Age rating: 15+ (PEGI)

What is it?

The final part of the Bungie’s kill-em-all FPS.

Is it fun?

In parts.

Is it worth the money? £34.99

No, it’s one to rent.

Why?

Over-hyped and underwhelming were the two defining features of Halo 3 for me. The amount of hype layered (lathered and maybe a bit of smearing too) on Halo 3, by Microsoft, was pretty impressive. The problem is that when you separate the hype from Halo 3, you’re not left with a terribly impressive game (contrary to almost every other Halo 3 review available).

I really enjoyed Halo (apart from the idiotic last level). I wished Halo 2 was a lot longer, as I felt it was not only rushed but also a game too far for the struggling Xbox. So I approached Halo 3 with lots of optimism, as the Xbox 360 seemed to be the perfect vehicle for Bungie’s imagination. This optimism was all but obliterated after playing the first few levels. Boring and quite frankly lazy level design was the order of the day. Going back and forth over the same bit of a level is not a way to make it seem bigger. Heck, did Bungie forget they designed huge, and enjoyable, levels like the “The Silent Cartographer” in Halo? Sure there are glimpses of this kind of level design throughout the game. But all this good work is quickly undone with dull, pedestrian and repetitive levels.

The fight is finished in about 6 hours (for single/co-op mode), which is disappointingly short. You will clock up a lot more game time if you try to play it on legendary difficulty which Penny Arcade summed up perfectly with this comic. The graphics vary between pretty good to frequently poor (oooh, some of the cut scenes make your eyes bleed with all the jaggies). Sorry, but Gears of War has raised the bar in terms of FPS graphics, and sadly Halo 3 hasn’t quite caught up yet.

And finally the whole Halo 3 multiplayer experience. Well, I found it a bit sterile and boring to be honest, but it’s all very well done even so. Bungie brings you up to speed nicely with a newbie map at the start, so you’re not flapping around getting blasted by those Halo 3 veterans (that happens later). But I really wanted more variety in the game play, and not just from from playing different maps. When it came down to it I wanted Team Fortress 2 and its class based killing (and healing if you’re an overworked, and underused medic). I really tried to like Halo 3’s multiplayer game, but it just left me cold.

In summary:

A disappointing end to the hype fight (didn’t stop 8.1 million copies of Halo 3 being sold).

Screenshots:

Update 21st Jan 2008: Here’s another Halo 3 review that doesn’t get caught up in the hype.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Age rating: 15+ (PEGI)

What is it?

First person shooter set in the Half-Life universe.

Is it fun?

Yes.

Is it worth the money?

PC - £26.28 via steam, Xbox 360 £26.99 (inc. p+p)
Not on its own, but as part of the Orange Box. Yes, yes, hell yes.
Continue Reading

Popularity: 22% [?]

Age Rating: PEGI 18+ for swearing and violence.

What is it?
First-person shooter with a humongous-boobed supervillain. The first in a planned series of episodes, so it’s quite short.

Is it fun?
Yep. Most definitely.

Is it worth the money? US$14.95 via Steam or £14.99
Via Steam, yes. I was charged £9.54 by Barclays. You could do worse with a tenner.
There’s not really enough game for £15 if you’re an experienced FPS player. Maybe if you dial the difficulty up to the maximum.

Why?
‘Tis fun! The AI is nowhere near as pedestrian as some reviews would have you believe. It’s better than the AI in Black and I love the way you can throw a grenade into the middle of a group, watch them scatter and hear the screams of “Incendiary! Aaaaaah, aaah, it burns!” Shooting down people using jet packs has much the same effect as well. Love it! Pity that the agonised screams are better voice-acted than the main characters.
Continue Reading

Popularity: 13% [?]

Age rating: 18+ (PEGI)

What is it?
First person shooter in a space ship (and a bar, well for a little bit anyway).

Is it fun?
Yes, unless you suffer from motion sickness then you might feel a little sick!

Is it worth the money? Xbox 360 - £39.99 and PC - £24.99
Yes.

Why?
I think it is best to summarise Prey’s good and bad points as it’s a fairly generic first person shooter. However, it does boast portals (aka doors) and other clever graphical effects to distract you from the task at hand which is shooting God damn evil aliens. Continue Reading

Popularity: 19% [?]

What is it?

1st person shooter - everything explodes!

Is it fun?

Yep

Is it worth the money?

No - too short, combined with no multiplayer, naff story and weak replay incentives.

Tell me more!

I`ll keep this brief. First up, the good stuff:

• Explodeable scenery and destructable cover, great stuff.
• Mostly superb level design.
• It’s a pretty-looking game, lots of blur and bloom effects.
• Lots to shoot (always a good thing in a shoot-em-up).
• Enemies that pretend to act smarter than in most games (circling around you, etc) - and I don’t remember any instances of the enemy doing any really dumb stuff, like ignoring you when only feet away (which they sometimes do in Killzone).
• Good variety of distinct weapons to muck about with.
• Controls are good! You don’t feel like they hinder you like in some console shooters.

Now for the bad: Continue Reading

Popularity: 15% [?]

Damn, this game sucks.

Played it this afternoon with TheFluffyFist in an arcade coz it looked really great. It’s your standard wander-through-the-building-shooting-zombies arcade shooter. This time around you get uzi-style machine guns with grenade launchers and you get attacked by absolutely fricking LOADS of zombies at once! Fantastic stuff! And then during every other intense battle a zombie clings to the screen (apparently it’s supposed to be clinging to your gun) and you have to spend the next 5 seconds shaking it off by literally shaking your machine gun to fill a progress bar while other zombies attack you.

WTF?? Continue Reading

Popularity: 6% [?]

Hmm, from all the pre-release hype I was expecting something pretty exciting from this Steam release from Valve. But the end result is very very brief affair, echoing my disappointment with Half-Life2 and its premature finale.

Yes it looks great, the HDR effect is pretty cool and the level starts off feeling quite fresh as you start on a beach and go on to scale a cliff face (which is vaguely reminiscent of the HL1 cliff level). But it’s so darn short, and boring. You shoot a few Combine and then shoot some more, take out that helicopter yet again and then yawn, it’s all over.

“But this is just a tech demo!” you cry. “Don’t be so critical.” Continue Reading

Popularity: 14% [?]

Age Rating: 18+

What is it?

A first person shooter with spooky bits (sorry, paranormal events) and a plot!

Is it fun?

Oh yes, but it will scare the pants off you.

Is it worth the money? (£26.99 from play.com)

Yes, yes, yes!

Why?

The underlying creepy ambience to the whole game which makes even walking down an innocent looking corridor a most unnerving experience as frequent “paranormal events” mess with the lights and manipulate doors at will. Continue Reading

Popularity: 12% [?]

Age Rating:

15+

What is it?

It’s a tech demo with bad guys from Half Life 2 (HL2) to keep you entertained whilst you’re gawping around the latest instalment in the line of free content from Valve.

Is it fun?

Err, yes, briefly.

[Or see a second opinion from Tikipod here]

Is it worth the money?

(Free! With pre-requisites)

Yes.
But you have to buy HL2 first (US$39.95 and requires a credit card), install Steam, play HL2, then download The Lost Coast and then you can start dribbling my friends, start dribbling indeed!

Why?

It’s very, very, very pretty (HL2 was no munter in the first place!), short (15 minutes game time without the Valve commentary) and it will melt your PC. Continue Reading

Popularity: 18% [?]