By Heather Newman
Detroit Free Press

"Halo 3."
Bungie Studios/Microsoft Xbox 360.
Rated M for Mature.
$59.95-$149.95 (depending on package).
Four stars (out of four).

"Halo 3" will give fans of the sci-fi shooter video game series exactly what they're looking for: a solid, if short, single-player campaign and multiplayer tweaks that'll keep people coming back to annihilate their friends online.

We played the game early to bring you this review, so we were unable to test the multiplayer, though we did complete the single-player campaign and thoroughly test the new cooperative mode for that campaign.

The third and final installment in the trilogy _ but not the "Halo" game series, since there's more games set in the universe to come _ starts with the Master Chief being discovered/rescued by the Marines after having jumped to the surface of a planet (the shock being absorbed by the gel layer of his suit, but the impact incapacitating our hero).

The order of things is quickly established: your companion is an Arbiter, an enemy from previous installments who now fights alongside you, and your enemy is the alien Prophet and the hordes he commands in his quest to annihilate all other life in the galaxy.

The environment around you is much prettier than earlier "Halo" titles, taking advantage of the Xbox 360's high-definition capabilities, although some surfaces are still a little fuzzy. Cross a river in your Warthog all-terrain vehicle, for example, and you might marvel at how good the water effects are _ only to see the low definition of the beach ahead, and the grass blades that suddenly pop up on screen as you drive by.

People suffer the most on-screen from the compromises Bungie Studios had to make to keep the game both pretty to look at and completely playable. They're still the fairly blocky, unrealistic models you remember from previous "Halos" with better skins overlaid on top. Their animations are sometimes jerky, their facial expressions limited _ and you can definitely tell the difference between a standard Marine and the loving attention paid to the Master Chief, Arbiter and Elites themselves.

That's a little disappointing, given the Xbox 360's processing power. Compared to recent PlayStation 3 games like "Lair" or "Heavenly Sword," it almost looks a little last-gen.

Fortunately, most "Halo" fans aren't going to care. What they buy the game for is the compelling storyline and the smooth, non-stop gameplay, and they'll find both in this chapter.

The story is on the shortish side. To complete this review in time for publication after receiving the game Saturday afternoon, we played through the game on Easy mode (to paraphrase Bungie's sniffing description, "Your enemies flee in terror as the game almost plays itself"), and it took about four hours from intro to the end of the credits.

(Always watch games through the end of the credits. Especially this one.)

Reports from others who got their hands on early copies say that even Heroic difficulty is relatively short. But that's not a surprise; "Halo 2" wasn't the longest game out there either, and most fans consider the length a compromise for the multiplayer shoot-outs that will capture their time.

Bungie says their research indicates that the vast majority of "Halo" buyers don't play the campaign through to the end. But that would be a mistake in "Halo 3."

For starters, it's easier to reach the credits than ever before on any difficulty mode, thanks to the inclusion of co-op play. You and up to three of your friends can play through the campaign together, either on one TV via split screen or online (which seemed to be working smoothly).

The difficulty is ramped up a little, compared to single player _ there appear to be more enemies, and your friends won't have the same abilities as computer-controlled characters that are sent with you.

But when you die, as long as a member of your team remains, you can respawn in place as soon as the area is clear of enemies, either because they were killed or because your teammates ran away to a safe location.

What it means is that instead of having to start over at the checkpoints every time you wipe out, your team can move fairly smoothly through every objective.

"Halo 3" players should also finish the game as quickly as possible because thanks to the new movie and screenshot editors included in the game people can take movies of any part of the game. Including the in-game cinematics.

What this means is that approximately two hours after the game is available, multitudes of people are going to have posted movies that spoil the ending. (Actually, you don't even have to wait _ they're posted now.) Your friends are going to be posting galleries of screen shots that are going to spoil different plot twists.

Basically, there's not going to be any easy way to avoid finding out the ending if you wait too long to play it.

And that would be a shame. "Halo 3" has a solid, satisfying ending, and it's not giving too much away to say that the final scene before the ending _ a truly epic race across an exploding landscape in a wildly careening Warthog _ is one of my favorite levels in any video game this year, not because it's anything terribly innovative, but just because it feels right, a fitting way to end the trilogy and an appropriate cap to the game's suspense.

© 2007, Detroit Free Press.