AdrianOst077

Another 3 years, another amazing Halo game and sadly, the end of the original trilogy saga. Halo 3 once again excels the bar set by its predecessor's, giving us another amazing campaign experience with the return of a new multiplayer experience with the introduction on ranks and XP. For a while, I thought the Halo 2 campaign was my favourite in the franchise, Halo 3 leaves me torn between picking the two but both are awesome. The cutscenes, the story all really make for it. For 2007, the graphics really do shine what the Xbox 360 is capable of. I can see the hype for it back in 2007 and see why still to this day, Halo 3 is regarded as one of the best Halo games and a favourite among the fanbase. For 3 years running (2007-09), Halo 3 was the most popular and consistently played games on Xbox 360, with the player base always being in the tenth's of thousands worldwide. Another feature was introduced in Halo 3, Forge, a mode where you can mess around with maps and customise them to your liking. There really isn't a lack of content in this game. Completed the campaign? Try your luck on legendary or look for the hidden skulls that give you a new campaign experience when you play it. Work your way up in the rankings of multiplayer (which as of January 2022 has sadly shut down, so I haven't been able to experience it). Play co-op campaign with your friend. Halo 3 really is an important game. A historical landmark that shows how much games meant to the developers who made them, especially Bungie. When developers truly dedicate time and passion and love for what they create, they create an amazing game like this. Halo 3 really had a close relationship with the fanbase and the developer, Bungie were seen like heroes. It saddens me to see a game like this from 2007, compared to corporate cash grabs that get pushed out every year, half-completed with the rest of the game being update over time through live service or DLC's for £15+, going back to a game like Halo 3 is important to remind us how gaming was back then. Making games out of the passion of being a game developer and pleasing the fanbase whilst at the same time, being successful in doing so, rather than feeding the masses with mediocre and standard generic first person shooters, with no sense of reward that doesn't require whipping out your wallet to feel like you have unlocked something cool. Sadly even Halo has fallen into this pool with Halo Infinite, going back to the older games makes me really wish I could go back and relive these games in their prime, truly taking that time for granted. Didn't really know how good we had it back then. With this being said, I can't deny giving this game the first 10/10. There's a reason why Halo 3 is still being held to this high standard and communities such as Halo 3 Sunrise have pushed to reviving this game by hosting lobbies even after they've been shut, and that is the love this game has accumulated from developers who loved making games and were eager to show their passion projects, with money being a second thought.

Halo 2 is a really great sequel. Halo: Combat Evolved set a high bar when it released in 2001, 3 years later it exceeded the bar. A lot of positive changed were made in Halo 2: Shields recharge quicker, enemies (at least on normal difficulty) are easier and more fairer to fight, especially the flood. Lot of new fun weapons such as the Covenant Carbine or the Brute Shot. Speaking of Brutes, as tough as the flood were in the previous game, the brutes take the cake in this game but they're nowhere near as bad and annoying as the flood were in Combat Evolved. Mission design and the story blows Combat Evolved out of the water. Halo 2 allows the player to play from the perspective of Master Chief, a spartan, and now as The Arbiter, part of the Covenant. This feature alone is what makes Halo 2 one of my favourite games in the franchise, I loved playing as The Arbiter and following the story of the elites. Overall, the single-player experience was really really good and I recommend playing this game if you have played Combat Evolved. Halo 2 also introduced the first matchmaking online servers through Xbox Live, something Combat Evolved didn't implement in time. Co-op split-screen is still available and it's a nice feature being able to choose between playing as a Spartan or an Elite in multiplayer. Unfortunately, Xbox Live servers were shut down by the time I got around to playing this game :(

Another decent DLC for Battlefield 1942. In my opinion, this beats The Road to Rome in terms of content. Bigger variety of weapons, vehicles and cool gimmicks on the new maps like the addition of a jetpack class that can be found on Essen, jet planes or the ability to launch rockets on certain maps.

New factions, new weapons, new maps. Maps are built mainly for multiplayer considering most of them are just reciprocal. The new weapons are okay, new vehicles are also a nice addition. Overall, it's an alright expansion.

A decent FPS shooter. Quite revolutionary for its time considering there wasn't really any games that supported 64-player big team battles with the ability to fight the enemy on the ground as an infantryman, in a tank or from a mounted machine gun on a half-track, the ability to fight and pilot planes and even fight other ships in a submarine or provide shoreline bombardments against the enemy on maps like Iwo Jima or Omaha Beach. The map selection is decent, the ability to fight on the Western Front, Eastern Front and the Pacific Theatre provides the player with unique atmospheres as well as different countries to play as: British, Soviet, American, German and Japanese. As of 2023 however, multiplayer support is still somewhat alive being ran by the community, gameplay can be quite stale but it's nice to see where Battlefield has come from. Mod support is quite nice as well, expanding upon the game base massively with mods such as BattleGroup42 or the notorious Desert Combat mod, giving Battlefield 1942 a more modern spin to it.

Some improvements made from the previous game but it's still terrible, most notably the awful track design.

Namco outdid themselves with this game. They certainly pushed the PS2's capabilities and gave us a solid Ace Combat game and a solid entry to the PS2 era. A lot of stuff was done right in this game over the previous 3 games, the jet controls were improved a lot in my opinion, controlling the jets had more feel and was smoother compared to AC3. The ability to return to base to repair your jet and replenish your ammo supply is also very good. Dogfighting can be tough but gives the player a fair challenge. Mission layouts were slightly improved, they still had the same "go fly over there and destroy this and that" sometimes, but now it more relies on a "points system" where different enemies are worth different amount of points when destroyed and you have to reach a certain threshold within a time limit to complete the mission. It was nice to get a mix of the old style and new style of missions. Missions were made longer as a result and often had 2 parts with mission updates after completing the first part/task of a mission, which gave the player more game time, unlike AC3 giving the player also more game time but that's because you had to deal with the weird flying mechanics and the stupid missions towards the end of the game. All in all, AC4 is a solid entry to the franchise. Also worth mentioning that this time all regions got a full fledged story which adds character and emotion to the game, making the missions feel like they have more purpose and development over the previous 3 games. I like the whole story between Mobius 1 and Yellow Thirteen being narrated by a spectator of the war.

Good little expansion pack with more enemies to fight and new weapons to choose from. Gameplay is the exact same though.

The next step up from Doom by ID, an engine that many would take and modify to make games such as Half-Life, truly shows the genius behind Quake and just as Doom was the grandfather of the FPS Genre, Quake would take it a step further into inspiring developers to take a shot at making their own games, with Quake being the foundation for those franchises.

A big improvement over Air Combat visually and gameplay wise. The core mechanic is still the same and the way the missions play out are the same, but it's cool that you get to decide at one point which path to take when it comes to the missions. The AI surprised me for a 90's game when I realised that when you pursue them, specific aircraft such as the Su-35 can pull a cobra manoeuvre just to get behind you in a dogfight. Graphics wise, the scenery of the missions and the colour palette improved drastically and adds character to the missions and the atmosphere. Very good sequel to Air Combat, would recommend playing.

A massive improvement over the previous 2 games. Track layouts are way better, handling model has massively improved. AI are a lot more fair and fun to race against although still have their quirks. Overall much better game