Zero Punctuation: Halo 3

This week, by popular demand, Yahtzee throws down on the most important media property of the year, Halo 3.

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hahaha, it was worth the extra weeks wait... genius Yahtzee

also, in before sh.tstorm :P

That was worth it. *Sheds a tear of joy*

Brilliant, Yahtzee...I loved it.

Fan-tubby-dabulous

I guess we can assume the xbox is un-bricked again or that microwave is working quite well.

Not true sir, I've been saying that bit about the FPS genre deprecation for nigh on years (albeit mine had us all working in EA's sulfur mines) but lacked the large e-outlet you possess

In either case, well done, that video was well worth the 20 seconds it took to load and I should think more than makes up for the fact you had to play Peggle

I Knew he was gonna do Halo 3 on the last topic. Now wheres my five bucks?

If you guys really, uhh, dig it and you have a Digg account, show it some love here:

http://digg.com/videos/gaming/Zero_Punctuation_Halo_3

FPS+Console=FAIL
Yeah, we don't do that here. - Joe

Here's hoping you don't have to say "I fucking called it".

KICK ASS REVIEW.

BRILLIANT! Or I need to say more?

Aaaaany second now...

Ahh yes you summed up my thoughts perfectly there Mr. Croshaw.

I played through the SP campaign last week, and I was left with the same impression I had of Halo's 1 and 2... pretty graphics, dumbed down controls, recycled levels, and the most annoying online community in the fucking world.

im a big fan of halo3 and all you said was real and rly good. still i only buy halo3 for the multiplayer online and not rly for the campagne because halo = xbox live and not single player

Yahtzee- It's nice feel that there indeed other members of the gaming strata of humanity that can, indeed ENJOY, games that do not require one to never have progressed passed the "playing Army" stage of boyhood.

Thank God. I wrote my own review of Halo 3 wherein I ripped it apart in much the same way Yahtzee has, although his is (dur) better. But at least I'm not the only one, aside from those brave NY Times (!) and British Xbox magazines (!!), who acknowledges the following:

* The singleplayer sucks
* The AI sucks
* The plot and story sucks
* This game is average at best
* I don't give a damn about multiplayer.

I'm going to enjoy my reflected feeling of superiority now.

Sixteen posts with no flames. I'm quite literally lost for words.

I see your backlash and match it: the schizophrenia joke was good and the section in the middle with the Ewok-with-lampshade-on-head banter was pretty funny but not so sure about the rest.

Seemed just a little too too knowing and eager in its controversy, and leaving out discussion of vast sections of the rest of the package just so you could keep the line of argument clean and on-message seems quite unfair.

While carefully balanced and nuanced criticism obviously isn't quite the point of the column, such focussed efforts to irritate fanboys - however deserving they are of irritation - is cheap and as such I thought this was weaker than your previous content.

gozaimas:
such focussed efforts to irritate fanboys

There hasn't been any backlash yet... they must all still be in bed.

Well, I suppose when you look at it like that - that being, "I don't give a damn about multiplayer" - it's pretty mediocre. Meh, I like it. Probably because I give a damn about multiplayer. Maybe you could try it, just to see what the crowd of fanboys that makes up much of the gaming community is talking about. Who knows? There're a lot of people saying the multiplayer is great. Maybe they have a point.

...Then again, I wouldn't exactly want to say that while standing in the middle of Nazi Germany. Stick to your guns, Yahtzee.

Great review, I think my favorite so far. But one question, did you like Halo 3 or Peggle more?
Btw im not exactly sure if he was saying he hates multiplayer in general, but it is true that a game shouldnt be getting such high reviews with such a poor single player, why not just cut that out and make it an all multiplayer game instead of trying to do both.

Multiplayer is the heart of most games for me, so I absolutely love Halo 3, but your criticisms are valid. I never really thought much of the Halo single player campaigns, but since I spent around 9 months playing Halo 2 online it's hard to give it a score of average in my book when I had a freaking blast.

Wow... I'm not alone in the universe... Thank you so much Yahtzee... The first thing I saw of yours was your Bioshock review and when I heard the phrase "console tards" i finally felt that wow, maybe I'm not crazy! Thanks again, keep it going!

Where were all you nice people yesterday? I reviewed Halo 3 for gamecritics.com and I've got almost nothing but people insulting me in surprisingly crude and uncreative fashions. You know what? I'm telling them about this review. Maybe they'll spread some of the hate around.

gc_danny:
Where were all you nice people yesterday? I reviewed Halo 3 for gamecritics.com and I've got almost nothing but people insulting me in surprisingly crude and uncreative fashions. You know what? I'm telling them about this review. Maybe they'll spread some of the hate around.

