Halo 3 is the biggest release yet for the XBox360, we give it a whirl.
First-day sales: $170 million (RS 680 crore). That number made Halo 3 the biggest grossing “first-day” entertainment product in history, and that includes Hollywood. The title grossed over $300 million (Rs 1,200 crore) in its first week. This game brought back the Xbox360, Microsoft’s game console, from the brink, just as Sony’s PlayStation3 was seeing its price cuts (everywhere but in India) work. Microsoft executives were basking in the glory of one of the more epochal moments in video-game history. Bungie Studios (which has, since, broken away from Microsoft Game Studios) actually managed to deliver a product that lived up to its tremendous hype and gave Microsoft its “iPhone moment” of the year.
But with the hype surrounding the launch of Halo 3—the third and last installment of the Halo series from game design house Bungie Studios—exclusively for the Xbox360, any self-respecting gamer, even one who would rather play Forza Motorsport 2, will want to see the game at work and give it a quick spin.
Now, to be fair, a quick spin on this first high-definition version of Halo is unfair, because it takes hours to figure out the game; a quick run-down of the game is not easy, even if you are playing with someone used to FPS games, because, honestly, playing the game on some of Samsung’s new high-def LCD televisions, you’re so blown away by the graphics that gameplay comes a distant second, initially that is. And yes, the score by Marty O’Donnell has to be the most memorable in a video game for a long time.
That said, the story of Halo 3 is quite complex and intricate. Like with previous versions of the game, you play as the Master Chief, a cybernetically altered super soldier who has to protect the earth, or, rather, the human species, from destruction by the Covenant, an alien race. Mind you, all of this is taking place several hundred years in the future (the year 2553 to be exact) and, therefore, the types of weaponry and vehicles at your disposal are tremendous.
Of course, that is not to say that you cannot play multi-player games on this game; you have several modes, including online co-operative play, where the other players play as the Arbiter and other Elite soldiers. Microsoft has recently launched Xbox Live in India, which will allow you to play an online co-operative game. You also have other great new features such as Forge, which allows you to move features on a map (on multi-player modes such as Capture the Flag) realtime, plus the settings as well as saved movies can be shared online over Xbox Live.
Is this the best game ever made? That is a subjective question, but it is definitely one of the best video games, possibly the best among the current generation, and definitely the best franchise in video game history.
