I can have blindingly good or blindingly bad games on Halo 3, my abilities often depend on several factors, luck being a key one that I'll hit on, if I'm even slightly not feeling the game I'm done for.

However I have analyzed and found ways to make using guns that most Halo 3 players will claim are "terrible" "crap" or "" work to my favour, half the time because people don't expect me to use them. My main gun of choice aside from a BR is to grab a spiker or even dual wield them I discovered that dual spikers is quicker to kill than dual plasma assault rifles. Though a combi of dual plasma and spiker is devastatingly effective if you take shields with plasma and then whoop them with the spiker. Melee is useful with this gun as a drum of 60 shots will generally deal with 2 people and the melee is pretty damn hard, I know of no melee with a gun which is as damaging for the speed of it's attack. In close maps like Orbrital this can be highly effective. However even I acknowledge the main gun I'll use is the battle rifle or the sniper rifle (I'm a pretty damn effective man with a sniper rifle and a good perch, because I used to love playing with the shotty sniper games especially on high ground) I rarely use grenades unless the hit is sure fire or if the need is great such as I'm suddenly finding myself outta ammo in the clip and nothing suitable to cover my reload with. Sometimes especially up close and personal it's better to dual wield if you can't get something with a great rate of fire. Though I still tend to use the BR up close and at a range.

I have to admit the shield thing is something which makes more sense, ok so I'd love to see the warthog sever limbs and leave arcing blood sprays all over the map but I doubt it :P Ok take a look at like Gears 2 or Call of Duty 4. The enemies fill you full of lead your screen goes bloodshot and red and then you die. If you duck in cover, stop getting hit you regenerate health. How is the idea that in some games of Call of Duty 4, someone can fill you with 50+ rounds of lead, yet miraculously you'll survive however in Halo 3 someone shoots a load of rifle rounds at you but you manage to survive them because the kinetic barrier (shield) deflects most of the bullets before your shield overheats and your armour and body is left to absorb the shots themselves. A few seconds/minutes outta the fire and the system reboots and your shield is up again ready for the next battle. What makes more sense? Eating 50+ bullets or deflecting them on a shield which regenerates?

Melee attacks are reserved for "last ditch" and "assasination" unless you've got a grav hammer or a sword in which case your melee isn't so much a melee as just attacking. Though sometimes I'm not adverse to sneaking up behind someone and then going *BOOM* to their skull with something like a spiker/brute shot and watch them die.

And on Swat mode it's surprising how many kills I can rake in on the pistol, though Dan missed my recent shot of glory, I managed to headshot a dude with a magnum as I picked up my second pistol for dual wielding before he noticed me with 1 bullet. Psy was quite impressed, as he was when my dual wielding pistol tactics caused another player to rage quit!

Theres several tactics which annoy me, the bunny hopping is a major gripe though thats been the way of FPS games since way before CS even. Still no game is perfect but Halo 3 is definitely one of the best games to be released in the last decade and fully deserves it's place on the list.