I feel you, Danny. LINK

gc_danny:
Where were all you nice people yesterday? I reviewed Halo 3 for gamecritics.com and I've got almost nothing but people insulting me in surprisingly crude and uncreative fashions. You know what? I'm telling them about this review. Maybe they'll spread some of the hate around.

All the nice people start playing again in about an hour.

FACT.50:
I played through the SP campaign last week, and I was left with the same impression I had of Halo's 1 and 2... pretty graphics, dumbed down controls, recycled levels, and the most annoying online community in the fucking world.

...besides, if you DO give a damn about multiplayer there's Battlefront, 2142, and Ureal Tourniment that already do that... only better.

Russ Pitts:

gc_danny:
Where were all you nice people yesterday? I reviewed Halo 3 for gamecritics.com and I've got almost nothing but people insulting me in surprisingly crude and uncreative fashions. You know what? I'm telling them about this review. Maybe they'll spread some of the hate around.

I feel you, Danny. LINK

Well this site is probably the most intellegent when it comes to gaming. You shouldnt find any trolls here. At least here people explain there views here. Thats why I only make topics on this site. But yeah this is what I expected of Halo 3. Not bad, but definetly not good either.

I don't think any fans of this video series should be surprised at all that Yahtzee doesn't care about multiplayer. From there, it shouldn't have been too far a stretch to conclude that he wouldn't care much for a game whose single-player campaign is basically one long training mission/excuse to shove everyone into far shinier multiplayer.

I mean, was anyone impressed by the report about how Microsoft supposedly blazed whole new trails of iterative game development with Halo 3?

this just in: everything sucks!

i mean, you can tear anything down.

you don't like something. big deal.

however, yahtzee here is an entertainer. so, his opinion, while not a big deal as well, is appreciatively sensational, which is what makes it entertaining.

Disagree utterly with this one I'm afraid. Worse than Bioshock? Uck. Bioshock was an excellent example of storytelling done right, but there wasn't an actual GAME attached to it. Halo on the other hand is well, the closest thing to the perfect FPS that I've yet to come across. Yes we all enjoy our bouts of CoD or Battlefield or even when forced, Counter Strike... but the one series that keeps delivering entertainment years after release is Halo. I'm not sure how many hours of gameplay I've taken from the campaign alone yet; I'm sure there's some Bungie.net stat I can check up though. It must be a great deal; once through on Heroic co-op, once through on Legendary co-op, once through to pick up the Skulls and another playthrough to beat the Meta-Game scores. Not once have the encounters played out the same.

I know it's "chic" and "cool" to "criticise" "the" game "" ["?"] [or is it still? Which way does the wind of fashionable counter-opinion blow today?] but for this ex-Amiga, ex-PC fanboy it really does complete a Holy triumvirate of awesome - K240, Elite 2 and 3, Halo series.

That said, if you ever fancy giving the multiplayer a fair shot you're more than welcome to join me and my cabal of not-high-pitched-at-all Englishmen.

Brilliant and hilarious.

jackolantern:
However, yahtzee here is an entertainer. so, his opinion, while not a big deal as well, is appreciatively sensational, which is what makes it entertaining.

Yeah.

Hi, just registered for this.
Awesome review, i just love his way of setting opinions that are flying high due to raging hype-ing back on earth. Hes not "tearing anything down" just for the fun, hes just more honest that those "hay guys we need to fill this page here with awesome preview stuff that surely will offend none of our readers". Hes just that awesome.
Of course "his review" is subjective, he is reviewing what he thought about a game that he played and by definition that includes his opinion.

Btw, i bought Psychonauts because of his review and boy, i enjoyed that game way more than Bioshock/Halo3. Yahtzee,please please please do positive reviews of game-gems that people missed more often! Bringing overhyped mainstream games back into reality is good and fine (and probably better to make fun of), but id love to see your takes on other stuff you liked (surrealism i guess).

Ps: Loved your Flashback-LP.

Well, the bright side is if you originally had another game lined up it'll be easy to do your review next week.

jackolantern: right but Zero Punctuation has been, to my mind, about pointing out truths through perspicacious use of The Funny. There was still The Funny here but as it was less concerned with pointing out truth than as with bear-baiting it's all the less perspicacious for it.

That wouldn't be a problem but for the fact that the piece starts with Yahtzee calling all other game reviewers in the world 'cock eaters' (is that actually funny?), implying that he is the great, single rational mind in a critical community otherwise drunk on hype. Exaggeration to make a point is fine but it needs to be mostly true to properly work.