Best: They did it, they actually stuck the landing. It seems quaint, in this era of sprawling canon and cinematic universes, that a trilogy could actually…end. But Halo 3 actually pulled it off, marrying a satisfying resolution with just enough tragedy to give it impact. Then, of course, there’s the suitable send-off for Master Chief, left floating in space on a riven interstellar cruiser with no one but Cortana, his longtime AI companion, for company. Who can forget her timeless coda: “Wake me, when you need me.”
Worst: Nothing. I’ll be honest, I don’t know if I have anything here—or, at the very least, anything I’d cite as the “worst” part of Halo 3 would be disingenuous, at best. Though it’s no doubt aged, some of its design choices feeling ancient when weighed up against the metrics of today, Halo 3 was as close to faultless as a video game can get. There’s a reason some longtime fans had, um, dust, yeah, dust in their eyes when the Halo 3 servers closed for good earlier this year.
