Halo 3 Post Mortem

[Renwood]

Originally Posted by Aladuf

not to say it isn't a great game because it is, but it's about as "generic" of a FPS as you can get.

It doesn't take outrageous risks with the gameplay or level design, but there are far more generic first-person shooters. Something like Area 51: Blacksite, Turok, or TimeShift; games that rely on a gimmick or premise to cover the weak gameplay.

Halo relies on its core gameplay (the 30 seconds of fun) to achieve anything. It took ideas that had already been done, and threw them in together in the original Halo, and what came out of that was fun. And since then, its been incremental refinements of that initial system. What holds it back in Halo 3 is what has held it back from the beginning; hit-or-miss art direction and, in the Campaign, mixed level quality and a so-so story.