The problem is you can't measure quality by length of the game. Final Fantasy games are very long, yet lack gameplay. Halo 3 is a very good single player experience, and I would gladly pay 60 just for single player. Legendary will probably take 12-15 hours anyways. How long would you want a shooter to be?

As mentioned by Garet, the difficulty level(easy,normal,heroic,legendary) chosen for Halo 3 along with a players skill has a direct effect on the length of the game. An experienced FPS gamer could whip through the game in ~4 hours on normal or easy, simply by driving or running through levels only completing the primary game objectives. This is b/c the enemy units have poor aim and are less capable of defending themselves at this difficulty level. Most levels are designed in a way that allows players to continue on with the mission w/o clearing a room of enemies - which obviously takes more time than simply running through a room. On the higher difficultly levels, the option of running through a room/level without eliminating the vast majority of enemies is removed, as well as making it much harder to do so. A feature of the game that adds length to a level is the Campaign Scoring feature which also has the option to turn on "skulls" - a feature which changes the gameplay considerably. As a gamer who would hand you a quick death in a "Ranked" matchmaking game on Xbox live, I am suprised you did not mention the "Social" matchmaking game lists, which are at a much lower skill level. About the morons I entirely agree. As a side comment, the average "life" of a player before getting killed is usually less than 1 min, so don't feel too bad about your frequent deaths. Be thankful you don't have to wait for the match to end to get another shot at things - like Gears of War.
As far as why they don't make a cheap single player version, perhaps you should research basic Economics on the topic of "bundled goods" for a very good explanation.
Considering the on-line or system link 4 player co-op feature of the campaign, as well as the scoring and skull features, the campaign feature has many time the 7-10 hours of play value you described. As Garet said, Most FPS aren't designed to be 80 hours of single player like story-driven RPG's.

Amen. Play the game solo on Legendary and you won't complain about its length. Either that or go through and hunt for skulls (or other achievements). Video games since the days of Super Mario Bros allowed you to either blow through them in a weekend, or trek across levels for years depending on how you chose to play it.

I site Super Metroid as both one of the shortest (1 hour to speed run) and longest (20 hours to sniff out secrets) games ever made.

"The problem is you can't measure quality by length of the game. Final Fantasy games are very long, yet lack gameplay. Halo 3 is a very good single player experience, and I would gladly pay 60 just for single player. Legendary will probably take 12-15 hours anyways. How long would you want a shooter to be?"

I dont think you can realy compare an rpg with a shooting game. Rpgs are story driven,, shooters are generaly gameplay driven. i also dont think that your comment about final fantasy not having much gamplay is not fair, those games tend do have tons of different things to do especialy in battle, shooters are just firing guns how much game play is in that?

Sam, a Final Fantasy game has the gameplay of ordering off the menu at McDonalds. They are essentially interactive movies. Why do these games stick with play mechanics we had on the NES? I don't know why you say shooters are gameplay driven, then say that they don't have gameplay.

So, how is matchmaking supposed to work? I just got my live account last weekend or so, and in all the social matches I've played, there have been guys who have played 500+ matches against my like 8. Isn't matchmaking supposed to put players of equal skill level together, or am I missing something?

Its like the Orange Box from Valve that came out last Wednesday, Episode 2 took me 2 hours and Portal took 1. Keeping in mind that their unit price is roughly 20$ apiece, I had loads of fun running and gunning and then slow it down to explore the worlds, but thats me, I want to beat it asap so that I can go mess around in it at a higher difficulty setting and get all the achievements done.

I agree with Garet, RPG's are just movies, followed by a whackload of clicking around. FPS aren't just about point and click, you have to think about what you are doing, overcome obsticles, watch your health and take cover, all the while trying to get the objectives done. Sure you blow the hell out of everything in your path but what would a game be without a little violence? or alot?

Happy Fragging! :D!

Garet, Social playlists are open to everybody and are more random - they don't take skill or experience level into account. However, they are open to having "guests" (ie: split screen players) in them, which, if you don't have guests yourself, usually gives you a screeen size advantage for using a mid/long range weapon with better accuracy. There will be some others also without guests, and these are sometimes the people who have played a lot of matches and are playing social games because they can win them easier. Some of them will end up on your team. Even with these players, matches are generally a lot easier, except when you run into that person, or if they have the sniper rifle. "Ranked" matchmaking would put you up against people of similar skill AND experience (matches won), assuming you have enough talent to be rank 1 (for reference, it goes up to 50 - there is a bell curve with a mean of 18-20 or so shown when you press x to edit gametype settings in matchmaking). And once you get the hang of the controls, watch some saved films (a feature that records the last 25 games you played) of your matches to see what others are doing if you are still being destroyed - maybe you shouldn't run into the open once you know there is a sniper, or maybe you should run away from the guy with the sword.

