""""libellule have you played all these games extensively. I would bet you haven't seeing as PGR 4 is not even out yet. Ignoring your bias it is nice to see any mag review games across the spectrum. There are far too many sources that set their standards too low. """
==> like everybody I have seen screenshot and video
And like everybody I dont have played to the game
but I higly doubt any game in the world at 10/10 and particularly a arcade racing game when all the eyes are turned on GT5 or Forza2 for their realistic gameplay.
"""""Halo 3 getting a perfect 10 was highly likely. Not due to some insane bias. The series has a exceptional level of replay, solid controls, and pulls off multiple play scenarios perfectly. You rarely find a game that has so much variation in play style either. You get great FPS action, and ground vehicular combat, and great aerial combat. The game simply does so much so very well.""""
==> Halo has many flow the some americans/review forget to mention :
- level where you have to perform and then go back to your initial point
+ level design similar to Halo1&2 : "hey I have already play to this game before !"
+ campaign too short (even with their obvious trick to improve the game lenght)
+ co-op too easy (no more enemy)
+ poor predicted scenari
= rushed no-innovative campaign
and so many guys that put 10/10 !
sure no biais lol ...
I understand Bioshock is huge, but Halo3 ....
Look THE best (for me) UK Halo3 review so far :
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/technology/circuits/27games.html?ref=circuits
NEw YORK TIMES :
For those who have played Halo and Halo 2, the wildly popular shooter games, I can review Halo 3 in one sentence.
Halo 3 is Halo 2 with somewhat better graphics.
That’s all you really need to know. If you loved Halo 2, you will feel just the same about Halo 3. If you played Halo 2 and couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about, Halo 3 is not the revelatory experience that will change your view of the series forever.
So you could simply search through old issues of The New York Times for my review of Halo 2 and learn almost everything you need to know about the game, but rather than put you to that trouble, allow me to share with you my experience.
If you have never played any version of Halo, expect to have precious little idea of what is going on as Halo 3 begins. The game makes almost no effort to explain that humanity is battling a war against two enemies. One, the Flood, is a mindless, voracious collection of creepy crawlies that will attack anything that moves. The other evil is the Covenant, an order of alien religious zealots eager to set off an ancient device intended to wipe out the Flood and all other life in the universe. Halo 3 is the final game in the Halo trilogy that has followed protagonist Master Chief’s valiant efforts to save us all.
Put more simply, the story of Halo 3 is the same as that of Halo 2 and the original Halo: a lot of things get in your way and you kill them.
That doesn’t seem to have hurt sales. Microsoft said yesterday that its Halo 3 had $170 million in sales on its first day, easily surpassing its predecessor, Halo 2 in 2004, which racked up $125 million in the first day.
The game’s pleasures lie in the things you kill and how you do it. Enemies are engagingly varied, ranging from small, easily frightened creatures that will shriek and run away if things start going badly, to monstrous walking tanks. Weapons include shotguns, sniper rifles, flame throwers and a giant sledgehammer that slices most monsters in half with a single blow if you can just get close enough.
Action is fast and furious, with enemies coming from all directions. The game is a ballistic blur as you gun down aliens, tossing away an empty sniper rifle to scoop up a pistol or, if you’re lucky, a missile launcher.
You are accompanied by the Arbiter, an alien who switched sides. (The character formed a central part of Halo 2’s story but now seems rather extraneous.) If you play in Halo 3’s excellent co-op mode, in which multiple gamers play the single-player campaign as a team, the Arbiter is player-controlled.
Often the two of you are joined by space marines, tough soldiers who are effective partners. Their side comments during battles can be quite entertaining, as when a soldier marks the death of a particularly savage monster by saying, “That guy was really freaking me out; I’m glad he’s dead.” At times foot soldiering gives way to battles in tanks, hovercrafts or armed vehicles. I quite enjoyed driving over to an enemy anti-aircraft tank, jumping out, climbing up its side with a grenade and jumping off just as the tank exploded.
The Halo games have always had a great sense of scale, and some of the most notable visual moments are those in which dozens of monsters are running and firing over vast, picturesque landscapes. The last sequence is an especially striking example of vast vistas, big explosions and lots of enemies. Still, the game never achieves the visual heights of top Xbox 360 games like BioShock and Gears of War.
For all its grand panoramas and its galaxywide narrative, Halo 3’s plot feels like a bit of a throwaway, a rather short adventure with a predictable story and dialogue that is sometimes as hokey as something from an old John Wayne war movie. And despite adding special equipment like blinding flares and portable shields, the game is simply a tweaked version of the previous chapter. Halo 3’s game play is too firmly rooted in the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” school of design.
But then, single-player missions are not what has kept the Halo series at the top of the heap for all these years. What keeps fans playing the games obsessively, day after day, week after week, year after year, is online multiplayer games.
Halo 3 can be fantastically exciting when you play against other gamers in well-designed multiplayer scenarios stocked with exotic weapons and riddled with passageways that result in an unseen player sneaking up to shoot you in the back just as you toss a grenade at your own quarry.
Halo 3’s multiplayer abilities make a far more persuasive argument for purchase than its single-player campaign. Fans will have a whole new set of scenes to engage in frenetic battles, jumping in and out of tanks, leaping from a precipice to rain down fire from above or grabbing special items that offer temporary bonuses like near invisibility. Even the special equipment, which feels somewhat tacked on in the single-player game, proves incredibly useful in multiplayer mode. Those flash bombs can really turn a battle around.
I have always been more a fan of single-player games than multiplayer games, so when I say I found Halo 3’s multiplayer more exciting than its single player, it is both a tribute to the beautifully designed multiplayer experience and a critique of the fun, but somewhat forgettable, single-player game.
It is difficult to say that one likes, but does not love, a Halo game. Halo fans are so worshipful of the series that anything short of drooling admiration is seen as something akin to blasphemy. One is expected to love Halo games the way one is expected to love Harry Potter, “American Idol,” Tom Hanks, the Beatles and chocolate (some of which I love, some of which I don’t).
Yet, while Halo 3 is a slickly produced, exciting, well-made shooter, I wouldn’t class it as one of those creations that rival the importance of bendable straws or casual Fridays. And saying that could well result in a few angry letters.
It doesn’t really matter what reviewers say, though. Halo 3 is not just a game: it is a phenomenon fueled by obsessed fans, slick advertising and excessive press coverage (of which I find myself a part).
But even though the hoopla Microsoft has generated around this game is, in a way, a greater achievement than the game itself, it cannot be denied that there are people who will take greater pleasure in this game than in any other entertainment this year.
And what will make them happy, what will make their days joyful and give them long, crazed nights of ecstatic bliss, what will make the purchase of Halo 3 the best thing they could possible do with their money, is this one thrilling fact: Halo 3 is Halo 2 with somewhat better graphics!
