Before I get stuck into the review, Halo 3 is the final installment of the series and is hugely anticipated by millions of fans (including myself), with over 10 million spent on advertising alone so this should be a great game right?

Campaign

The campaign is a bit of a disappointment shamefully with about 6-10 hours completion depending on the players with you and the difficulty set, but don't let that put you down because it is fantastic with its mixture of gameplay, soundtrack and story.

The gameplay is awesome with its combat scenes followed by times of dashing on top of your Mongoose or Brute Chopper keeping it fresh like Halo 2 did.  A lot of the campaign features on this game are from Halo 2 but with the ending chapters of the Halo story, new weapons and vehicles it is still a great experience and with 4 buddies over Xbox Live it gets even better when you have someone to scream to for throwing the grenade their way instead at the brutes ahead.

The storyline follows up with the cliffhanger ending of Halo 2 that made a lot of fans scream in frustration.  Halo 3 manages to clarify the confusing events of Halo 2 and continues it very well with some great, unforeseen twists that keep the storyline plausible and make it in general a brilliant end to the trilogy.

The soundtrack fits extremely well and is unlike any other game.  It is spectacular and everything is orchestrated beautifully, filling your ears with high quality music from the eerie flood, to the majestic Halo theme tune.  The sound effects are very clear, responsive and accurate with their associated part.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is where the main bulk of the game is and yet again it will be familiar to you if you have played Halo 2 with the way it works and the gameplay in general which is great as the formula of the last one works very well as it always has.

There is 10 new maps and 1 which has had some changes made, all look stunning and better then the Halo 3 beta which critics complained about the lack of graphical quality.  All of them have a different gameplay style like in High Ground it's more of a CTS (Capture the Flag) environment whilst Construct is for general slayer games.

New weapons and vehicles like I have said previously are really cool and take away the Halo 2 feel.  There are 4 new vehicles, 1 of which is for a specific map only, and a few new weapons.  1 new weapon, the gravity hammer adds more close combat to the game and can be used for many imaginative purposes because of its power and it can even redirect rocket launcher bullets.

I brand new feature is the Forge mode.  This is a simple editor, which allows you to turn into a monitor and edit the objects and spawn points in the game.  This may not seem like a great deal but it really adds to the games lifespan and makes the game a lot more customisable unlike Halo 2.  You can delete, create, place, and edit the objects properties.  The shameful thing with this though is that the items you are limited to is down to the type of map, the size of it and the original items in the level and sometimes its frustrating being limited to a number of 1 item or not being able to create another.

Another new feature is the theatre mode, where you can view up to 25 recent games and have a look at the game in detail, like what other players did so you can improve, or look back to see who killed who and who did what, or just to flick back at a hilarious moment.  You can look at the video from a first person view of any player, from a 3^rd person view which you can turn the camera around the person, or you can free roam around the scene and even pause it and look around the place.  This allows for some great screenshots and scenes.

The last new feature is its integration with bungie.net where you can make an account and link up your Gamertag to view all your game records, even in detail, view your videos, screenshots and download them onto your computer and also download other peoples game modes and creations straight onto your Xbox 360 the next time you turn it on and sign in.

Conclusion

This game definitely lives up to its expectations and is one of the best games of the year.  It may feel samey to Halo 2 but because of its new additions and features, it makes it even better.  It is probably recommended that you have a gamertag to play this but you will still have fun playing the campaign or inviting a few friends over for a game.  This is a must have!