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The Halo 3 story picks up as Master Chief lands in the jungle in Africa, ready to finish the fight against the Covenant and it’s vicious leader, the Prophet of Truth. The Prophet, who is looking for the key to a religious “great journey,” is trying to kill everything with the help of a group called the Brutes. Basically they want to end all life and activate a massively destructive weapon called the halo. You know, total annihilation, yadda yadda yadda.

The protagonist in this story is the aforementioned Master Chief, aka you. If you played Halo 2, you'll remember the Arbiter, an outcast member of the Elites who switched over to your side. Now, the Elites and the UNSC humans have formed an alliance to end the plans of the Prophet of Truth. You are the evolved killer, the last member of an advanced human fighting team, and it's your job to make this happen.

Now that the background is out of the way – let’s move on to the game itself.

Courtesy of Bungie

Halo 3 is awesome. The upgraded HD graphics are second only to Gears of War. The detailing of the weapons, enemies and vehicles is meticulously done and in campaign mode you can finish the fight and find out the fate of humans everywhere.

1. SOUND

As you walk through the nine levels, you will hear a bevy of different sounds. Whether it is ambient environmental noise, the bone chilling bellow of a brute off in the distance or the continuous chatter of your fellow UNSC soldiers, the sounds in this game are amazing.

Each different plot or setting has a corresponding song that reflects the mood of the scene. When you walk into a room and hear the orchestral symphony pick up to let you know that you're approaching a firefight, you can’t help but feel nervous, exhilarated and completely ready to rock.

2. WEAPONS

The weapons in Halo 3 have great balance. Some have been dropped, some have been improved, and some new ones have been added.

The battle rifle is still the most efficient in killing power and accuracy, but it's better to always start out with the assault rifle instead of the pea-shooting smgs. New to Halo 3 is the third-person view when you pick up certain weapons. It transitions seamlessly, and in this mode it's just as easy to point and shoot as normal. The third person guns are powerful, but they also make you walk very slowly and aiming is not as fast as you’re used to. Definitely weigh the risk vs. reward when choosing to use one of these guns.

Courtesy of Bungie

3. GAME PLAY

One new addition to the controller scheme is how the X button is used. Now, instead of being the "action" button, it is used for equipment. You'll pick it right up and it can work wonders if you learn how to use it right. Imagine throwing a trip mine just as a ghost is coming at you full-bore and watching as it explodes right in front of your face, damn right therapeutic.

And multiplayer. Freaking multiplayer. This is the reason you play the game. What the campaign doesn't bring, multiplayer brings and then some. You know that feeling you get when you hear your favorite song on the radio, and you start jamming to it, singing along loudly? It's like that, except your friends won't yell at you to "cut it out, douche bag," because they’ll be fighting along with you.

And there’s more. Ever wonder what your kill would look like from the enemy's left big toe? No? Well, now you can see it anyway. Using the "theater" option, you can go back and watch a myriad of clips that are saved on to the XBOX, ranging from your individual campaigns to your last 20 online games. This means that if you kill three people with one shot from the Spartan laser, you can go back and watch from any angle as their heads simultaneously jerk back and to the left.

After you're done watching your killing spree repeatedly, you can upload the file you've recorded onto Bungie.com, and your friends can download it to their 360s and watch from the couch, with popcorn and a frosty beverage in hand.

Just playing around with the theater is one of the most entertaining things you'll do in Halo 3. You can literally look at every square inch of the map, follow a specific player if you want to study just how they manage to kick your ass every time and watch from a bird's eye view of how people run through the course.

Finally, you can use this feature to study maps you haven't played yet. If you are curious about which weapons are standard on the map and where they're placed, just take the camera around and locate all the rifles, grenades and lasers a kid could want.

Courtesy of Bungie

Bungie has also created "The Forge," a multiplayer map editing system where you can get inside the map and adjust things like weapon locations, re-spawning points, equipment options and even vehicles and their locations too. Although you can't mess with the terrain, there are endless possibilities of what you can add or subtract to the scene.

If that’s not cool enough, you can jump straight from your editing camera (played by a Guilty Spark-like Oracle floating thingy) to being a player in the game, so you can feel how your adjustments work or don't work. This can also be done as a game is being played. For instance, if your team is down to one player, the Forge camera operator can go in and drop an overshield right next to that guy mid-game. Pretty awesome.

4. THE BOTTOM LINE

Sure, campaign mode is what made the Halo story so interesting. It has created the fan base that started the whole thing and keeps the game in the headlines, but multiplayer for Halo 3 is going to put this game on the all-time list of greatest games ever made.

Although the campaign may lack a bit of substance you will still have a blast taking down the Brutes, The Prophet of truth and a million of those tiny little Flood crawly thingies. So finish the fight, because when it's over, it's time to ruin your spare time with game after game of multiplayer awesomeness, which I like to call "multiplawesomeness."

4.95 out of a possible 5 dudes who won't get laid because of this game (the .05 is only because of the less-than-average campaign mode).