I just played legendary on H3 on god mode.

I took me three hours to finish. What a disapointment. What can't they make it longer? Crappy game...

I've also been playing through Halo 2 for the first time this week, and it makes me appreciate the fact that Halo 3 ends when it does. Halo 2 seems to drag on, with all this filler crap.

Who plays Halo on normal? What a noob!

I am a recreational gamer and I found that Halo 3 was (at the Normal setting) balanced right for me. It was tough enough to be challenging and not so tough to be unpleasent to play. There were a few sticking points for me as I got into jambs and needed several tries to get unstuck. I have also been playing on the social and ranked lists. I do find that the initial settings that would pit 5 level 4 players together often widens up to 1 to 15 or 20. This needs to be fixed. A really good match is one that ends in a tie for all five. A really bad match is one in which one guy who has lived in the game comes in and just kills everyone. I have had games where the top guy is at 30+ kills and the rest of us are at 4-5. That really takes the fun out for the recreational player. I did find that the game was not as long as I would have liked but more from a story stand point then gameplay. I found GOW to be easy right up until the final fight and then I was annoyed at how hard RAM was to kill. Halo 3 did a good job at balancing difficulty of game play. I am ready to hear when Halo 4 will be released! Les face it a game that makes as much money as a blockbuster movie doesn't just end it's Francise :-)

Halo 3 as a single player experience is once through and that's it. You won't play single player on your the Halo 3 again, Garet...will you?
The problem is these "next-gen" games put more effort into graphics and generic badass characters with "attitude" that are "totally in my face" than they do things like gameplay and the experience.

Crusher has obviously never played the game - there is no "god mode" - but I will assume he just dislikes the game (and has poor grammar). Jordan also has not played the game ("Halo 3 as a single player experience is once through and that's it."), and obviously didn't read the post about the features that make the "single-player" (ie: Campaign)worth playing many more times than once. I've played through twice already - once for the story, once for scoring - and I'll still be going through it on legendary for the challenge + to unlock features. Not too mention taking clips from some sweet kills and saving films of them. It's always a blast to go through it with a friend, or with 3 other friends, and chase each other with vehicles, find the cavemen (and other easter eggs) hidden in a secret spot, and betray each other in funny ways. You guys should at least play the game before you offer your opinions.

James, you can change the settings in matchmaking options (press x inside the matchmaking lobby after selecting the playlist you want to play in)to prefer close matches, or to prefer quickly connecting matches,or best connection, etc. You will get less level spread if you choose close match. Part of the reason you are seeing guys at a low level with 30+ kills in a game is that they are awesome, but just got the game (low exp) or haven't played in that playlist often (low skill/rank number). As the game gets older you will see less and less of that - as getting a large amount of kills in a match without dying often boosts your level by additional ranks (I've gone up 3 levels in one match before) and the game matches you with players of both similar "experience" and skill - making it hard to stick around the low experience levels if you are winning a match even once in awhile- in either "ranked" OR "social" matches.

Honestly i think Halo is very over rated. When it comes down to its just a plain old FPS. With that said there hasnt been a game that i have found to be as awesome as Gears of War other than Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Im hoping that Mario Galaxy is awesome. I was looking forward to Smash Bros but thats been delayed until next year. Oh yeah i think RE 5 is gonna be the game that will win Game of the year for 2008

I know for a fact Jordan has played it. We beat it together on normal mode.

I refuse to play the game based on the over-hype that came with it. The advertisements have made it out to be a near-religious experience. Nevermind Mountain Dew "cranked up for Halo 3". I "Believe" that it's pretty much Halo 1 and 2 all over again. And though Halo 1 was groundbreaking at the time, there are many new games, even fps's that have deviated from the classic formula and have much more in the way of innovation than Halo. Bioshock, for example, is a game with much more depth than Halo (and better than Halo 3 according to a lot of people), besides the fact that it's similiar to its predecessor System Shock. It still manages to stand out in todays bland gaming market that is sadly lacking in games with real heart put in their design.
As an aside, the 360 is a shoddy piece of hardware. Under minimal use and without it overheating at all, mine gave me the red ring of death.

I agree with the post, I felt that Halo 3, and Halo 2, were a tad short. I played H3 on Heroic and found it to be a good challenge, and got through it in 8-9 hours.

But, I have to say. You cannot play Halo 3, then talk strictly about the single player game length. The multiplay is as much or more a key part of Halo 3. As it's been said before, this element is key. Any true Halo fan knows that!

Kudos to Jeff for bringing up the fact that System Shock and Bioshock need as much recognition as the Halos.

It's not just run and gun, its studying your targets and analysing their weak points, thus taking advantage of them, however i am disappointed that in Bioshock to find a monster's weakness all you have to do is take a picture of it, whereas in System Shock you had to take a piece of flesh from a victim and combine it with specific Elements to find their weak points...

