It’s billed as the greatest game of all time. It has a multitude of Guinness World Records to its name. Outselling every other game on the Xbox 360 with a total of 8.5million copies and is soon approaching its first birthday. But is Halo 3 actually any good?

I have played extensively, even completing it on legendary (the hardest setting) in a single sitting, and after all that game time I can say its… pretty damn good

You continue the story of the great super soldier Spartan-117: the Master Chief, as he fights against the Covenant forces. Following on from where Halo 2 left off, the chief crashes to Earth dusts himself off picks up a rifle and starts shooting. This isn’t a team based game like others that have become so popular lately; it’s more of a Rambo style shooter, send enough bullets in the path of enemies and you’ll make it to the next level. On that basis you’ve probably guessed the levels are not too difficult and your probably right. Until the Flood return there’s no real panic element, it never feels like the odds are against you even when the colossal Scarab tank climbs over a wall to stomp on you and your comrades. If you are unlucky enough to die you feel it was because you did something stupid not because the enemy is too difficult. Even when the parasitic Flood makes a return, switch to a gun that can unload a magazine in a second and you’ll be able to walk through. Unfortunately you’ll be walking through a fairly short campaign, 10 levels will have you playing for roughly 6 hours which feels very short when compared to the other games in the series, or when compared to Call of Duty 4 and other 360 shooters.

Although once you’ve fought your way through the campaign you can sign into Xbox Live and play online which is where this game comes into its own. 1.4million people played online on the first day of release putting Halo 3 in the record books with the “busiest day on Xbox Live” and the number of online players racking up kills continues to grow. Capture the flag, Death match, King of the Hill, the classics are all there and whether you’re butchering your friends or slamming the butt of your shotgun into a strangers face it’s still entertaining even with competition from Call of Duty 4 and Rainbow Six Vegas 2.

Now the look of the game, it’s cleaner and crisper than its predecessors, which for the first in the series to feature on a next-gen console it had to be but it doesn’t stop there. Another record this game has achieved is “Greatest draw distance” as quoted from ‘Guinness book of records-Gamers edition’. The greater the draw distance the more power is needed to render all the objects on the screen. The draw distance is the area in a 3D scene between the player’s point of view and the horizon; beyond this point nothing is rendered or drawn, Halo 3 boasts a rendering engine with a record draw distance of 22km (14 miles). This bit may sound boring to some but it makes the game look beautiful. The soundtrack is epic to match, 50,000 separate pieces of separate audio have been recorded along with 32 tracks by Martin O’Donnell.

All these figures add up to a great game that people will still be playing for quite some time to come. So if you don’t own a copy for your 360 buy it and celebrate Halo 3’s birthday on September 26^th by firing a few rounds at Covenant and do your bit to save Earth.