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Halo 3

This year has not been an all-together happy one for Microsoft Corp.’s videogames business.

In July, the company finally confessed to quality problems with the Xbox 360 after experiencing what it called an “unacceptable” number of repairs to the game console. That forced it to take steps to fix the problem and swallow a more than $1 billion charge, deepening the losses from a games business that hasn’t turned a profit yet. Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 and Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 combined are nearly being outsold in the U.S. by Nintendo Co.’s Wii, an inexpensive console that makes up with fun what it lacks in dazzling graphics power.

Microsoft wants an event beginning midnight Tuesday to obliterate those unhappy memories: the launch of Halo 3. The games industry isn’t shy about hyping its products, but in the case of Halo 3 — the third installment in an outer space franchise that has previously sold 14.8 million copies — the buildup has been particularly deafening, with Microsoft billing the launch as an entertainment event that transcends games.

This past Saturday, when my copy of Halo 3 arrived in the mail, I got a chance to judge the fuss for myself. I need to first confess that I’m not a serious gamer. I am, however, at the start of the older demographic (late 30s) that the games business says it wants to increasingly engage with its products. I also follow the business of videogames as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

Halo 3, among other things, is Microsoft’s attempt to reassert the primacy of a certain kind of videogame, with an epic storyline and the trappings of a big popcorn movie, including a lush musical score and spectacular graphics. For the past year, that approach has been elbowed aside a bit by the huge success of the Wii, a relative weakling in the graphics department that has nevertheless captivated gamers with its intuitive motion-sensing controller and easy-to-play, “casual” games.

Like the previous installments of the franchise, Halo 3 manages the tricky feat of being both simple to pick-up and deeply immersive, a combination that explains how previous versions managed to find such crossover appeal among hardcore and casual gamers. The game continues the story of a band of marines as they do battle against an alien civilization called the Covenant. Players inhabit the armor of a genetically modified super-solider called Master Chief.

To some players the story might greatly enrich the experience. In my experience, though, it’s still easy to have fun with Halo 3, even if you know nothing about the whole saga. Try that when you start watching “Lost” or “The Wire” mid-season.

Halo 3, provided you play it on a high-definition television set, is one of the few instances where the actual game looks as good in action as the screenshots used to promote it. The environments, spanning everything from beaches to snowbound fortresses to jungles, are all vividly rendered in bright colors. While the human characters in the game are all still a long way from cinematic-levels of realism, the machinery and landscapes are as richly detailed as any I’ve seen in a game.

And in Halo 3, there is a lot of machinery. The game continues the Halo franchise’s tradition of supplying users with an impressive arsenal of weapons for blasting away at the bad guys. At certain times, I found myself with weapons far too wimpy for the villains attacking me and, at others, completely out of ammunition. But just as feelings of inadequacy and frustration started to creep in, the game would plop an utterly devastating cannon or ax into my hands — very satisfying. Naturally, there’s violence in Halo 3, though not of an especially gory sort (it’s a “mature”-rated game aimed at players 17 years and older).

While Halo 3 is perfectly enjoyable as a single-player game, it will also be judged it on the merits of its online capabilities, in which players battle each other through Microsoft’s Xbox Live game service. The online multiplayer capabilities of Halo 2 were a huge hit and a big boost for Xbox Live. I was able to play Halo 3 online against other players for only about an hour Monday afternoon, after Microsoft enabled multiplayer capabilities for the game on its Xbox Live servers.

That hour was an exercise in humiliation for me, as I was repeatedly killed by other, more capable players who often seemed to blast me away before I could get a shot off. Fortunately, a new feature called Theater in Halo 3 made my defeats more comprehensible to me.

Think of Theater as a TiVo for your Halo 3 playing sessions. The feature records everything that goes on in your game, whether you’re playing alone or with others online, giving you the ability to replay your greatest exploits and worst defeats during the game.

One of the niftiest aspects of Theater is that it gives you complete control over the camera that controls perspective in the game so you can pivot around your character or climb to an aerial shot for a better view of the battlefield. What’s more, you can switch perspectives to another character in the game and perform similar camera tricks.

This was especially useful for me in reviewing the footage of my online sessions with others. I was able to see exactly how my opponents were killing me. Superior aim and strategic placement inside the game frequently played a role, as did a couple of grenade tosses in quick succession.

Another new feature in Halo 3, called the Forge, lets players customize game environments by deciding where to place weapons and other items. I didn’t have time to thoroughly explore this part of the game.

In all, Halo 3 is an impressive title that’s a reminder of how serious a contender Microsoft has become in the games business, despite recent missteps.