Man oh man, here I am coming out from a Halo double punch – to put it more directly, I just was treated to presentations of Halo 3 and Halo Wars.

For the first time, we get to see the single-player portion of Halo 3. The way this worked was that we had a community manager from Bungie actually playing a level on Heroic, no cheats or anything, just a straight up action romp through a level.

The thing is, Bungie didn't show the entire level as they don't want to reveal anything from the plot, so the action picked up about one third into the level.

And you know what, it's still the good old hectic Halo action that many of you loved so much in the first two games. Judging by the amount of Covenant on screen, it seems like the dynamics of the combat are faster than in Halo 2; an obvious throwback to the original game (which is a good thing).

In terms of visuals, there's the expected presence of HDR lighting, Bloom effect, in addition to heavy emphasis on physics and some very detailed textures in the background. In the level shown, Master Chief was fighting through a forest area, and as the density of trees would vary, the lighting effects adjusted to accommodate the environment.

The guy who was playing was really good, so he was tearing through the Covenant like you wouldn't believe, switching between different weapons as he went along. Immediately, one could notice the new Brute models, who seem to be the main bad guys at least throughout this demonstration, Besides being bulky and heavily armored, these guys use a weapon that is a cross between a shotgun and a rocket launcher, quite neat to use in combat.

The level flowed very nicely with top-notch gameplay in terms of the intensity of the fire fights. Somewhere along the way, the Master Chief stumbled across a huge chaingun and picked it up ala the main protagonist in CapCom's Lost Planet. At this point, the camera switched to a very handy over-the-shoulder third-person camera view, as the Master Chief rained down with a hail of bullets on a Covenant dropship, ultimately bringing it down.

This looked great, but overall, at least in terms of the visuals, sure the physics are now beefy and there are more polies and better lighting, but compared to some of the other stuff I've seen at the show, Halo 3 is definitely not the best looking game out there. In fact, aside from the noticeable environmental changes, the game looked very much like the old ones, even in the single-player mode. Now, bear in mind that I might be losing my perspective here as I've seen so many games in the course of these three days, and it's been a while since I played Halo 1 and 2. However, off the top of my head, Bungie isn't exactly squeezing the last drop out of Xbox 360's power.

On the other hand, the combat seems really fun and intense, and that to most should be the main point of interest (Hear, hear. – Vader).

In addition to showing this single-player level from the game, Bungie also revealed a "Make A Movie" option for their multiplayer games. This is something special if you're into creating footage for the pure purpose of bragging rights between buddies. How this actually works is that players will be able to record games, but with a chunk of code that will then play it in the engine itself. Basically, as opposed to actually making, say, .AVI movies, you are recording games so that, once they are recorded, you have total control over which areas of the recording you want to watch, at which angle you want to set the camera, freeze-frame, zoom in and out, etc.

This is a wonderful way to view multiplayer games, as it offers ways for players both to learn from their mistakes or to create very cool machinima and just match clips they can send to their Live buddies. The problem is, you can't simply export this chunk of code to, say, an e-mail client and send it to someone outside of the Halo 3 community. For that, you would have to use a capture program to turn the clip into an .AVI file. Still, this, I think, will be an excellent option for hardcore multiplayer guys to share cool matches between themselves.

And that's about it from Halo 3 at this show, folks. The presentation ended there and I was shipped off to my Halo Wars meeting (With a Covenant dropship, no doubt. – Vader).

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I'm getting fed up with this whole shebang! How but a cappuccino?

Hey, assholes, don't bunch off!!

	Pavarotti	[mail] Sep 03 2009, 12:00 am EDT
	Reply looks great. It will come to pc after 2 years :))

	fatman	[mail] Sep 03 2009, 12:00 am EDT
	Reply looks lame, Did ppl actually think the beta wasnt actually gfx for the single player. look at it its basically halo 2.5

	Blabbermouth	[mail] Sep 03 2009, 12:00 am EDT
	Reply Yeah it looks like Halo 2 in HD to me.

	thestewieman	[mail] Sep 03 2009, 12:00 am EDT
	Reply this looks great if it was on the xbox1 maybe...

	fieldcar	[mail] Sep 03 2009, 12:00 am EDT
	Reply honestly these are some of the better graphics ive seen for h3, and they still aren't jaw dropping... but to say they are xbox quality or equivalent to halo 2 is just plain negligent and fanboyish... the textures alone show this. halo 2.5 is more accurate... but its not over till the fat lady sings on launch day. on a side note, screw vista on my gaming rig... BF2 just plain doesn't wanna work with multiplayer as i cant ever connect to a server without some kind of error (not the OS privilege one). NO hddvd support, no true surround sound, no scaling in windows photo viewer, slow as hell when using explorer sometimes, and it never stays in "list" view for exploring files... With halo 2 and other games cracked to support xp, I'm honestly done with it. I will miss some of the cool features and look, but my media center pc to the right can take it for a ride. Game on.

	NiteX	[mail] Sep 03 2009, 12:00 am EDT
	Reply I agree it looks better than Halo 2, but just barely. It's easily a Halo 2.5. I can't believe those beta morons thought the SP would have a huge graphically overall. Well thats Xbox fanboys for ya.