Throwback: Halo 3 (Premium)

The release of Halo 3 for the Xbox 360 on September 25, 2007 was a big deal and was originally intended to close out the trilogy. In this throwback celebrating today’s release of a remastered Halo 3 for the PC, I’m presenting my original Halo 3 preview and single-player review from late 2007 for your nostalgic enjoyment.
Halo 3 for Xbox 360 Preview
September 18, 2007

The past twelve months have been a time of amazing blockbusters in the electronics market. During the 2006 holiday season, both Sony and Nintendo garnered huge lines when their next-generation video game systems finally became publicly available, though those systems---the PlayStation 3 and Wii, respectively---have gone down different paths in the months since. Then Apple dropped the shock and awe of the iPhone on us, first in a January unveiling that presaged six months of unprecedented consumer awareness, and then again in late June when the company finally unleashed the product. But the biggest blockbuster of the year, by far, is coming this week. And you don't have to be a video game fan to understand its import.

Prosaically speaking, Halo 3 is an Xbox 360-based first person shooter, the third and final act in the hugely popular Halo trilogy. But that simple description does nothing to describe the frenzy and excitement that are building as the game sneaks ever closer to release. That's because the Halo series, like so few video games, is a cultural phenomenon that transcends the primarily young, dateless, and male world of video gaming. It has transformed the lives of millions--yes, seriously--and changed the way that people interact with each other, albeit in a virtual world. In a more insular way, the success of Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, both of which were first released for the original Xbox console, shaped the development of the Xbox 360 and the way that that console provides its pervasive online experience.

What's most amazing about Halo, of course, is that the sum of its parts vastly outweighs the whole. I recall my first experience with the original Halo and wondering what all the fuss was about, as I am a long-time PC gamer and had seen much better and more imaginative games before. Indeed, aside from the problems of implementing a first-person shooter with the constraints and vagueness of a video game controller in mind, Halo developer Bungie had pretty much borrowed the plot, characters, and situations from the game from a number of books, movies, and other video games, the most obvious being the setting, which was taken from Larry Niven's classic "Ringworld" series.

But Halo, and to a much greater extent, its first sequel, Halo 2, is notable for other reasons. In the video game console world, Halo was among the first---but not the very first---truly playable first-person shooters, proving that a video game controller was no detriment to good design. Halo and its sequel also made multiplayer not just an important component of the game, a...