Joystiq impressions: Halo 3 campaign

Bungie's Frankie took us through a tantalizing tidbit of Halo 3's opening single-player campaign level last night, although they wouldn't show us the full opening, since "It gives away a few twists that we want to keep secret until the game launches." Curse you to the ends of the universe, Bungie Boy! We wanted some deets. We were his last walkthrough of the night, and he would've gone over the edge if we'd brought him a cocktail, but we were bone dry. Reminder to pack the Joystiq Official Developer Tongue-Loosening Flask (tm).

Thanks the the wonders of developer magic, we skipped those scenes which were denied us, and after seeing the cool new Halo 3 loading screen -- a blizzard of white pixels snowed vertically across the screen to form a computer model of a rotating Halo. It's a much faster loading screen than Halo 2 had ... we remember that thing taking forrrreeeeverrrrrr sometimes.



Once the game popped up, we noticed that it looked, frankly (no pun intended) a lot more gorgeous than the multiplayer beta. We're not talking Crysis levels of photorealistic details here, but pretty close. There's a canopy of green trees overhead, and lush water and rock/dirt environments underfoot, and it's very well-rendered. You creep up on a group of sleeping Grunts and proceed to take them out (if you choose), all stealthy-style. Soon enough, Frankie gets spotted and it's an all-out battle against Grunts, Jackals, and Brutes against his crew, which consists of a few Marines and the Arbiter.

We'll hand it to him, the guy clearly has some skill. Possibly because he's had a bit of experience with the game, mayhaps? He makes short order of the baddies, continues down the path, and ends up near an ocean, facing off against a Covenant dropship. Frankie quickly yanks a turret out of it's socket, and (after failing the first time) uses it to take out the offending ship. Pretty cool stuff, except that it only makes us itch as badly as a really powerful case of poison ivy to play the real thing ourselves. Must ... try ... to ... wait ... longer.

The HUD interface is familiar to everyone who played the multiplayer beta, shields recharge at the top of the screen, grenade count in the upper left, ammo and selected weapon in the upper right, etc. We weren't shown nearly enough to critique the single-player game, but so far it looks promising. We left Frankie to collapse into his gaming-induced coma, while we continued dreaming about possibly (hopefully?) being able to actually finish the fight. Sadly, we didn't get to take pictures, but look for more Halo 3 assets later this week.