On September 23, a collective bevy of websites, blogs and magazines clambered over themselves to give the hype machine called Halo 3 a sparkling review, whereas three words should have replaced them all: "average at best."
Apart from the time in March when we took some girl out to dinner and then the cinema, poured champagne down her neck all night, and she didn't even give us a blowjob for our effort, it is the biggest disappointment of the year. There is no longevity in Halo 3's campaign mode, the graphics are flat, the gameplay is hugely repetitive, the achievements easily obtainable.
The game does have two saving graces. Social Multiplayer can be a riot. You blow up lots of your friends and scream torrents of abuse down the headset. A level editor called Forge Mode, while time consuming, allows you to place the more devastating weapons and vehicles into otherwise bare maps.
While Halo 3 may be a commercial success, and the advertising onslaught continues, it has been strange to charter the online experience. Users complained about the frequency of repetition, given that they could not chose the map or game type played in a ranked game; the people who defected from the Gears of War lobby slowly but surely came back, disappointed by something that offered so much but gave so little. You finished the fight and there was nothing left in the tank.
So, how do you milk a dying cow?
Release a Map Pack for 800 Microsoft Points (as the nearest points' purchase is 1000, this will set you back £8.50). Halo 3 Heroic Map Pack consists of three new multiplayer maps: Standoff, Rat's Nest and Foundry. This update does not add any more achievements.
Standoff is a large basin-type valley, similar in size to Valhalla, bunkered at each end like Snowbound. A few land-based vehicles are here. Nothing that can fly, a shame since the ceiling is quite high. The weapons are sparse. We couldn't find a sniper rifle, unforgivable given the size of the map. We drove around in our Warthog and checked out the scenery. Yes, it is quite pretty, but after drinking ten pints of Stella the average chav ho looks pretty and getting up in that will get you nothing but earache phone calls from the Child Support Agency.
It's a big level, taking about 30 seconds to drive around, but you'll never get lost. Given the size of the level, the distance the two bunkers are apart, this is ideal Capture The Flag territory.
Rat's Nest, directly lifted from level two of the Campaign Mode, contains, according to Microsoft's own blurb, "vast, labyrinthine passages." If five or six corridors defines "labyrinthine" then consider us David Bowie in spandex with big hair.
We drove over some noobs, got bored of that and started to kill our own team. We're ejected from the game for Team Killing. Humourless bunch of fools. There's nothing new here. If we wanted to play Campaign level two, we'd play level two.
Foundry comes with the bold claim that "players can edit every single object in this voluminous industrial warehouse, place stairways, walls, bridges and tunnels to create an entirely new play space and build almost any kind of map they can think of." Any map we can think of? WOW!!
We can think of some bizarre shit, even on our off days. We can build a map that has got '2 Girls, 1 Cup' playing on every monitor. How cool would that be? Imagine our disappointment when we walk into a warehouse containing industrial containers stacked up on each other and a couple of staircases and bridges. Voluminous? It's a medium-sized square room, basic at best, not the ultimate creative palate it's being made out to be.
We sigh, disappointed again, eject the disc and scan Xbox Arcade Marketplace. 800 points would have got us Speedball 2, a game we would play until our thumbs fall off. We weep a solitary tear.
Heroic Map Pack Two will be released in Spring 2008, when Pack One hits Xbox Marketplace for free; unless you're the hardcore lunatic who queued up at Midnight on September 23 in a forlorn attempt to be the first to get their Master Chief Legendary Halo 3 Limited Edition That Also Includes Bill Gates' Pubes, we suggest you wait until then to download Pack One.
[story by Miles Fitzsimmons]