Half-Life 2 
Halo 3 Overall Comparison I have seen many people vehemently back Halo 3 in this argument (which I have seen crop up often) with very little to back them other than zeal.
For the sake of time, I'll be shortening Halflife 2 to HL2 and Halo 3 to H3 as I go on.
The matter of the fact is, despite having been released 3 years prior, HL2 is superior on numerous levels (though admittedly, this is often the way with older games). For a start, there is a level of atmosphere in HL2 that crops up often that you just never find in any stage on H3. H3 wasn't helped by its predecessors, which although give the story, you can easily play it as if H1 and H2 never existed, I did. However HL2 had massive expectations to live up to, just with HL1's reputation. It fully pulled it off. The character interactions, the way the dystopian pre-apocalyptic cityscape could pull you in and the amazing graphics / physics engine made H3 feel like an adrenaline-junkie breezeblock.
I don't know how long these are meant to be, but I could go on for a lot longer but I just want to make my first post short, blunt and quite frankly rubbish. I don't think I enjoyed H3 even half as much as I enjoyed HL2, maybe I'm just a sucker for a bit of horror, too much Sci Fi puts me off, but personal opinions aside, HL2 is just generally superior to H3. The only thing H3 had in superiority to HL2 is... uh... Publicity? No wait, that doesn't affect the game play in the slightest...
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Comments
I loved HL2. Just like any good single player FPS storyline, it just ended so soon. There were a ton of cool parts that felt really frantic, yet fun. Like the time you had to shoot down the strider. The only parts I can remember from H3 are the ones that were really annoying, like driving that stupid vehicle across all those tiles as they are falling.
I agree with you fully. I felt much more involved in the story line then I did in Halo 3, and seeing guys flying out of there barriers because of a well placed grenade, that just never gets old.