Halo 3 Meta-Game Complete

A few days ago, I finished going through the Halo 3 Meta-Game, which counts as my third completion of the game.

In English, the Meta-Game is playing through the Campaign Missions either Solo or Cooperatively as the game tracks your score. Your score is achieved by killing enemies, and certain kinds of kills, such as head shots and running an enemy over, nets you more points.

In order to achieve the proper scores per Mission to gain the Achievements, you need to activate the gold Skulls that you can collect. I mainly used the Tough Luck, Fog, and Famine Skulls, as well as the Catch and Thunderstorm Skulls when I needed an extra point boost.

I also had some fun with half of the silver Skulls, namely the Grunt Party Skull and IWHBYD Skull.

If you play on Heroic or Legendary, you get a score modifier, and the faster you complete a mission, the better your time bonus. I played through on Normal, and I used those extra gold skulls on the levels that I couldn't get the time bonus on. It should also be noted that while Checkpoints function in the Meta-Game, scoring doesn't resume mid-Mission if you've powered down your Xbox 360. If you're going to do this, you need to sit through an entire Mission in one sitting.

I actually found the Meta-Game quite challenging, and in several instances, very frustrating. That's because you're focus is not on completing the Mission, but the need to accumulate X amount of points, and you usually don't realize your going to fail until you're nearly done a Mission. This means I wasted some hours of my time, however since I had to replay so many Missions, I've nearly completed the game for a 4th time.

With the completion of Halo 3's Meta-Campaign, I've earned all but one of the game's Single Player Achievements: "Campaign Complete: Legendary". While it's worth a nice 125 Gamer Points, sadly, I don't believe I have the skill to earn this Achievement on my own.

I also tinkered around a lot more with the Theatre and taking Screenshots. Overall, a very nice feature and a lot of fun, though my Screenshots didn't upload to Bungie's web site. Odd, as I thought they would, but perhaps you need an Xbox LIVE Gold Membership for that.