Sunday, March 16, 2008

Halo 3: such a convoluted story

The original plan was to play through Halo 3 for the first time in co-op, alongside Kieron and John, fighting our way through the Covenant and the Flood together. And then I read that you actually can only play missions you've unlocked ... and if none of us have unlocked them, that could be a problem.

Last night I was on the exercise bike for three hours as part of my marathon training, so I progressed with the story. I'd played a bit before, working towards stopping the prophet Truth from activating the weapon stored on Earth (though for some reason I've not written about that, it seems), and I carried on fighting on Earth. We stopped the weapon being activated, but a massive portal opened up, and Cortana sent a message on a Flood-infected ship crashing to the ground. I went through the portal to find the Ark, from where the Halos could be controlled, and tracked down the remaining prophet - and the Arbiter killed him. Not before Truth's lackeys had killed Keyes, though. Sob.

While the game's made up of excellently-designed levels, and the way the set-pieces are built around the AI is really clever, it's not really that memorable. I suppose the individual fights are unmemorable in a good way, in that the whole game is actually excellent.

There were some highlights. Taking a Scorpion tank through installations, destroying Wraiths and Ghosts. Flying the Falcons to take out two Scarabs at the same time. Allying with the Flood to get to the prophet, running along and seeing fallen enemies being consumed to join my army. Great fun.

We found a new ring, being built to replace the one destroyed in the first game, and it was explained in a rather long-winded way that we could use this to destroy the Flood and not kill everything and everything. All I need to do is find Cortana, who's somewhere on the Flood-infected High Charity ...

3 comments:

deKay said...

Are you sure you can't play through in co-op without unlocking the later levels first? When I completed it, I'd been playing off-and-on with two friends, and none of us had ever even played single player before.

planneroftowns said...

You played *whilst* you were on the exercise bike???

Xexyz said...

Yes, while I was on the bike, pedalling away.

I'm only going by what I've read somewhere ... I could be wrong, of course!