So, “Halo 3” has been out for almost three weeks. You might have finished the fight and found Master Chief’s fate, jumped in with the millions of other gamers online, and shot a few Spartans or Elites, captured a few flags and caught a few skulls. Well, now where do you go?
What’s great about developer Bungie’s labor of love is that there are still plenty of things to do – playing through single-player and dipping your toe into multiplayer truly is just the tip of the iceberg. Let the Emerald make a few suggestions for what to do to get even more play-time out of that copy of “Halo 3.”
First and foremost, if you haven’t already, get an Xbox Live Gold subscription. Just do it – it may be $50 a year, and the main difference between the free Silver and for-pay Gold accounts is online play, but for online play (especially for “Halo 3”), it pays for itself.
Most of the rest of the suggestions are predicated on having Xbox Live Gold for online play. For the price of a game, it’s well worth the investment.
1. Go into the settings panel (available in almost every menu by pressing start) and change the voice settings to your team/party only.
Unless you’re playing every online multiplayer game exclusively with all of your friends, you will run into the scourge of the online community – the screaming high school-aged “Halo” player.
We’ve all heard him before: yelling racial epithets into the Xbox headset through his braces, this kid will make your life hell – and possibly blow out an eardrum. By changing the voice setting so that you only hear your teammates and anybody in your online party, all that you lose is the capability to eavesdrop on opponents in team battles, which honestly isn’t that much of a loss.
But what you gain in peace of mind is definitely worth it.
2. Play four-player co-op campaign over Xbox Live.
And, specifically, if you have any “Halo” experience (including beating “Halo 3” by yourself), play it with two or three other friends online on Heroic or harder. Co-op play has been a trademark of the first two “Halo” games, with co-op on Legendary difficulty being a staple that tries even the most battle-hardened warriors. Now with a move online and pushed to four-player capability (including Master Chief, the Arbiter, and two other Elites) the co-op experience has improved tenfold. Being able to coordinate moves and attacks with one person is fun; add two more people and the tougher difficulties become much more doable.
Unfortunately, that means some sections get easier, but that means fewer full restarts because everyone has to die in a section. Heroic on co-op seems to play a full difficulty level easier than its single-player equivalent, and is a nice balance between a challenge and an overwhelming challenge. Don’t forget to turn on Campaign Scoring, too, which keeps tracks of kills and other statistics and makes co-op into a competition in the manner of old-school arcade games. Plus, this is the easiest way to keep track of the high-score achievements.
3. Go unlock some campaign-mode skulls.
A dozen or so skulls – that look just like the ones used for Oddball modes in multiplayer – are scattered around the single-player levels. These skulls, when found, add options to the campaign mode that make the game more difficult – including upping enemy AI and turning off the radar – but also add score multipliers toward the high score achievements. For some of the top high-score achievements, the skulls are the only way to even have a shot at the scores. Plus, finding the skulls gives achievement points by themselves, so it’s worth the time to go find them.
4. Mess around with the Forge.
The Forge – an editing mode that allows players to change map features including spawn points, weapon and vehicle spawns and locations, and other game rules – is an incredibly powerful new mode that will keep the game the freshest the longest. While you can edit a map offline, it also allows the full load of 16 players to actively edit a map together online – and then switch back, on the fly, into player models to engage in some combat.
At the simplest level, this means you can go in and drop Warthogs or Scorpion tanks on your friends in real-time. In the hands of somebody who has the vision and ability to really manipulate the editor to its full extent, though, incredibly fun game modes should continue in the game for months – if not years. With the ability for Bungie to promote and publish game modes it finds, it means a truly great Oddball or Capture the Flag variant won’t exist solely in a vacuum. Bungie added in the popular zombies setting – which used the honor system and some intricacies when used in Halo 2 – as a default in Halo 3, so there is a precedent of user-created content making its way to the top.
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