So double Kudos to Jeff for making me want to play System Shock.

:D!

Bioshock can completely be played as a run and gun type of game.

Halo on legendary, however, cannot. A sniper will kill you in a minute if you try that.

Garet:
I do agree with you, Bioshock has been really simplified for console users and, unlike System Shock, is really forgiving on being aggressive (ie: running and gunning). Still, the game has a lot of depth and attention to quality that many modern games don't have. I haven't played many games in the past 4 or 5 years that are as immersive as Bioshock is. I only referenced Bioshock because I wanted to use an example from the 360 to speak to the audience that would be playing Halo. There are other examples of FPS style games that don't follow the standard mold and have innovative and engaging features that make them stand out. My big beef with Halo is that it is a generic shooter following a generic formula of gameplay. It isn't the "must have" game in this generation, but it's made out to be that way through a lot of hype. It's a great game for the casual gamer who isn't expecting a whole lot though.

I've heard that 1/3 of 360 owners have some form of Halo 3. That has to say something. Bioshock can also only be played a couple times. That's the flaw with story driven games.

Are you referring to the replayability due to multiplayer? I agree, it is a big plus. Personally, I prefer games like the Battlefield series when it comes to something fps multiplayer. Squad based tactics, combined arms, weapon bloom, and team gameplay make it a richer experience than the standard deathmatch. PC games also have the advantage of having large communities working on mods to extend that experience. For example, I play a great reality mod for Battlefield 2 that's very unforgiving.
Of course, the topic of the blog is the length of the single player Halo game though.
At any rate, I'm not saying Halo is an awful game. It *is* a good game, it's just that I've had better single player experiences than it offers and I've also better multiplayer experiences. I'm just sharing my viewpoint because I don't like the hype around a game that's pretty good, but not genre defining.

Not even multiplayer. It's just because since Bioshock is more of a cinematic game, it kind of loses something after beating it once or twice. The city loses it's charms after seeing it all. The enemies pretty much react the same. Sure, you could fight differently, use different plasmids, or whatever, but it's essentially the same game over again. Halo 3 is at least a little varied with each playthrough. Plus you have Legendary, which will take a long time to beat alone. Then you have the skulls and such.

Hello all!

I see alot of apples and oranges being compared here. First off, I will say that Halo 3 is an incredibly fun game to play IF you are playing with someone else. As a multiplayer game, whether you are playing campaign or matchmaking, Halo 3 delivers in spades (try legendary with 4 people...it's almost criminal to have that much fun). As a single player experience, however, I would choose Bioshock hands down. So which is the better game? Heck I sure wouldn't want to be the one to choose. It all depends on what you're looking for in a game. Like to solo it? I'd say Bioshock. A little more social? Then definately Halo. Either way, its all good and you're sure to have alot of fun.

Also, RPGs definately do not deserve to be dissed. Entirely different gameplay style but just as fun and rewarding. Before Halo 3 I played Blue Dragon and I have to say I absolutely adore that game. Old school nostalgia on my part? Hmm perhaps, but I'm sure new gamers would find something to like in it as well.

Cheers!

Dang, I forgot to mention one other thing (oddly enough it's what I was going to say in the first place...)

Yes, Halo could be considered a short game if you play it solely as a single player game. But are people really buying Halo 3 for the campaign story? It's the multiplayer component that defines Halo and really extends the longevity of the game. Campaign play is the icing on the cake.

I think the better analogy for campaign mode is it's the leaf that fell on top of the pile of dog poop.

lol well Jordan I don't deny that the campaign mode could and probably would seem fairly lacking if played alone. But have you played it with a few buddies? Taking down that first scarab; a couple mongooses (mongeese? O.o) zipping around, errant rockets flying everywhere, all the while trying to avoid the scarab's death beam that I'm purposely trying to attract while my buddies try to hop on board to take it down...this is only one such moment I experience and there were many others. I had an absolute blast playing campaign mode.

Hmm. Short version of halo 3. Having just taken a trip to the city to visit my friend who happens to be a very good player I find that I was happy that it was a shorter game as I did not have to stay glued to the console for 3 days straight to see the ending. Instead we broke it up into a couple hours of gaming a night, followed by judicious application of beer. Also, the amount of time it would take m,y friend to finish the game on normal is probably about half the time it would take me to finish on easy. So it is somewhat realative. Beside lets foucus on the positive. It has awesome graphics, and amazing levels that are wide open and have tons of room for variety in gaming styles (ie I like to snipe, my friend likes to smash things with the hammer). In short, slow down, or better yet, take the time to stop and smell the burning roses!

I'm feeling a little ripped off by Halo 3. not only did it feel really short but it was easy as hell to beat on legendary. I didn't feel like it took the story out with a bang, the way it should have. Nevertheless it was beautifully done but was this game made for amateurs?