Halo 3 Reflections

I've played a lot of Halo 3 over the past several weeks, in a variety of ways. I've shot, melee'd and grenaded through:

• most of the game in Solo Campaign mode
• several levels in Co-op Campaign mode (locally) with Tammy
• several levels in Co-op Campaign mode (online) with two different guys from work, and
• many, many hours of online deathmatch and team deathmatch play.
  

If you add it all up, I've probably invested around 50 hours into the game so far, which is generally a good sign for a video game (Warhawk, on the other hand, I maybe played for 5 or 6 hours, after spending $60 for the game!)

While working my way through the offline Campaign this afternoon, I played a level that very much reminded me of my early Aliens Vs Predator gaming experiences. The scenario today took place inside a cavernous area littered with pulsating, gelatinous sacs that were attached to the walls everywhere. Anyone who's ever played an AVP game - or even seen an Alien movie, for that matter - recalls that pulsating eggs are always a bad sign, because of what they contain: facehuggers! In Halo 3, those disgusting sacs are filled with numerous small Flood critters, which can't kill you (as the Master Chief) in ones or twos but certainly can when you come at you ten to twenty at a time! As I pointed out to Vicki during the very short period in which she was watching me today, the game designers are no dummies: the sacs are located all over the place so that you have to be careful with your gunfire. If you're careless in your attempts to kill some of the other bad creatures there, you end up creating even more trouble for yourself by accidentally popping those nasty pimples and releasing additional swarms of enemies. I tip my hats to those evil geniuses at Bungie!

Playing in Co-op mode with Tammy is always fun, going all the way back to the original Halo. As I'm sure I've posted before, her "charge right in and start shooting" style complements my more cautious play, and usually avoids both of us getting killed at the same time. What I've discovered in the online Co-op Campaign sessions that I've had so far with McChicken from work, is that he and I are more similar in our approaches, and if anything, I'm the more gonzo of the two of us. Playing this way over the Internet has the advantage of affording each of us the full screen - when Tammy and I play locally, we have to split the screen between us - although we're unfortunately at the whim of the Internet Gods, as we were reminded a couple of nights ago when our valiant efforts to finally take down one of the giant scarab machines was suddenly aborted by a connection problem! Despite that ignominious conclusion, we'd had a great time up to that point, as only two geeks can while sitting in front of their TVs in separate locations! McChicken was wise enough to suggest that we play on the highest difficulty setting, since anything less would've been too much of a cakewalk when there're two of us in the game. At that setting, we were dying just often enough to keep things interesting.

As I experienced early last year with Resistance: Fall of Man on the PS/3, the problem with a really good game that has addictive online play is: you tend not to play any other games for awhile! In the queue for the XBox 360 right now are the Half-Life 2 Orange Box (which contains 5 games!), another F.E.A.R. game, and Gears of War. We've also got Call of Duty 4 and the latest Ratchet & Clank game waiting for time on the PS/3. Oh, and I still want to finish the original F.E.A.R. on the PS/3! So many games, and so little time!

I think once I finish the Halo 3 Solo Campaign, though, it may be time to try something new.