Don't get me wrong, the port itself is good enough. With each new release, though, the problems with the Master Chief Collection frontend become harder to ignore. It is truly best approached as a big daft playground of tanks and aliens. Halo 3 rejects the part of your brain that wants to master a game and make rank numbers go up-something that isn't helped by the MCC's series-spanning levelling system. Maybe I've been spoilt by a decade of refinement in the competitive shooter space. Rounds, especially on larger modes, linger a little too long-and with teams often finding themselves unbalanced from the start, it can be a chore to sit through a 20-minute game you know you've lost. But as I've found with previous MCC releases, it's not something I'll stick with beyond a light distraction. The right amount of weapons on the best lineup of maps, without streamlined loadouts and abilities that would crop up in later games. It's my favourite version of the Halo formula. But It's big team battles that always hit the hardest-rolling tanks and chaotic explosions that less resemble Battlefield than they do a military toybox thrown haphazardly over stunning alien landscapes. Smaller rounds have their charms, weaving through phenomenal maps to outflank foes, memorising the routes and timings for weapons like the energy sword or rocket launcher. Like the campaign, there really isn't anything quite like Halo multiplayer. They're still deadly with a mouse, but not quite so much that other weapons don't get their time to shine. Thankfully, Halo 3's precision shooters have been toned down from the first game's pistol and the sequel's BR. It's a spirit that carries over into the game's now-legendary multiplayer scene, even if-once again-carbines and battle rifles throw that balance into flux. Every piece of equipment throws a new wrench into a fight, whether you're disabling tanks with power drains or blocking routes with deployable cover to keep a Flood swarm at bay in a fungal meat-prison. Every weapon-even the woefully stripped-down Halo pistol-has a use. Even Destiny 2, which shares plenty of Halo's DNA, is too wired into the loot-shoot grind to nail this kind of playful murder toybox. It's a form of shooter we don't really see on PC. But then, why take the easy option when there's a Warthog and a massive, well-placed ramp? The last-a brawl against two of these beasts-gives you a leg-up with the Hornet VTOL. The first gives you a squad of bazooka-toting bikers to swarm around them with, kicking out their knees with high explosives. Bungie knows that these massive, walking crab battles are the best bits, which is why you fight them four times over the course of the campaign. This sandbox hits its peak with Scarab fights, the shooter's answer to Shadow of the Colossus. Sooner than expected, the parasitic Flood throw in their own wrench by bringing dead fighters back as screaming, shambling infected. The first level's narrow jungles give way to massive arenas, where deadlier weapons and tougher vehicles are thrown into the mix. Every fight is a playground-mobs of enemies to deal with using a smattering of weapons and 'Equipment' (one-shot tools like bubble shields and grav-lifts). Halo 3 is the Bungie sandbox at its best. Long before Destiny, Bungie was still best-in-class when it came to jaw-dropping skyboxes.īut this is a shooter, not a sightseeing trip. Brutalist temples jut out of sweeping deserts, as city-sized cruisers duke it out in the sky. Shattered highways wrap through towns around a vast, drained ocean. But christ, if Bungie can't bash out some absolutely stunning vistas. Texture quality, particularly on the Earth levels, betrays the game's 2007 release. Yes, the character models look real rough. Halo CE: Anniversary, meanwhile, was a haphazard mess that buried the original's brilliant broad strokes with ill-considered effects and greebly assets. Halo 2: Anniversary's rework was stunning, but that was an ugly game that needed sprucing up.
#HALO 3 PC REVIERW HOW TO#
The old soldier might be showing a few wrinkles, but the closing act of Bungie's original trilogy still knows how to go out with one hell of a bang.īesides a bump up to higher resolutions and 60fps, Halo 3's visuals have been largely untouched. Now, with Halo 3's arrival via The Master Chief Collection, the circle is finally complete. Then, 13 years passed, and PC players never found out what happened to Master Chief's merry band of army-lads, floating orbs and squid-faced Keith Davids.
#HALO 3 PC REVIERW WINDOWS#
Long ago, on some long lost Windows Vista machine, Microsoft's big green army man promised us he'd "finish the fight". Reviewed on GTX 1060, AMD Fx-4130, 8GB RAM