Halo 3 released at a rather strange turning point for video games. With Call of Duty 4 hitting shelves around the same time and changing the way first-person shooters were thought about in the mainstream, Halo 3 offered a kind of last-ditch attempt to reinvent the conventions of the past. Grander in scale and more epic in tone, the third (and then final) entry into Master Chief's journey released to hype that only a couple of games have ever received. However, while that made the run up to release incredibly exciting for fans of the series, it meant that Bungie's game was already starting on the back foot; no matter how good it might have been, there was no way Halo 3 could live up the hype. And of course, it didn't. With a single-player campaign that didn't offer anything particularly new in terms of weapons, content or set-pieces, the third game built upon its predecessors as opposed to radically ripping up the rulebook for the Chief's final hurrah. It didn't make for a bad game - just one that felt more than a little too familiar.
