Why Halo 3 Justifies its $60-Price Tag

Online multi-player games are arguably the most popular aspect of video games, and they come pretty common to the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC. One of the most popular online games for the 360 and possible of all time is definitely the Halo series. While Halo 2 didn't offer a ton of extra features with the multi-player aspect, it was and still is one of the most popular online games. Halo 3 became the biggest entertainment launch in history. Sure, the single player is fun, but what drives so many people to buy this game? The fact is that Bungie put in so much multi-player additions that this game can easily keep going for years and years. Let's run down why Halo 3's multi-player actually makes the game worth $60.

The multi-player aspect of the game alone makes it fun with dozens of game modes and the ability to customize your own game mode. Popular game modes include slayer and team slayer which is basically death match and team death match, capture the flag is always popular along with one bomb which pretty much is sneaking in a bomb to the enemy base and destroying a target. One of my personal favorite modes would be infection. When you start the match you will have lets say 10 people in a match. One person will be infected and they will only have an energy sword. The idea is for the infected guy to kill everyone else in the match and when they die, they turn infected as well. You pretty much want to be the last person standing and stay alive the longest. Maps like Sand trap are perfect for this game mode. It actually turns into almost a survival horror once it's down to you and maybe one other person. There have been times where we've been cornered in a bunker with just pistols and having constant wave upon wave of people coming to slash us. It's a very addicting game mode.

The fact you can customize your own game mode makes the multi-player that much more great. Another nice addition to Halo 3 is the replay editors and file sharing options. You now have the luxury of going back and watching any match where you just completely dominated or had a really funny moment that you want to share with your friends. You can choose to save screen shots or clips of your latest matches and upload them to your file share, which is very easy. Then any of your friends can look at your clips and download them to view them. Another great thing about file share is that you can upload one of your custom game variants or maps you've edited so other people can download them from you as well.

Probably the coolest feature of Halo 3's multi-player is The Forge. This is a map editor that doesn't allow you to create maps from scratch but you can take objects and items on maps and either move them or delete them. You can remove all the warthogs and replace them with tanks if you wanted to or you can remove all the vehicles period. You are given a budget and once that budget is depleted, you can't place any more objects on a map. Simply delete objects to increase your budget. You can save changes to your maps and even upload them so other players can use your map for online play. You can even invite other players to join your editing session, which adds a lot of fun by itself. You can pretty much just drop vehicles on each other if you really wanted to.

Right now Halo 3 is definitely the most popular online game and will be for quite a while. The features they brought with the game this time around will hopefully set a bar for other developers to try and maintain with their games. Every online multi-player game needs to have features like Halo 3 does and this is why Halo 3 is actually one game that is really worth $60.