Weapons/graphics in Halo 3

Graphics and level design

Visually the game stands up well compared to other first person shooters. While not quite on the same plane as Epic's Gears of War, Halo 3's character models are highly detailed and the visual effects for weapons fire, shield visuals and more are first rate. We still get a bit of repetition in some of the game's level designs at times but thankfully that is less of a problem now than with the original Halo (which seemed to be designed on a cut-and-paste method of map making at times).

Weapons and equipment

People who want more "stuff" to play with will be very happy with Halo 3 as it adds new weapons, vehicles and the all new equipment items to the mix. New weapons include the Brute Spiker (firing spikes, natch, in dual mode is pretty effective) the Spartan Laser -- a massive laser gun that takes a while to warm up but fires a powerful burst and my personal favorite, the Gravity Hammer, a new melee weapon used by the brutes that can kill and send flying a bunch of enemies at once with just one swing. There's also a couple of new grenades; one that fires off spikes everywhere and another that burns enemies down to the ground.

The humans get a couple of new vehicles in the game; the two seated and unarmed Mongoose ATV (fast and deadly if your back-seated friend has a powerful weapon) and the Hornet (an VTOL craft that you fly and fire machine guns and rockets while up to two others can ride on the sides of). The Covenant also has new vehicles as well but we won't reveal those at the moment.


The most interesting new addition to Halo 3 single player is the equipment items. Basically you can hold one of these items at a time and deploy them by pressing the Xbox 360's "X" button.

You may have played through the multiplayer beta a few months ago and seen items like the bubble shield and the energy drainer but the full game has even more items such as a regeneration field (basically the reverse of the energy drainer) and a shield barrier that cannot be walked through like the bubble shield can. These items can make or break you at times in the single player portion of the game and we can't wait to try them online in multiplayer.