Co-op gameplay

Oh, and we almost forgot to mention the four player co-op portion of Halo 3. The two previous games in the series offline two player split screen co-op but Bungie went all out and made the co-op mode for Halo 3 support four players online and off. You and three of your friends can quickly sign onto Xbox Live and go straight to the campaign mode for some Legendary four player action. While co-op won't be as popular as the other multiplayer gameplay modes it will still be a big hit with folks that want that kind of experience.

So how does Halo 3 actually play in multiplayer? Pretty darn well judging by our first few hours online. There was no noticable lag in playing the game online that we could tell and we had a ball playing with some of the new weapons, vehicles and items in the game. From the Spartan Laser that packs a whollop to the trip mine to the energy drainer that cuts down a player's shields and more, the sheer amount of weapons, vehicles and equipment items is impressive for any game of this time. Once more gameplay balance seems to be pretty much maintained. More powerful weapons tend to take longer to fire and the weaker weapons fire and reload faster.

One thing we didn't mention in our Sunday review was the way that the game allows both machine gun and plasma turrets to not only be fired from their normal fixed positions but they can also be ripped up from their spots to use as powerful handheld weapons. The plasma turret gun is weaker but its firing rate is high and the machine gun turret tends to take a little bit of time to warm up.