Halo 3

Also known as: N/A

Developer: Bungie

I've never been a huge Halo fan, in all honesty. I took part in a handful of "Halo Parties" when I was in college, but I always preferred going to a "Smash Bros. Party" instead. My biggest issue with the games in the series that I've played is that I always found the single player campaign to be somewhat boring…it was like the game was designed for multiplayer and the single player was thrown in as an afterthought. Sure, multiplayer can be fun, but you can have fun taking turns throwing knives at each other, if you’ve got the right friends around to participate in the activity, too. To me, multiplayer games have little to do with the game's quality and much to do with the players that you'll be playing with - like I said, throwing knives and getting knives thrown at you sounds terrible. But, get a group of friends that can somehow make it fun, and now you're having a good time getting your ear sliced off. But anyway, all of that said, I've always been and will always be a single player guy. I'll dabble in multiplayer, but most of my time will be spend in single player mode…and I felt like Halo 3's single player mode was dull - by the end, I just wanted it to be over. It's not a bad game by any stretch…it's solid for what it is, and I'm sure the multiplayer is great, but for me, just shooting at things with fancy weapons isn't enough to make me feel like I'm having a great time. If you loved the previous Halo games, you'll probably also love this one. If you've never really been a Halo fan, then this one won't convert you.

Review added: 09/12/2024

Harms Way

Also known as: N/A

Developer: Bongfish

Harms Way was another free game on the Xbox 360 from Doritos…and it's an interesting concept, but with not-so-great execution. Basically, there are two ways to play Harms Way. First, is the obvious way - in a racing game, driving a vehicle around a race track. The second way to play is to control various turrets around the track and do your best to blow up all of the vehicles driving around, aside from your teammate. If you're curious, yes, this was designed to be a multiplayer game with one person driving and another person shooting. And yes, it's possible to play alone if you desire. Anyway, the concept of this game is pretty solid, as I mentioned, but with this being a free game, there really isn't a lot of content or polish here. If you decide to play once through each campaign (driver and shooter) you're probably looking at 30-40 minutes total. I think if a little more time had been put into Harms Way, and maybe a budget given to it with the goal to sell this game instead of give it away for free, I think this would have been a pretty solid game. As it is, it's not bad for something that was free, but it's still just shy of passable.

Review added: 12/31/2024