I’m going to start with a really, really tiny detail and try to use it to come to a sweeping statement about what makes a game fun. The detail we’ll start with is weapon spawns in the Halo games: why timers are fair, but not fun, and why slightly random spawns may be unfair, but more fun.

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Okay, so not everybody is in love with Halo 3. Over at the Hushed Casket, Midnight calls it “fun” and details the changes. Rapture calls it a bigger, prettier Halo 2, and it’s most decidedly not a compliment. Of course you can’t please everybody, and some things (like Halo) become so popular that the only way for anybody to make themselves cooler is to not like it. The guys at the Hushed Casket aren’t like that, though, so if they’ve got a beef with the game, there’s probably something to it. That doesn’t mean I agree, but it means there are probably things worth thinking about.

Some people say that Halo 3 isn’t pretty enough.

After playing Gears I can see where some people are not impressed. However, I think it’s worth noting that there is nowhere in Gears any location that is as large as even a medium-sized Halo map. There are lots of terribly detailed textures you get to look at at fairly close range in Gears; mostly on your own characters, your enemies, and the nearby environment. The path you can travel is predetermined and there is no way to break off from it. Forget trick jumping, in Gears you can’t even jump. I don’t mind that, actually. In fact, I really wish Halo 3 had implemented some kind of limitation on consecutive jumps to eliminate bunny-hopping, which is an incredibly annoying tactic. The day a game studio decides to make their campaign enemy bunny hop because it’s an effective and legitimate strategy, I’ll drop my complaint.

To expect the same level of texture detail and lighting effects in an outdoor area like Valhalla where you can go virtually anywhere in the level at any time is simply unrealistic. Epic, in a sense, by restricting you to small rooms and preventing you from looking at thing up close that are far away, has spoiled 360 gamers for any other approach. Halo 3 is incredibly detailed. If you haven’t already, download the Red vs Blue Beta PSA. It’s got some Halo 2 footage of Blood Gulch right next to Halo 3 beta footage of Valhalla. If that doesn’t prove that there’s been a quantum leap in the look of Halo 3 from Halo 2, I honestly don’t know what would.

Another thing to keep in mind is that while Gears’ single player campaign is suitably lovely in its appearance and scope (even if most of it is just unplayable scenery) the multiplayer areas are also toned down. They’re smaller than even the small areas of the campaign. There’s nothing approaching the size of a map like Valhalla in it; that’s the tradeoff that Bungie is making.

Bungie has swapped out the Team Training list for a Big Team Training playlist. This features Banshees when played on Valhalla.

More articles about the Halo 3 Beta around the web:

GamingExcellence likes what they see but think Bungie has taken a “safe approach” to changes in Halo 3.

Hushed Casket has impressions of Halo 3 by Midnight and rapture; they’re not nearly as impressed as many others are, and their comments deserve some examination which I’ll get to shortly.

Somebody got their hands on the Halo 3 Legendary Edition (the monster version) and thought it would be a good idea to take lots of pics. I take my hat off to this person.

It’s going to hurt to lay down $130 + tax for this, but you only have to do it once…
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At least, that’s what I think.