Scott Hanselman

That's pretty cool, Bill Gates sold the first copy of Halo 3 to a 17-year-old in Bellevue at the Best Buy. Why did I think of that - standing in line for 10 hours to meet Bill. Darn. I'll need to be more creative.

Fortunately, as you know, I went to work for Microsoft for one reason. Was it to "influence millions of developers?" Please. It was to get a cheap copy of Halo 3. Home delivered. Yesterday. To my home. Thank you Company Store. I can quit now.

Seriously, the wife was kind enough to let me encourage me to play "that damn game" last night from about 10pm to 3am. I don't play a lot of games, so this was a rare thing. I started on the Solo Campaign - I never start with Multiplayer, I want to get my bearings first - I did that for about four hours. I then did the Multiplayer Matches for the last two.

Here's my impressions.

First Impressions

It looks like Halo. Maybe I've forgotten what Halo 1 and Halo 2 look like, but Halo 3 looks like those, except bigger and sharper. The graphics aren't face-meltingly awesome like BioShock or Gears of War. I didn't go "holy crap, look at that water" or utter any "wow's" that I can think of.

However, it's smooth. It's calm. The framerate is clearly the number one priority of their graphics engine. You can feel it as you walk around. There's no tearing, no drops, no slowdown. It's just buttery smooth. I'm not saying that they've sacrificed visual quality for framerate, I'm not qualified nor do I have an eye for such things. I am saying that you WILL notice the smoothness. I did like the Spartan (no pun intended) opening menu. No nonsense. Gets you right into the game.

Single Player

The story picks up literally minutes after Halo 2 ends. This of course means that you should familiarize yourself with the story if you want the cutscenes to make sense. I had to read Wikipedia on Halo 2 before I went "oh! THAT was who that dude was." Then again, I have a memory like a sieve. Frankly, now that there are THREE I want to go play Halo 1 and 2 through on Single Player again for some reason more than I want to play #3.

So far the same has been very easy on Normal mode, so I think I'm going to pump up the difficulty as soon as I can. I would probably think that "Heroic" difficult would be a good default for folks who made it through the first two games.

 The dual wielding (two guns) option, combined with the addition of a pile of new weapons makes the mind work much more than with Halos 1 and 2. You're constantly asking in the back of your mind, "is this the right combo for what might be coming." Also, you'll need to watch the reaction of the enemies, as they are distinct. I never thought I'd choose a Shotgun to go after a Brute, but frankly, not only is anything better than the standard gun, the Shotgun just works. It becomes clear which weapons work against which guys and each weapon has it's reason for being.

The story really has you on rails. After playing BioShock, another FPS that is slightly less structured (but still on rails), I had forgotten how I didn't like games that walk you from level to level. Don't get me wrong, the level design is lovely, but there seems to be a pattern just in the first few hours of walk, walk, walk, fight, fight, go back to the main area urgently!, run run run, fight fight, new door opens up, walk walk walk. We'll see if there are surprises coming that will blow my mind like the the introduction of The Flood did.

My ONLY complaint (and it's a lame one) is that the dude is just so jumpy. After playing Gears of War and being stuck to the ground with no jumping at all, the Master Chief in Halo 3 seems like he's running on the Moon an can leap really high and really slow. It's a little confusing for me, but I'm getting used to it. Pretty lame that's my worst complaint. ;) It's a really solid game.

Oh, one other thing you can do Single Player is you can play cooperatively single player online. If anyone sees me online in Xbox Live I'm "glucose" and I'm happy to play if the family is asleep. If you haven't played a single-player game as a team with someone in another timezone, do, it's a treat.

Multi-Player

So balanced. I just hate getting beat on in Multi-player games. Seriously. It's depressing. I suck and I know it, so I want to be paired with others who suck equally. How hard is that? Well, apparently it's so hard that it takes three versions - but they nailed it. You really do get matched to folks that are challenging, but not punishingly so.

There's a ridiculous number of options and choices in multi-player and if Bungie continues to offer maps (which I'm sure they will) then it will continue to stay fresh. They've even included an object placement/map editor called the Forge. You can't change terrain, but you can move stuff around and buy and place weapons.

Last night when I was playing there were about 90,000 people online. Right now there are:

• Halo 3 Players Online: 151,309
• Unique Players (Last 24 Hours): 529,510
• Matches Logged (Last 24 Hours): 1,649,790

It looks like there are at least a half-million folks for us to play with. :)

Conclusion

Is it the greatest game ever? Probably not, but I'm only 4 hours into the single player mission. It might turn out that way. It's clearly different from Bioshock (which may well be the greatest game ever) and Gears of War, but if you like the FPS (First Person Shooter) genre, then all three are distinct flavors worth tasting.

It's really fun to play, though, no question. As I see it:

• BioShock - Prettiest Game To Date. Full Stop. Amazingly deep story that's not too hard to follow. Unbelievable sound engineering - you must play it with headphones or a nice 5.1 surround sound.
• Gears of War - Most "immersively urgent" Game to Date. I'm literally on the edge of my seat with this game. The camera work is fantastic and the human models are the best I've seen in any game, including Halo 3
• Halo 3 - Most Balanced Game. There's something about Halo's Multiplayer Matching. I noticed it in the Halo 3 Beta, and it's even better in the Final Release. I had the most satisfying multiplayer matches last night. I suppose it could have been a fluke, but it happened time and time again. The folks I was matched against were not kicking my ass as completely as they usually do. I attribute this to being matched to folks within my skill range. It's very nice. The whole game feels very balanced.

Should you buy Halo 3? If it make you happy, yes. It is a very pretty, very balanced game. I expect I'll have a lot of fun with it.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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