A (not very) brief synopsis-
I think that even console haters can't have missed this one, the game that sold the xbox, the sequel that doubled the sales of the xbox, and now, the final part of the trilogy, which will no doubt be said to double sales of the 360.
For those that really don't know the story-in the halo world humans are space-farers, we come into contact/conflict with a group of alien races all lead by one type of alien, this group is the covenant. The covenant believe humans to be filthy demons and try to destroy them, humans resist, badly. Humans then make super soldiers who are then destroyed, except a few, some go do other things, some are so badly injured they'll never fight again, some are whisked away by secretive types. (this is in the books) In the game, you are the last spartan, tasked with defending earth/humanity. Into this steps a super-intelligent blob of green/cream/grey goo called gravemind, the collective concious of millions of creatures eaten by an organism known as the flood. The flood devours all known life, kinda like the borg, but aren't mechanical, squishy borg if you will. This 3 way fight involves massive planet sized rings, these rings are artificially formed planets that look like a halo (with all the planet bit on the inside edge) that also house a superweapon that will destroy the flood (hence the name), drawback is, it destroys life in most of the universe to remover the floods food, it doesn't just destroy the flood. 1st game you destroy a ring to stop the extinction of man, the covenant leaders are duping the other covenant races into thinking the firing of the rings is a 'great journey' that must be undertaken, you fight. 2nd game, more of the same, new ring, more weapons bigger baddies shinier stuff, didn't really do much for the story, just stretch it a bit. 3rd and final game, the destuction of another ring in halo 2 sees a thing called 'the ark' activated, it remote detonates all the halo's, its a big ship built by the forerunners, ooh didn't mention them did I. Well, the forerunners were ancient beings, great power, scientists etc etc, fucked up, unleashed the flood, fired the rings in an act of sacrifice, sent genetic code to other side of universe for millions of years of evolution to happen, the covenant revere the forerunners and all their works, hence activating the rings is meant to lead to the forerunners. Right, the forunner command shipthe ark is on Earth! humans are the descendants of forerunners, but the covenant leaders lie and call humans beasts instead, because if everyone else knew, they'd worship us instead of melting us with fancy lasers. In 3, you finish the fight by going to another part of the galaxy, releasing a spare halo that was in the ark, firing it to destroy the flood but not killing the humans, and the elites who were covenant but are now on your side after discovering the truth, and thus ending the whole thing. bloody hell thats long (twss)
Gameplay/graphics etc
It's pretty, but I expected that, it needs a hdtv to shine 100% but its still pretty on a normal tv. The gameplay is a lot like halo, not 2, which is great, 2 feel's too arcadey, you're a super soldier, but the things you fight are thousands of crappy fodder lead by lots of super soldiers, you are nothing special to them, you feel like a swift vengeful god in 2, 1 and 3, you fuck up you die, as it should be. The pickup's/guns/levels/vehicles, all of it is well worked, given they've had forever it was expected, and does as always fall a little short of hype, but not much. The ending and length (twss) sucks total ass(twss, again), a few minutes of movie after a few hours of shiny, fuck ms and their money spinning multiplay slant and fuck bungie for shafting the fans. the control's feel a tad sluggish to me and they are set on 10(insane) so apparently I'm mental because my controller sensitivity is set to max, it's still to sluggish for me because it's not as fast as halo 2, but it's a far better multiplayer experience, but I'm not going to cover multiplayer, let me get a few thousand hours played then I can compare it to 1 and 2. Foe extra's we have marathon console's, skull collecting and the 'meta game'. The console's are from an early bungie game, marathon, you might have played it, its just depth for fans, and you might get rewarded for finding them. The skull collecting is where they have hidden a number of gold and silver skulls throughout the campaign, they actively impact on the campaign itself, gold skulls give rewards and affect the game, silver skulls affect the game. The blind skull removes hud, the fog skull removes motion sensor etc etc, it adds re-playability for non-story purposes, the skulls also affect the 'meta-game'. This 'meta-game' (they insist on ' ', dunno why, to make it seem a bit ooh la la mebbe) is where you do the campaign, and get points for headshots, squashing people, not dying, moving fast, blowing stuff up in style etc, it adds massive re-playability, you always want to be the best, the skulls give multipliers to the overall score, the famine skull takes away nearly all weapon drops from the dead, hence you find yourself smashing lots of faces and having no bullets. Stuff like this all builds the singleplayer, even if the story is a tad lite. Plus 4 player co-op, with scoring=win, letting your mate dish out loads of pain, then stealing all his kills for 90% of the points=win.
Pro's
It is pretty, very pretty.
The balance of all things is nice, nothing owns a map unless you blindly attack it over and over.
The guns/vehicles/grenades/power ups are numerous and also well balanced.
The maps all feel nice.
They upped the sniping difficulty, no longer is it piss easy to headshot 4 people in a row inside 2 seconds whilst jumping up and down.
Even singleplayer has massive re-playability with the 'meta-game' and skull collecting.
4 player co-op
Con's
The ending. (watch past the credits for slightly less suck)
It's too short, I took my time on my first run through, and its about 10 hours.
The brutes are weak now, you shouldn't be able to beat a talking armour-wearing gorilla in the face with relative impunity.
The flood, argh, fuck of to xan please and stay out the way.
The change in pace/survivability will throw everyone at first (but it's not too long before it feels normal(twss))
The pointer arrow thing to show the way sucks, you get lost, it eventually turns up about 2 minutes after you got the rage. Also, it's amount of suck doubles on the last part of the last level, when you really need it to guide you.
The con's are mostly niggles, the pro's make a very balanced and enjoyable game. It should have been longer and richer story-wise, and the ending shouldn't have sucked quite as much, it would have got 1/2 a point extra from me if they had finished the story better, but I wanted a fitting end to it all, the 'meta-game' stuff is a nice surprise and makes the game play for far longer, even if you had no live, but the story should have come first dammit.
9/10
Hehe, this. 
