Halo 3 Confirmed for Fall 2007

The folks at Bungie share the news, via their weekly update, that Halo 3 will be coming out this fall. Not surprising, but still good to hear. The game's marketing campaign will soon be kicking into gear, and the site offers the first 'iconic' image they'll be using on billboards and bus stops. The update also includes a few words on the Crackdown/Beta offering (sometimes later this spring), and an update on where they are with Halo itself.

Those are Nintendo first-party games...

[Anonymous Coward]

...does Nintendo actually pay attention to other releases when they make dates? I know they like to hit xmas with stuff but other than that aren't they in their own world? Particularly with Halo, I imagine they think the demographics don't cross much, and maybe they don't, although Smash Bros is a pretty major Halo competitor in my view.

I wanted to hate Halo, too.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I wanted to hate it because it was an Xbox exclusive.

I wanted to hate it because the PC port was half-assed and years late.

I wanted to hate Bungie for selling out to Microsoft -- I've heard rumors that the original Halo was going to be a truly cross-platform (Windows/Mac/Linux) game before Microsoft bought it and made it Xbox only.

I wanted to hate it because FPSes are supposed to be unimaginative... I wanted to love the PS2, because it had Linux, and Final Fantasies...

I wanted to hate it so I didn't have to give another dime to Microsoft.

But you know what?

It's not just green metal. (Where do people get that, anyway? There is NO green metal through most of the games, other than the protagonist.)

It's actually a really damned good game. The graphics may be technologically dated -- it's hard to tell -- but they were amazing for the time, and the artwork is still amazing. The writing may be "uninspired", but it's not so much what they're saying, it's how they're saying it. The Halo may seem to be a cheap ripoff of Ringworld, but they made it real -- I can feel the world under my feet.

Halo was repetitive? Maybe, but it also meant it was decently long (Halo 2 was over too fast), and gave you time to get good at it. And it was fun... You know, I wanted to love Doom 3, because of the native Linux port, and id being generally cool guys and releasing their source, and all the yummy graphics, but the gameplay just isn't that fun. After you've whacked your 50th zombie on the head with a flashlight, and shotgunned your 200th Imp in the face, it's just no longer fun or even particularly hard, but no matter how many Elites I melee in the back, it never gets old -- or any easier.

And a forgettable storyline? Marathon very likely exists within the Halo universe, but I already forget its storyline, sorry...

So, tell me, what shooters are you playing that are better than the Halo games?

Re:I wanted to hate Halo, too.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Of those that I've played: Unreal Tournament doesn't even come close. Gameplay? Might be better, that's a matter of perspective -- I prefer quality over quantity. But Halo actually had a story-driven single-player campaign -- UT just has a story tacked-on to multiplayer against bots instead of humans.

Half-Life 2: Close enough that I'd call it a matter of taste. Halo restricting you to only one or two weapons carried at a time was a nice mechanic, and it's on the whole more solidly put together -- one of the things I love about Half-Life 2 is that it feels like playing through five different games, but I'm not sure that makes it a good game in itself. There's also plenty of things to like about Halo -- game is mostly streamed in Halo, and entirely streamed in Halo 2, while Half-Life 2 makes you wait through 1-2 minute loading screens. Halo 2 actually has co-op, even if it is splitscreen; I don't know of any PC shooters that do co-op campaigns in any form, except maybe for a mod of Half-Life.

Battlefield 2 -- engine sucks, EA sucks. Don't need to say much more about it, and I won't, as I haven't bought it.

You are right that it's one of the few console shooters that's actually worth playing, but I do think it competes well with PC shooters, on just about everything except raw graphics power -- being an Xbox game, it really can't, but check out the Halo 3 trailer, and anyway, I'll take a Halo or Half-Life over Doom 3 or FEAR any day.