Halo 3 Review

Halo 3 is the series' gameplay high-water mark, and the S there is earned by generosity as much as tuning. The core sandbox, equipment like the bubble shield and grav lift layered onto perfected weapon and vehicle balance, would have been enough; Bungie also shipped Forge, a map editor that spawned entire community genres, Theater's free-camera replays years before anyone else, four-player online co-op, and a file-share economy.

No shooter of its era respected its players' creativity more. The campaign is deliberately crowd-pleasing: The Ark and the final Warthog run are all-timer setpieces, and Brute pack AI gives the sandbox worthy prey, but narratively it spends three acts resolving Halo 2's cliffhanger in straight lines, with Cortana reduced to a distress beacon. That safeness is why story sits at B and the whole lands at A rather than S. As a package, though, 2007 multiplayer nights on Valhalla remain the console standard.