[Melkor]

Reviews are all subjective, I'm sure one can concoct some (in my opinion, ridiculous) way of justifying giving Halo 3 a perfect score, but if we are to take any merit in any form of objectivity (or rather intersubjectivity) when dealing with games, I can say with certainty that the score is simply false. It's not that good of a game. Not if you actually start looking at the actualities of the game in comparison to other FPS games. Is it a thrilling experience to be part of the phenomena that is «Halo»? Maybe. I don't think so, but some might think it is. But from a technical perspective, if we are to be objective and empirical about games at all (not saying that we should use it as any kind of definitive grading), it's not a perfect game.

I mean, the hype for the Halo-series is just silly. The games are all relatively good games, but they have never been anything else. Not spectacularly good in any aspect. Simply a string of relatively solid console shooters (solid in the same way that Knocked Up is a solid Hollywood romcom), that's it (and considering that console shooters traditionally aren't all that good, that's not saying much). I can't for the life of me understand all the praise the games have gotten, it's ludicrous (from my perspective).

Games that push the limits of what the artform of gaming can do can be categorized as games of top quality in my opinion. Games that excell at what they set out to do (within the already established framework), that are effective games in terms of affect it instills in the player, they can also be very good games, but as far as I'm concerned, they simply can't compete with the prototypical games that was there before them. If anything, the Halo-series is the latter type of games, and not even very good ones at that (from my perspective). So, I wouldn't trust anyone giving Halo 3 a perfect score, it just doesn't compute with the way I look at things. For me, the potential of the Halo-games are simply weak, and the execution in that potential is also pretty weak, but hey, enough of my rants, if you're into Halo, then I'm sure Halo 3 is, at the very least, better than Halo 2. I wouldn't expect much other than a semi-solid console shooter though.