas came out and gaming sites were falling all over themselves to give it 9.999999's?

So do I. Then I got it home, realized it was a giant bag of errands and stopped playing. But even before I bought it, I knew it wasn't 9.999999999 worthy.

But Halo 3? I really thought it was. The first two were tons of fun. I didn't go crazy online or anything, but I had some good times.

So all they really needed to do for me to like Halo 3 was remake Halo 2 but put an ending on it. But they were gonna do so much more. They had some giant brain trust chewing down data on how people moved through levels and modifying them based on the data. All kinds of money to make this game the best thing ever.

I was very stoked, and had I not been working at midnight, I'd have been buying it. Gorgeous Hair did me the favor of picking it up for me, and I got to playing it after work. First thing noticed was how terrible the story was. Then there's that thing from Little Shop of Horrors and the computer lady slowing my game down and making me think something was actually gonna happen with either of them (spoiler alert: it doesn't)

But whatever. Shooting dudes is fun. Man though, terrible story. Whatever. Shooting.

Then I got to the ship/flood level. Did the brain trust that had data on how hundreds of people play a level lose some files? MAN is it un-fun. Evertying can come back to life unless you shoot it double dead, and even then some stuff still can. This level was made to run though. To skip over as fast as possible. Just run and jump, cos the shooting is no fun at all in this part of Halo. But, of course, the thing's a poorly laid out mess, so running through it isn't exactly the easiest. Piles of cumbersome.

Seriously, where'd the money go? All that testing of things, all the innovations, where? It's still Halo 1. Same number and kind of enemies (except for some new flood that are terrifically annoying), same purple and green everything design. Same one earth level then going off to another spacey ringworld. Same same same. Capped w/ a boring ending that GH missed half of cos he hit the button before all of the eighty million credits finished.

He had a great point about the part he did see, which was that why were people writing 117 on the memorial as an afterthought? The three games prove that you are solely responsible for winning this alien war and instead of making a statue the size of Nepal of you, someone had to sneak up and scrawl your ID number on the little memorial.

The last time I remember playing was online as GH was yelling about how terrible the ending is. As much as I wanna like the game, and indeed Halo 1 might possibly be a 4 star game, this one is not.


Halo 3: 2 stars.

Bunrout Paradise

It's a trip down memory lane.

Remember when you could do cool Signature takedowns?
Remember when Avril Lavigne wasn't on the soundtrack?
Remember when crash mode was an interesting puzzle?
Remember when crash mode was not tacked on?
Remember when the soundtrack wasn't 50 dudes doing their best AFI impression?
Remember when you didn't need to be good w/ the Reverse button to navigate?
Remember when it took 1 second to restart a race?
Remember when SSX had Rahzel in it?

That was awesome. Back then.

Now, we've got an open world. And the only thing more annoying than running through one to get someplace is driving. Sure for most of it it's fast and fun, but then you miss a turn and have to slam on the brakes, bang into a wall, reverse and dick around to get your position correct. What fun.

Then Avril Lavigne comes on and tells you she's hot.

There's a litany of moments like this, little flicks to the nuts, all to accommodate the "open world". They even hired the dude that replaced Rahzel in SSX 3 when that game when "open world" and lost much of the life it had for me.

Yeah, the world's open. It affords a few neat opportunities. I like smashing up cars to win them, I like that I can pick up a challenge and go anywhere. But I miss the style of it all. Taking out five rivals at once (far as I can tell you can only off one guy at a time, even if it looks like you took out two or three). I miss the design of the old game, the novelty of trying to knock a car into the lake or figuring out how to cause 12 million in damages.

The cars feel great, and Burnout's still the only place for non-sim racing. But much of what made the series great has been shoveled out of the way so we can all relive our Midnight Club 2 fantasies.

2 stars.